forgery to be circulated till it had served his purpose; and then, without an allusion to his former language, imported the letter into his works with the complacent announcement "that it was plainly intended for Mr. Pope." The reason assigned by Pope why a letter must be forged which he afterwards admitted to be genuine, was one of his usual deceptions. By the Bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury it was declared to be felony to correspond with him in his exile after June 25, 1723. Pope disregarded the enactment with little risk of discovery, and perhaps without much danger of punishment if his harmless intercourse was detected. He condoled with the bishop on the death of his daughter, Mrs. Morice; and the bishop thus commenced his reply, which is dated Montpelier, November 20, 1729: "Yes, dear sir, I have had all you designed for me, and have read all, as I read whatever you write, with esteem and pleasure. But your last letter, full of friendship and goodness, gave me such impressions of concern and tenderness, as neither I can express, nor you, perhaps, with all the force of your imagination, fully conceive." This again must have drawn forth a response from the poet, for Atterbury says in an answer without date, "I venture to thank you for your kind and friendly letter, because I think myself very sure of a safe conveyance, and I am uneasy till I have told you what impressions it made upon me. I will do it with the same simplicity with which I wrote to you from Montpelier upon a very melancholy occasion." These extracts testify that the letter which Curll published of November 23, 1731, was not a solitary instance, and that other letters had passed between the poet and Atterbury "even after that period when it was made felony to correspond with him." The proof which Pope urged with triumphant scorn to demonstrate that the letter of November 23 must be counterfeited was therefore an absolute fraud. His disingenuousness did not end here. He printed Atterbury's letter of November 20, 1729, at the same time that he reproduced the letter published by Curll, and said in a note,--"This also seems genuine, though whether written to Mr. P. or some learned friend in France, is uncertain; but we doubt not it will be acceptable to the reader." To support the alleged uncertainty he omitted the passages which showed that it was addressed to a sickly poet in England. The complete letter was inserted by Mr. Nichols in the "Epistolary Correspondence of Atterbury," and his version is confirmed by a copy among the Oxford papers at Longleat. The bishop died in February, 1732; and if in 1739 Pope thought it unsafe to admit that he had held communication with him in his banishment upon literary and domestic topics, he might have left the letter to be published by Warburton, and not have violated truth for the sake of hurrying it before the world.