to publish the Cromwell letters. Cromwell had given the
letters to a mistress, who fell into distress and sold them to Curll for
ten guineas.

The correspondence was received with some favour, and suggested to Pope
a new mode of gratifying his vanity. An occasion soon offered itself.
Theobald, the hero of the Dunciad, edited in 1728 the posthumous works
of Wycherley. Pope extracted from this circumstance a far-fetched excuse
for publishing the Wycherley correspondence. He said that it was due to
Wycherley's memory to prove, by the publication of their correspondence,
that the posthumous publication of the works was opposed to their
author's wishes. As a matter of fact the letters have no tendency to
prove anything of the kind, or rather, they support the opposite theory;
but poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar, and took the first
pretext that offered, without caring for consistency or confirmation.
His next step was to write to his friend, Lord Oxford, son of Queen
Anne's minister. Oxford was a weak, good-natured man. By cultivating a
variety of expensive tastes, without the knowledge to guide them, he
managed to run through a splendid fortune and die in embarrassment. His
famous library was one of his special hobbies. Pope now applied to him
to allow the Wycherley letters to be deposited in the library, and
further requested that the fact of their being in this quasi-public
place might be mentioned in the preface as a guarantee of their
authenticity. Oxford consented, and Pope quietly took a further step
without authority. He told Oxford that he had decided to make his
publishers say that copies of the letters had been obtained from Lord
Oxford. He told the same story to Swift, speaking of the "connivance" of
his noble friend, and adding that, though he did not himself "much
approve" of the publication, he was not ashamed of it. He thus
ingeniously intimated that the correspondence, which he had himself
carefully prepared and sent to press, had been printed without his
consent by the officious zeal of Oxford and the booksellers.

The book (which was called the second volume of Wycherley's works) has
entirely disappeared. It was advertised at the time, but not a single
copy is known to exist. One cause of this disappearance now appears to
be that it had no sale at first, and that Pope preserved the sheets for
use in a more elaborate device which followed. Oxford probably objected
to the misuse of his name, as th