[143] Birch MSS. Brit. Mus., quoted in Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339. When Mr. Gerrard was about to return to Ireland from Bath, Pope wrote to him, May 17, 1740, to say that he had found another conveyance for the letter he had intended to send by him to Swift. Mr. Gerrard may nevertheless have carried over the printed correspondence, which would not have been openly entrusted to him by Pope, who professed to know nothing about it. The poet may have thought upon reflection that it would look less suspicious if his avowed letter and the anonymous parcel were not transmitted by the same bearer.
[144] Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.
[145] Pope to Mr. Nugent, March 26, 1740, and Mr. Nugent to Mrs. Whiteway, April 2, 1740.
[146] Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740.
[147] Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 469. The letter to Allen was not published till twenty-five years after Pope's death.
[148] Millar v. Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2397.
[149] "Athenæum" for Sept. 15, 1860.
[150] "Whereas there is an impression of certain letters between Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope openly printed in Dublin without Mr. Pope's consent, and there is reason to think the same hath been, or will be done clandestinely in London, notice is hereby given that they will be speedily published with several additional letters, &c., composing altogether a second volume of his works in prose."—"London Daily Post" for March 24, 1741, quoted in the "Athenæum" for September 15, 1860. The advertisement displays the same cautious phraseology as was employed in the prefatory notice to the quarto, and speaks of the Dublin volume as only printed, not published. One motive which probably induced Faulkner to delay it was, that the work would have been incomplete without the additional letters.
[151] Page 89 in the quarto bears, in the cancelled division, the signature M., and the later page 89 has the signature N. The cause of the difference is plain. It is the ordinary habit to begin the body of a work on sheet B, and reserve the signature A, for the preliminary matter. This is the method adopted with the three previous quarto volumes of Pope's works, and was followed in the original quarto impression of the correspondence; but after the poet had cancelled the beginning of the volume, the sheet commonly marked B was in the second state of the quarto marked A, which occasioned the usual sheet N to become M. The discrepancy is an additional proof that the opening sheets had been cancelled and reprinted.
[152] There were probably minor cancels which did not disturb the general arrangement, as at page 124, where there is a note which purports to be copied from the Dublin edition. The final sheet of all was evidently printed after Faulkner's volume was in type.