[Footnote 173: Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an account of some religious fanatics.] [Footnote 174: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.] [Footnote 175: The general impression produced by the correspondence was expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can place no reliance on his passing words.] [Footnote 176: Oxford MSS.] [Footnote 177: This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much asperity in a preliminary advertisement, of which the original, corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.] [Footnote 178: Advertisement to the edition of 1749.] [Footnote 179: Advertisement to the edition of 1749. In the same year Warburton put forth a short pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted, in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of the principal charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and "only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years before, when the subject was fresh, and Bolingbroke was living.--Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 526. Appendix, p. 573.] [Footnote 180: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 573.] [Footnote 181: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 232.] [Footnote 182: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 572.] [Footnote 183: Warburton says that the expense had been considerable.--Ruffhead, 571.] [Footnote 184: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 92.] [Footnote 185: Macaulay's Essays. I Vol. edit. p. 718.] THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.