The letter was a
signal blunder. Curll saw at once that it put the game in his hands. He
was not going to tell lies to please the slippery P. T., or the short
squat lawyer-clergyman. He had begun to see through the whole
manoeuvre. He went straight off to the Lords' committee, told the
whole story, and produced as a voucher the letters in which P. T. begged
for secrecy. Curll's word was good for little by itself, but his story
hung together and the letter confirmed it. And if, as now seemed clear,
Curll was speaking the truth, the question remained, who was P. T., and
how did he get the letters? The answer, as Pope must have felt, was only
too clear.
But Curll now took the offensive. In reply to another letter from
Smythe, complaining of his evidence, he went roundly to work; he said
that he should at once publish all the correspondence. P. T. had
prudently asked for the return of his letters; but Curll had kept
copies, and was prepared to swear to their fidelity. Accordingly he soon
advertised what was called the _Initial Correspondence_. Pope was now
caught in his own trap. He had tried to avert suspicion by publicly
offering a reward to Smythe and P. T., if they would "discover the whole
affair." The letters, as he admitted, must have been procured either
from his own library or from Lord Oxford's. The correspondence to be
published by Curll would help to identify the mysterious appropriators,
and whatever excuses could be made ought now to be forthcoming.
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