although the persons who brought out the collection of 1741, had the manuscript before them, or they could not have given Bolingbroke's share of the letter, they nevertheless, by a marvellous coincidence, print Pope's share precisely as it had been printed by Pope himself in 1737. The conclusion is irresistible that the editor of the quarto of 1737, was the editor of the collection of 1741. The postscript of Bolingbroke was not written when he was in the house with Pope, but was added subsequently when he got back to Dawley,[141] and its omission from the volume of 1737 was due to the circumstance, that the poet had not then received back his correspondence from Swift, and only possessed a copy of his own carefully composed essay. The letter of Bolingbroke to Swift, in which the poet had no share, was commenced at Aix-la-Chapelle on August 30, 1729, and completed at Dawley on October 5. Pope appears not to have seen it before it was sent; for four days later, on October 9, he says to Swift, "Lord Bolingbroke has told me ten times over, he was going to write to you. Has he or not?" The elaborate epistle of Bolingbroke was a reply to a letter which Swift had addressed to Pope, and the consequent interest that Pope would have had in the answer, may have induced the author, proud of his production, to provide him with a copy; but however he came by it, a copy was deposited by him in Lord Oxford's library, where, as in the quarto of 1741, it is the single example of an epistle by Bolingbroke alone. Swift had by him a quantity of Bolingbroke's correspondence, some of which would have been full as appropriate as the specimen that is given, and it is a weighty fact in the question whether the Dean or the poet furnished the materials to the printer, that the one letter selected was the one letter that Pope possessed. The three letters which are inserted from Swift to Bolingbroke incline the scale to the same side. The first relates in part to Pope, the conclusion of the second is addressed to him, and the third is the answer to the letter of August 30, 1729. It was never pretended that the Dean received back his letters to Bolingbroke, and it was not his habit to make copies; but with our knowledge that the poet and Bolingbroke had much of their correspondence with Swift in common, we may be sure that these three letters, at least, had been in the hands of Pope, and if he did not retain the originals, it would in 1729, the year to which they all belong, have been in accordance with his common practice to transcribe them.