me extra copies to be struck off. These, he
said, "put into his head the thought of collecting more," and when he
printed the materials he had since accumulated he imitated as closely as
possible the type and paper of the stored up sheets.[60] P. T. made a
merit of the revelation, and wished that Curll should see in it a proof
of the openness and confidence with which he was treated. In reality it
was an endeavour to explain the awkward circumstance that the prose part
of Pope's Wycherley had been done up with the letters of 1735. The
publication of 1729 was entitled the second volume of Wycherley's
"Posthumous Works," and contained a couple of notes referring to poems
which were inserted or omitted in what was called "the present edition."
But as Pope's letters were not an edition of Wycherley's Works, the
absurdity of the reference might have led at any moment to the exposure
of the fact that the sheets of the old book had been transferred to the
new, and it was better at once, by an air of candid confession, to
account for the importation than to run the risk of discovery. Curll had
soon a rival version to give of the manner in which these sheets were
procured. He announced that Gilliver, who published the Wycherley volume
of 1729, had declared that Pope bought of him the remainder of the
impression, consisting of six hundred copies, and directed the other
letters comprised in the volume of 1735 to be printed to match them.[61]
There can be no difficulty in deciding between these opposite
statements. The assertion of P. T. we know to be a falsehood, for Pope
himself, and not the noble friend, prepared the letters of Wycherley for
the press. None of the inferior agents could have carried off any large
number of books, without detection, nor could have stowed them away from
1729 to 1735. The motive to thieve what was already published could only
have been lucre, and yet thirty pounds were taken for three hundred
octavos of 470[62] pages each, when but 50 of these pages were derived
from the sheets that cost nothing. If, too, there was any truth in P.
T.'s story, he was encumbered with the pile of stolen goods when he
opened the correspondence with Curll in 1733, whereas it is clear from
his communications at that time that the idea of supplying printed books
had not then occurred to him. The trick which had been practised was
known to Pope when he put forth his "Narrative," and he might have
obtained a clue to the culpri