upon him the stigma of his own personal treachery, and this pretended magnanimity in forgiving a deed which he had contrived and instigated was in itself a calumny and a fraud. If any doubt could exist that it was Pope who put forth the collection of 1735, and the Swift collection of 1741, we have still in the quarto of 1737 his own avowed version of a large portion of his correspondence. He published it with the express object of correcting the corrupt text of spurious editions, and there remains the inquiry whether he published it truly. When he burnt three-fourths of it, and deposited copies of the rest in the library of Lord Oxford, he professed to have preserved the originals from which the copies were taken. Lord Bolingbroke discovered a great number of returned letters among his papers after his death, and told Dr. Heberden that they contained many alterations and corrections, which he supposed had been made with the intention of printing them some time or other.[163] From this it would be inferred that those which had been printed were not part of the collection, and that the poet had found it inexpedient to retain vouchers, which would condemn if they did not acquit him. Unfortunately the whole of the manuscripts were destroyed by Lord Bolingbroke, and beyond the unsatisfactory information conveyed in his remark, nothing can now be known of them. The literal interpretation of his language is favoured by the evidence yet within our reach, and we should conclude that Pope had not kept originals which would have revealed alterations in the published letters of a far more serious nature than any which Bolingbroke appears to have suspected.