The assertion that the letters were returned which Swift addressed to Pope, is next to be examined. According to the poet his surrender of them appears from _some_ of the answers of Swift; but the single passage by which it is implied, is that in which the Dean speaks of "a great collection of [your/my] letters to [me/you]." The very letter in which the sentence occurs commences with a lament by Swift that he has "entirely lost his memory," and the strange double form in which he describes the correspondence seems chiefly to indicate a consciousness that his recollection of its nature was uncertain and confused. On one half of the subject he had manifested his misconceptions a few days before. He had forgotten the chasm in the series of Pope's letters, had forgotten that any of them had been restored to their author, had forgotten Mrs. Whiteway's denial that she possessed them, and when she again corrected him, continued to fancy they were deposited with some person he knew not whom, in some place he knew not where. His notions respecting his letters to Pope were not likely to be better founded than his notions respecting the letters of Pope to him. But more than this, he only professed to make the statement upon the authority of his cousin, and his cousin disavowed all knowledge of the collection. Far from being aware that the Dean had received back his letters to Pope, she expressed her conviction that the materials for the printed volume could not have been drawn from Ireland, just because those letters formed part of it.[138] The literal interpretation of a single phrase of Swift, in a letter which bears internal evidence of the grievous extent of his malady, being negatived by the authority upon which it claims to be based, there still exists the ambiguous assurance of Pope that he returned the correspondence after the death of Gay, which happened in December, 1732. The replies, however, of Swift in the quarto, instead of stopping at this date, extend to August, 1738, and those of the last half-dozen years must have remained with the poet. The Dean had said in 1717, that he kept no copies of letters. Mrs. Whiteway testified that he had never taken a copy during the twelve years she had been at his elbow, "excepting of a letter to a lord-lieutenant or a bishop, whom he feared might make an ill use of it;" and as for the letters to Pope she had seen him write them, and send them off immediately. Letters of which Pope had the originals, and Swift no copies, must plainly have owed their publicity to Pope.