by a mysterious personage known as P. T., who offered him for publication a large printed collection of the poet's letters-how a man in a clerical gown and a barrister's lawn band went to Curll at night and showed him most of the sheets of the volume and some original letters-how a large number of copies were taken by the unscrupulous bookseller, and on the report that they contained letters from noblemen were seized by an order from the House of Lords next day-how by a knowing fraud of P. T., who tried in vain to make the bookseller prevaricate and give false evidence, the Committee of the Lords were compelled to drop the matter-how a narrative was published which professed to reveal the whole story, but which revealed nothing about the purloiner of the correspondence-and how finally Pope published the letters himself on the plea that he was forced to do so.

Pope's story was received at the time, as Johnson tells us, with different degrees of credit, and the Doctor himself, although writing partly in the dark, had no doubt that Pope contrived the plot to serve his own purpose. That this was the case is now evident, yet, despite the suspicions of his contemporaries, the deed was never proved against Pope in his lifetime. Not only were the Wycherley letters, the letters of 1735,

and the Swift letters all dishonestly published, but in each case the poet attempted to divert the blame and the responsibility from himself, and to fix it on his friends. With regard to Swift, his best and oldest friend, his conduct was especially blameworthy, for it was not until his great contemporary was sinking into his dotage that he carried out his design. Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the

"I find," says Swift (in a letter printed for the first time in Mr. Elwin's edition), “you have been a writer of letters almost from your infancy, and by your own confession had schemes even then of epistolary fame. Montaigne says that if he could have excelled in any kind of writing it would have been in letters; but I doubt they would not have been natural, for it is plain that all Pliny's letters were written with a view of publishing; and I accuse Voiture himself of the same crime, although he be an author I am fond of. They cease to be letters when they become a jeu d'esprit." This is a significant passage, and one that Pope was not likely to read or to remember without painful feelings. It shows how thoroughly Swift had gauged his weakness and the contempt he felt for it. One can picture the Dean's sardonic smile when reading Pope's reply: "I am pleased to see your partiality, and it is for that reason I have kept some of your letters and some of those of my other friends. These, if I put together in a volume for my own secret satisfaction, in reviewing a life passed in innocent amusements and studies, not without the goodwill of worthy and ingenious men, do not therefore say I aim at epistolary fame. I never had any fame less in my head."

publication by Curll he begged Swift to return him his letters, lest they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope should eventually have them, but declined giving them up during his lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters (probably another ruse of Pope's) formed an additional ground for urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to deliver up the letters. There was an hiatus in the correspondence, and Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory at the time was not to be trusted, to hint what he dared not directly assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean and that Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to deplore the sad

vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so miserable." In the introduction to the first volume of his edition, Mr. Elwin, following the path opened up for him by Mr. Dilke, has laid bare all the artifices of Pope with regard to his correspondence. He has been blamed for so doing, but we do not see how the miserable narrative was to be avoided. Truth is more precious than even the reputation of a poet, and there is no greater blunder than to suppose that because a man has genius, his moral failings are to be concealed or condoned. Pope lied abominably, and, in the words of Mr. Leslie Stephen, "a gentleman convicted at the present day of practices comparable to those in which Pope indulged so freely, might find it expedient to take his name off the books of any respectable club."* To ignore the painful fact was impossible; the mistake, as it seems to us, lies in the prominent place assigned by Mr. Elwin to this exposition of the poet's mendacity.

Pope said once what he certainly did not believe, that he could not write agreeable letters, and he never uttered a truer word. It would have been better for his reputation if he had not published a **Hours in a Library.' First Series. Smith, Elder, and Co.

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single letter; better, considering the insincerity of his correspondence, if he had never written one. It is the charm of Cowper's letters that they are as natural as spring flowers. There is art in those of Walpole, but such art that they generally appear unstudied. Moreover Walpole's correspondence abounds in entertaining gossip, and we forget his defects as a letter writer in the amusement we glean from him as a chronicler of town talk. Pope's letters, on the contrary, have no spontaneity, and no great variety of interest. The well-turned compliments, the carefully constructed periods, the superfine morality of the poet ring hollow. "He laboured them," says Horace Walpole, "as much as the Essay on Man'; and as they were written to everybody, they do not look as if they had been written to anybody." Nevertheless Pope, whose taste was almost always correct with regard to literary matters, knew well that ease and freedom are essential to good letter writing. He never forgot that such compositions ought to be unpremeditated, and that whatever charm they possess should be caught from the feelings of the moment. Again and again he assures his correspondents that he is writing in careless haste, that he does not stay to correct, that his words