August, 1738, his general expressions in answer to Pope would appear to apply to the whole of the correspondence, and seem a confirmation of the delusion of Swift. The poet made himself responsible for the misconceptions of the Dean by marking them with inverted commas, by supporting them with specious subsidiary evidence, and attesting that they embodied the history of the publication; and since they leave an impression which he knew to be false upon the precise particular which implicates himself, his disingenuous sanction of the error must be considered to be the act of conscious guilt. "I should think with you, madam," Lord Orrery wrote to Mrs. Whiteway, "that some of Mr. Pope's servants had stolen the letters, did not many appear from various people to the Dean, of which Mr. Pope cannot be supposed either to have seen the copies or originals." With our present information, the letters in the collection which are not from the pen of Pope tell the other way, and contribute in a powerful degree to fix the publication on him. The replies of Swift, together with much of Swift's correspondence with Gay, are included in the volume, and it will be found upon examination that all these materials were likely to have been furnished by the poet, and that part of them could have been furnished by nobody else. He has twice touched upon the subject in the annotations to the quarto. The first note is attached to the heading, "Letters of Dr. Swift to Mr. Gray," and states that they were "found among Mr. Gay's papers, and returned to Dr. Swift by the Duke of Queensberry and Mr. Pope." The second note is appended to that portion of the postscript of August 24, 1738, in which the Dean mentions "a great collection of your/my letters to me/you." "It is written," subjoins the poet, "just thus in the original. The book that is now printed seems to be part of the collection here spoken of, as it contains not only the letters of Mr. Pope, but of Dr. Swift, both to him and Mr. Gay, which were returned him after Mr. Gay's death, though any mention made by Mr. P. of the return or exchange of letters has been industriously suppressed in the publication, and only appears by some of the answers."