[Footnote 49: Vol. I. pp. xl. xli. All the statements to which I have referred occur in this preface of Pope to the quarto of 1737, and some of them in many other places besides.]
[Footnote 50: Vol. I. p. xxxvii. Appendix, p. 419.]
[Footnote 53: Vol. I. p. xxxviii. The anonymous friend was put in the place of Lord Oxford. Half the notes relate to the Wycherley manuscripts in the Harley library, and could only have proceeded from the author of that fiction. Pope's official editor, Warburton, signed all the notes with Pope's name.]
[Footnote 57: This circumstance at once attracted the attention of Swift. "I detest the House of Lords," he wrote to Lady Betty Germain, from Dublin, June 8, 1735, "for their indulgence to such a profligate, prostitute villain as Curll; but am at a loss how he could procure any letters written to Mr. Pope, although by the vanity or indiscretion of correspondents the rogue might have picked up some that went from him. Those letters have not yet been sent hither; therefore I can form no judgment on them." Swift's detestation of the House of Lords for not punishing a man who was proved to be innocent of the offence with which he was charged, is an instance of the kind of justice to be expected from violent partisans.]
[Footnote 60: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 429, 445.]
[Footnote 62: P. T. said 380, but the 3 was probably a misprint for 4.]
[Footnote 66: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 438. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. II. p. 261.]
[Footnote 68: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.]
[Footnote 69: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. II. p. vi.]
[Footnote 74: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 435.]
[Footnote 76: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.]
[Footnote 77: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii. Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.]
[Footnote 78: The "Athenæum" of Sept. 8, 1860.]
[Footnote 79: When Pope put forth his preface to the quarto he could not have intended to disguise that he was the writer of the "Narrative," or he would have been at greater pains to vary his language. If the general resemblance had been less marked, an invention common to both productions would reveal their common origin. In the "Narrative" we are informed that the complete collection of Pope's had been copied into a couple of books before Theobald published his edition of Wycherley's posthumous works, and that it was from these manuscript books that the Wycherley correspondence was transcribed for press. This assertion was untrue. Theobald's volume came out in 1728, while Pope's collection, as appears from his announcements to Lord Oxford, was still in the process of formation in September, 1729, and he was only "causing it to be fairly written" in October, after his own Wycherley volume had passed through the press. The false account is repeated in the preface to the quarto, where we are told that the posthumous works of Wycherley were printed the year after the copy of Pope's collection of letters had been deposited in the library of Lord Oxford, which throws back the deposit of the letters from the close of 1729 to 1727. Since the poet revived and authenticated an anonymous fiction respecting his personal acts, he may reasonably be supposed to have been the author of it. The object of the imposition was to uphold the tale he had advanced in his Wycherley volume. He had ceased to state openly that the publication was the act of Lord Oxford; but he wished to have it believed that the letters were in the keeping of his noble friend at the time, and to leave the impression that the notion of printing them had not originated with himself.]