The extract from the letter to Caryll of January 25, 1711, which forms the second portion of the made-up letter to Wycherley of June 23, 1705, is a comment on the eulogy lavished by Caryll on some verses of the poet. The change of name and date flattered in a double manner the vanity of Pope,--the applause appeared to proceed from a celebrated wit instead of from a country squire, and to be bestowed upon a lad of seventeen instead of upon a man who was nearly twenty-three. He always aspired to the credit of precocity, and some of his falsifications seem to have had no other purpose than to exaggerate his juvenile fame. Wycherley wrote to him on February 19, 1708-9, and spoke of the genius which promised him immortality, of his great, vigorous and active mind. In a postscript it is mentioned that the "Miscellany," which contained Pope's Pastorals, would not be out for three weeks.[170] Pope suppressed, amongst other passages, the allusion which fixed the period at which the panegyric was penned, and altered the year to 1706-7, for no perceptible reason except that he wished to antedate the praise. There can be little doubt that his opening letter to Wycherley was manufactured or misplaced with a similar object. It is printed in the edition of 1735 on an interpolated half sheet, marked *B, the pages of which are correctly numbered from 1 to 4. As the first page of sheet B which follows is numbered 3, it is evident that it was originally preceded by only two pages, which must have been cancelled, and the present letter put in their place.[171] This new letter is dated December 26, 1704, and contains his reflections on a compliment which he alleges had been paid to him by Wycherley--that his compositions were above the attacks of envious critics. "It is pleasant to remark," says Dr. Johnson, "how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them."[172] He did not in fact publish a single line till more than four years later, and with our present evidence that the letter was an interpolated after-thought, we cannot but suspect that Wycherley's premature compliment, and Pope's premature cant both belonged to a subsequent period, or perhaps were fabricated for the press. "The author's age then sixteen," says the poet in a note, and in this ostentatious announcement we have the motive to the act. The opinion of Warburton, that the letters of the boy displayed all the characteristics of the man, is an argument the more that they were the productions of the man and not of the boy.