lete knowledge of their
various details has only been obtained by recent researches. I cannot
follow within my limits of space all the ins and outs of the complicated
labyrinth of more than diplomatic trickery which those researches have
revealed, though I hope to render the main facts sufficiently
intelligible. It is painful to track the strange deceptions of a man of
genius as a detective unravels the misdeeds of an accomplished swindler;
but without telling the story at some length, it is impossible to give a
faithful exhibition of Pope's character.

In the year 1726, when Pope had just finished his labours upon Homer,
Curll published the juvenile letters to Cromwell. There was no mystery
about this transaction. Curll was the chief of all piratical
booksellers, and versed in every dirty trick of the Grub-street trade.
He is described in that mad book, Amory's _John Buncle_, as tall, thin,
ungainly, white-faced, with light grey goggle eyes, purblind,
splay-footed, and "baker-kneed." According to the same queer authority,
who professes to have lodged in Curll's house, he was drunk, as often as
he could drink for nothing, and intimate in every London haunt of vice.
"His translators lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn in
Holborn," and helped to compile his indecent, piratical, and catchpenny
productions. He had lost his ears for some obscene publication; but
Amory adds, "to his glory," that he died "as great a penitent as ever
expired." He had one strong point as an antagonist. Having no character
to lose, he could reveal his own practices without a blush, if the
revelation injured others.

Pope had already come into collision with this awkward antagonist. In
1716 Curll threatened to publish the Town Eclogues, burlesques upon
Ambrose Philips, written by Lady Mary, with the help of Pope and perhaps
Gay. Pope, with Lintot, had a meeting with Curll in the hopes of
suppressing a publication calculated to injure his friends. The party
had some wine, and Curll on going home was very sick. He declared--and
there are reasons for believing his story--that Pope had given him an
emetic, by way of coarse practical joke. Pope, at any rate, took
advantage of the accident to write a couple of squibs upon Curll,
recording the bookseller's ravings under the action of the drug, as he
had described the ravings of Dennis provoked by Cato. Curll had his
revenge afterwards; but meanwhile he wanted no extraneous motive to
induce him