Pope imposed upon him just as Blifil imposed upon his
representative. He was so much pleased with the correspondence, that he
sought Pope's acquaintance, and offered to publish a genuine edition at
his own expense. An authoritative edition appeared accordingly in 1737.
Pope preferred to publish by subscription, which does not seem to have
filled very rapidly, though the work ultimately made a fair profit.
Pope's underhand manoeuvres were abundantly illustrated in the history
of this new edition. It is impossible to give the details; but I may
briefly state that he was responsible for a nominally spurious edition
which appeared directly after, and was simply a reproduction of Curll's
publication. Although he complained of the garbling and interpolations
supposed to have been due to the wicked Curll or the phantom P. T., and
although he omitted in his avowed edition certain letters which had
given offence, he nevertheless substantially reproduced in it Curll's
version of the letters. As this differs from the originals which have
been preserved, Pope thus gave an additional proof that he was really
responsible for Curll's supposed garbling. This evidence was adduced
with conclusive force by Bowles in a later controversy, and would be
enough by itself to convict Pope of the imputed deception. Finally, it
may be added that Pope's delay in producing his own edition is explained
by the fact that it contained many falsifications of his correspondence
with Caryll, and that he delayed the acknowledgment of the genuine
character of the letters until Caryll's death removed the danger of
detection.
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