On November 28, 1729, Pope protested to Swift that it was many years since he endeavoured to play the wit in his familiar correspondence. He assured the Dean that as he had a greater love and esteem for him than for others, so he wrote to him with even more than ordinary negligence. "I smile to think," he continues, "how Curll would be bit were our epistles to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they would fall short of every ingenious reader's expectations." Warburton tells us that Pope valued himself upon this abstinence from all effort to be brilliant;[127] but his pretence of sinking the author in the friend gained no credit from Swift, who took care to show his incredulity. "I find," he replied on February 26, 1730, "you have been a writer of letters almost from your infancy; and, by your own confession, had schemes even then of epistolary fame. Montaigne says that if he could have excelled in any kind of writing it would have been in letters; but I doubt they would not have been natural, for it is plain that all Pliny's letters were written with a view of publishing, and I accuse Voiture of the same crime, although he be an author I am fond of. They cease to be letters when they become a _jeu d'esprit_." Pope seems to have suspected that this half-direct, half-oblique criticism was suggested by his recent collection and arrangement of his correspondence, and he denied, in his answer of April 9, that he was open to the censure. "I am pleased," he observed, "to see your partiality, and it is for that reason I have kept some of your letters, and some of those of my other friends. These if I put together in a volume for my own secret satisfaction in reviewing a life passed in innocent amusements and studies, not without the good will of worthy and ingenious men, do not therefore say I aim at epistolary fame. I never had any fame less in my head; but the fame I most covet, indeed, is that which must be derived to me from my friendships." The poet as usual adapted his assertions to the exigencies of the moment; for it was not for "his own secret satisfaction in reviewing a life passed in innocent amusements and studies," that he had deposited a duplicate of the volume with Lord Oxford, or kept it in readiness "against the revival of slanders, and the publication of surreptitious letters." This suppression of facts and motives could have had no effect in deluding Swift. Once on September 3, 1735, when his faculties were waning, and his powers rose and fell with his malady, he echoed back Pope's former language. "Neither," he said, "did our letters contain any turns of wit, or fancy, or politics, or satire, but mere innocent friendship. I believe we neither of us ever leaned our head upon our hand to study what we should write next." But by the 21st of October he had already returned to his old conviction, and after mentioning the publication of the poet's correspondence by Curll, he added, "I believe my letters have