What, indeed! The method subsequently employed by Pope to recover his letters from Swift, and to get them published in such a way as to create the impression that Pope himself had no hand in it, cannot be here narrated. It is a story no one can take pleasure in. Of such an organized hypocrisy as this correspondence it is no man's duty to speak seriously. Here and there an amusing letter occurs, but as a whole it is neither interesting, elevating, nor amusing. When in 1741 Curll moved to dissolve the injunction Pope had obtained in connection with the Swift correspondence, his counsel argued that letters on familiar subjects and containing inquiries after the health of friends were not learned works, and consequently were not within the copyright statute of Queen Anne, which was entitled, 'An Act for the Encouragement of Learning;' but Lord Hardwicke, with his accustomed good sense, would have none of this objection, and observed (and these remarks, being necessary for the judgment, are not mere _obiter dicta_, but conclusive): 'It is certain that no works have done more service to mankind than those which have appeared in this shape upon familiar subjects, and which, perhaps, were never intended to be published, and it is this which makes them so valuable, for I must confess, for my own part, that letters which are very elaborately written, and originally intended for the press, are generally the most insignificant, and very little worth any person's reading' (2 Atkyns, p. 357). I am encouraged by this authority to express the unorthodox opinion that Pope's letters, with scarcely half-a-dozen exceptions, and only one notable exception, are very little worth any person's reading. Pope's epistolary pranks have, perhaps, done him some injustice. It has always been the fashion to admire the letter which, first appearing in 1737, in Pope's correspondence, and there attributed to Gay, describes the death by lightning of the rustic lovers John Hewet and Sarah Drew. An identical description occurring in a letter written by Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and subsequently published by Warton from the original, naturally caused the poet to be accused of pilfering another man's letter, and sending it off as his own. Mr. Thackeray so puts it in his world-famous _Lectures_, and few literary anecdotes are better known; but the better opinion undoubtedly is that the letter was Pope's from the beginning, and attributed by him to Gay because he did not want to have it appear that on the date in question he was corresponding with Lady Mary. After all, there is a great deal to be said in favour of honesty.