assigned to more imposing names, and a sixteenth was printed in a group of three to the "Hon. ----" Rather than credit an imposition so childish, and yet so unwarrantable, we should have recourse to the theory that Pope sometimes sent the same letter to different persons. Swift assured him that the best system extant for the conduct of human life might be collected from his epistles, and they certainly abound in generalities which, like the clown's answer, that suited all questions, might have been written to anybody. But a comparison of the printed letters with the Caryll copies, shows that this solution is inadmissible, and the observation of the clown, when his answer proved inopportune, is equally applicable to the contrivance of Pope--"I see things may serve long, and not serve ever."[164] The "Spectator" of the 10th of November, 1712, contained some remarks by Pope on the verses which the Emperor Hadrian composed when he was dying. The poet asked Caryll's opinion of the criticism, and the substance of his reply is embodied in the rejoinder of Pope. "The supposition you draw from the suspicion that Adrian was addicted to magic, seems to me a little uncharitable,--that he might fear no sort of Deity, good or bad,--since in the third verse he plainly testifies his apprehension of a future state by being solicitous whither his soul was going. As to what you mention of his using gay and ludicrous expressions, I have already owned my opinion that the expressions are not so, but that diminutives are often in Latin taken for expressions of tenderness and concern." This comment is introduced, in the printed correspondence, into the letter to Steele of November 29, 1712, and if it was sent to him as well as to Caryll both must have objected to the gay and ludicrous expressions of Hadrian, both must have spoken of the suspicion that he was addicted to magic, both must have inferred from it that he feared no sort of Deity, good or bad, and the language of both must have been as identical as their ideas.