On the 22nd of March, 1741, Pope called upon Lord Orrery at his house in London, and found him writing to Swift. The poet took the pen from his hand, and continued the letter. After large professions of affection, he went on to say, "I must confess, a late incident has given me some pain; but I am satisfied you were persuaded it would not have given me any, and whatever unpleasant circumstances the printing our letters might be attended with, there was one that pleased me,--that the strict friendship we have borne each other so long is thus made known to all mankind. As far as it was your will, I cannot be angry at what, in all other respects, I am quite uneasy under. Had you asked me, before you gave them away, I think I could have proposed some better monument for our friendship, or, at least, of better materials." Any words addressed to Swift were lost upon him now, and Pope in reality was speaking to Lord Orrery, and to those who might hereafter read his protestations. He had apparently forgotten that just four years before he had complained to the same Lord Orrery, that the Dean had denied his request when he wished to insert some of the letters in the quarto of 1737.[153] The monument he was eager to erect to their friendship in 1737, he repudiated in 1741. He affirmed that he could have proposed a better, but never hinted what it was; or at least of choicer materials, but never troubled himself further about them. This was the smallest part of the contradiction. He refused his consent to the reprint of the book sent to Dublin, and had even tried, he told Allen, to stop it by threats of law. It is true, he confessed to Mr. Nugent at the outset, and continued to confess to Allen, that he had no hope of prevailing; but his efforts are not the less the measure of his pretended disgust. Yet he instantly appropriated the correspondence he was anxious to stifle in its birth, contrived to anticipate the Dublin edition, incorporated the entire collection into his works, and published it simultaneously in folio, quarto, and octavo. He stated in the prefatory notice, that he had refused to revise the letters, because they were committed to the press without his consent; but the annoyance which would not permit him to revise the letters was no check to his haste in adopting, or to his zeal in circulating them. For a man who was "quite uneasy" at their appearance, his eagerness to countenance, to parade, and to propagate them was amazing, and the manifest duplicity is not the least forcible of the arguments which bring the whole contrivance home to Pope. Warburton applauded him for the little resentment "he expressed at the indiscretion of his old friend." He affected far more than his advocate supposed; but if it had been otherwise it is strange that Warburton should not have perceived that to talk of resentment was ridiculous when the poet was espousing "the indiscretion," and was doing his utmost to