y in which he conveyed them? The identity of thought and
expression was the more singular that P. T., in a private communication
to Curll, had confirmed the original story of the poet, and asserted
that "a noble lord had handed to the press the letters of
Wycherley."[55] To the world he varied the tale, and the variation was
the same which was adopted a week or two afterwards by Pope.

A coincidence remains which more than all the rest proclaims Pope to be
the author of the address "to the reader." Nothing would have served
better his purpose in the prosecution than to prevail upon Curll to
confess that the letters were of his own procuring and printing. Upon
the seizure of the books Smythe wrote to him in the name of P. T.,
promising that he should have the work upon easier terms, and holding
out the prospect of a second and more important volume of correspondence
if he would keep secret the whole transaction, would assert that he had
the letters from different hands, and avow that he had printed them, as
he did Cromwell's before.[56] The preface, which had never been seen by
Curll, and which was appended, as if in anticipation of the event, to
all the copies carried off to the House of Lords, contained the same
tale he was instructed to tell. "The collection," it said, "hath been
owing to several cabinets, some drawn from thence by accidents, and
others, even of those to ladies, voluntarily given. It is to one of that
sex we are beholden for the whole correspondence with H. C[romwell]
Esq., which letters being lent her by that gentleman she took the
liberty to print." On the 12th of May, the day the work was published,
Pope gave a similar account to Caryll of the mode by which the contents
were procured. "What," he said, "makes me sick of writing is the
shameless industry of such fellows as Curll, and the idle ostentation,
or weak partiality of many of my correspondents, who have shown about my
letters (which I never writ but in haste, and generally against the
grain, in mere civility; for almost all letters are impertinent further
than _Si vales, bene est; ego valeo_) to such a degree that a volume of
two hundred or more are printed by that rascal. But he could never have
injured me this way, had not my friends furnished him with the occasion,
by keeping such wretched papers as they ought to have burned." The whole
of this passage is an egregious specimen of misrepresentation and
hypocrisy. A glance at the work must h