ok from Faulkner, read it, and instead of begging
Pope not to deprive the world of so delightful a treat, said with dull
integrity, that he thought the collection "unworthy to be published."
Orrery, however, was innocent enough to accept Pope's suggestion, that
letters which had once got into such hands would certainly come out
sooner or later. After some more haggling, Pope ultimately decided to
take this ground. He would, he said, have nothing to do with the
letters; they would come out in any case; their appearance would please
the Dean, and he (Pope) would stand clear of all responsibility. He
tried, indeed, to get Faulkner to prefix a statement tending to fix the
whole transaction upon Swift; but the bookseller declined, and the
letters ultimately came out with a simple statement that they were a
reprint.

Pope had thus virtually sanctioned the publication. He was not the less
emphatic in complaining of it to his friends. To Orrery, who knew the
facts, he represented the printed copy sent to Swift as a proof that
the letters were beyond his power; and to others, such as his friend
Allen, he kept silence as to this copy altogether; and gave them to
understand that poor Swift--or some member of Swift's family--was the
prime mover in the business. His mystification had, as before, driven
him into perplexities upon which he had never calculated. In fact, it
was still more difficult here than in the previous case to account for
the original misappropriation of the letters. Who could the thief have
been? Orrery, as we have seen, had himself taken a packet of letters to
Pope, which would be of course the letters from Pope to Swift. The
packet being sealed, Orrery did not know the contents, and Pope asserted
that he had burnt it almost as soon as received. It was, however, true
that Swift had been in the habit of showing the originals to his
friends, and some might possibly have been stolen or copied by designing
people. But this would not account for the publication of Swift's
letters to Pope, which had never been out of Pope's possession. As he
had certainly been in possession of the other letters, it was easiest,
even for himself, to suppose that some of his own servants were the
guilty persons; his own honour being, of course, beyond question.

To meet these difficulties, Pope made great use of some stray phrases
dropped by Swift in the decline of his memory, and set up a story of his
having himself returned some lett