Mrs. Whiteway, indeed, met the suggestion so clearly, and gave
such good reasons for assigning Twickenham as the probable centre of the
plot, that she must have suspected the truth. Pope did not venture to
assail her publicly, though he continued to talk of treachery or evil
influence.
To accuse innocent people of a crime which you know yourself to have
committed is bad enough. It is, perhaps, even baser to lay a trap for a
friend, and reproach him for falling into it. Swift had denied the
publication of the letters, and Pope would have had some grounds of
complaint had he not been aware of the failure of Swift's mind, and had
he not been himself the tempter. His position, however, forced him to
blame his friend. It was a necessary part of his case to impute at least
a breach of confidence to his victim. He therefore took the attitude--it
must, one hopes, have cost him a blush--of one who is seriously
aggrieved, but who is generously anxious to shield a friend in
consideration of his known infirmity. He is forced, in sorrow, to admit
that Swift has erred, but he will not allow himself to be annoyed. The
most humiliating words ever written by a man not utterly vile, must have
been those which Pope set down in a letter to Nugent, after giving his
own version of the case: "I think I can make no reflections upon this
strange incident but what are truly melancholy, and humble the pride of
human nature. That the greatest of geniuses, though prudence may have
been the companion of wit (which is very rare) for their whole lives
past, may have nothing left them but their vanity.
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