his own expression, the Dublin printers had "done their job." The fact was, that Allen had intimated his apprehension that Pope would be suspected of being concerned in the publication, and Pope replied that "the whole thing was so circumstanced that this could never be the case." To stifle the suggestion, he based a falsehood upon a foundation of truth, and spoke of the letters which Mrs. Whiteway had offered to send him, in the beginning of 1740, as though they had been the originals of the printed correspondence. His invention of a fiction to establish his innocence, is a sure indication of his guilt. The Dean's people promised Pope the copy of the correspondence, that he might correct and expunge what he pleased. "I dare not," he wrote to Allen, "even do this, for they would say I revised it." His mind immediately veered from decision to uncertainty, and in the next sentence but one he states that "he knows not whether to make any use of the permission or not." A little further, and he comes to the conclusion that until he sees the letters he can form no judgment of the proper measures to be pursued. "The excessive earnestness," he adds, "the Dean has been in for publishing them makes me hope they are castigated in some degree; or he must be totally deprived of his understanding." Lord Mansfield deposed, from the personal information of Pope, that his imperfect memory of their contents increased his anxiety to stop the publication.[148] In the midst of his apprehensions, his knowledge of Swift's incapacity, and his conviction that it would be insanity to allow the correspondence to go forth in its integrity, he yet resolved not to expurgate the copy, and then doubted whether he would expurgate it or not. This easy kind of hesitation, which has none of the appearance of genuine alarm, was what might be expected in a man who had already revised the letters to his heart's content, and was poorly performing a borrowed part. Though he ended by refusing to retouch a text of his own preparing, he employed the interval while the sheets were submitted to his criticism in forestalling the Dublin edition. Mr. D. Swift believed that the correspondence was first published in Ireland. Faulkner asserted that it was first published in England, and Faulkner, who could not well be mistaken, was right. No advertisement of the Irish volume is to be found in the "Dublin News Letter" till some time after the English volume was on sale, and no copy exists in the public libraries, or after long search could be heard of from the second-hand booksellers, which does not contain the additional matter inserted in the quarto.[149] In the prefatory notice to the quarto itself we are told that the letters are taken "from an impression sent from Dublin, and said to be printed by the Dean's direction." This was the impression which had been privately forwarded to Pope, and the language seems to have been carefully selected to avoid the assertion