An event happened opportunely to assist the solicitations of the poet. Towards the close of 1736 Curll printed a couple of letters to Swift, of which the first was written by Pope, and the second by Bolingbroke. The bookseller announced that they were transmitted to him from Ireland, together with several other valuable originals, and Pope on the 30th of December employed this practical proof to convince the Dean that the correspondence was not safe in his custody. The two letters, as they were called, were in fact a joint epistle; for not only does the portion of Bolingbroke purport to be a continuation of the portion of the poet, but Swift, who had been absent, says in the reply, which on his return home he addressed to Pope, "I found a letter from you with an _appendix_ longer than yours from Bolingbroke." The letter and its appendix were printed by Curll at the period when Pope had exhausted his arguments to induce Swift to resign the correspondence, and the occurrence was so well timed for the purposes of the poet, and the device so much in accordance with his practices, that it is impossible not to suspect that he contrived the injury as a means of extorting the redress. The original of his share of the epistle still exists,[130] and shows that the published version has been edited in his usual fashion. The variations, in the aggregate, could not have arisen from carelessness, and they are not of a kind which an independent person could have had any motive to introduce from design. The appendix of Bolingbroke had been in the power of Pope, who might have transcribed it, together with his own contribution, before it was sent; but he declared that he never possessed a copy of either,[131] and small as is the credit due to his protestations, he may have spoken the truth in this particular, and been guilty not the less. The Dean was accustomed to lend his acquaintances a volume in which he had stitched specimens of the letters of his eminent friends.[132] The joint letter of August, 1723, was preserved,[133] when the letters of Pope to Swift for a considerable period before and after were lost or destroyed, and it is likely that it escaped the common fate by its insertion in the volume of selections. There it was easily accessible, and as Worsdale, the reputed mock-clergyman, who had personated Smythe, was sometimes resident in Dublin, his old employer had a trusty, or at any rate a trusted agent, ready to his hand. Curll did not print any more of his boasted originals, and he probably only spoke on the faith of promises which had been made him with a view to compel compliance from the Dean, by persuading him that traitors had admission to his cabinet.