vein of somewhat heavy pleasantry, prescribing soap, or soap lees, as a cure for the stone. The following extract is more to our purpose:

"The only objection I ever had to Mr. Pope is that he has no taste for nonsense. He never can find the wit of it, which is an amazing thing in a man of his parts and reading. Now, you must know, I have been all my life, as Dr. Taylor expresses it, trifling as an untaught boy; and an untaught boy I shall certainly be as long as I live. This is the reason why I am always uneasy when I have any of my children with me, for if I appear as I am, they will never have any respect for me, though they may admire me."

II.

LETTERS OF VOITURE'S PUBLISHED AS POPE'S.

Ir appears from MSS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, that after Curll had published a second volume of "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," he received the following communication, with accompanying documents:

"MR. CURLL,--The characteristics whereby the author of the enclosed letters may be known are too many and glaring to need any mention of his name. Were there no other arguments to confirm this, his own pen betrays him. But for your further satisfaction I must inform you that I found them among some papers of a deceased friend, with several others of a nature more insignificant, which therefore I would not transcribe. The gentleman's wife, before she was so, is known to have been personally acquainted with your adversary, which puts the matter beyond doubt. With many thanks for your two former volumes, these are at your service for the third, which I find you are about.-Yours, S. E.

For Mr. Edmund Curll, Bookseller, in Rose Street, Covent Garden, London.

[In another hand, also on the back of the letter: "Send by Thos. Goodall at the Four Swans in Bishopgate Street,, on Friday by noon."]

The letters enclosed consisted of translations from Voiture, one of them entitled, "To Miss B. on the Death of her Brother." Curll had replied by a notice in the newspapers, which called forth a second communication:

"Sept. 29, 1735. "MR. CURLL,-In one of the public papers I find the following advertisement: Á certain gentleman having received two letters from an unknown hand, signed J. E., if the author will let him know where he may be spoke with, or favour him with a line signed with his own proper name at length, the said gent. shall think himself very much! obliged. I presume it is put in by you and concerns me. Imagining that the two letters are the copies enclosed in mine to you, and that you, by mistaking my handwriting, have put J. E. for S. E., thus I 7 state the case and thus I answer.

"When I sent you the copies of four letters which I thought abundantly worth your publishing, even though they were supposed not to belong to the hand whose style and sprightliness they undoubtedly bear, I did it with a view at least by your means of serving the public. If they fail of that desirable end, I am not answerable, having committed them wholly to your judgment, to publish or throw them by, as shall seem fittest to you and most to suit your conveniency. It can be but of little importance to you to know my name at length: let the initials suffice, as I for many reasons chuse it. If you have anything further to urge, it will probably escape me, unless inserted in the Gazetteer, Oracle, Old Whig, or Craftsman. I wish you success in your third volume, and you may depend upon my utmost assistance in the encouragement of it, who am yours, &c., S. E."

This bait proved successful. Curll printed the spurious Pope letters in his third volume, and the poet in the genuine edition stigmatised them as letters " printed in his name, which he never writ, and addressed to persons to whom they never were written." He also, in the list of spurious editions, pointed out the French source from which they had been derived. The original communications appear to be in Pope's well-known handwriting slightly disguised. They are indorsed on the back, in neat printed characters, "LETTERS OF MR. POPE TO MISS BLOUNT.' The editor had no doubt that Pope was the author of this ingenious and successful imposition upon Curll; but since the first edition of this work was published, the following manuscript note has been discovered in a copy of Pope's Works which belonged to Francis Douce, the eminent antiquary:

"The Miss Blount which our son Charles mentioned to you was your granddaughter, begotten by Charles himself. Bookseller Curll having had good success with publishing a volume of letters of Mr.

Pope's, and others, he proceeded to a second, and by laying out far and wide, for letters of all sorts, he has now, I think, made them up 6 vols. When Charles found him so greedy of letters he translated three or four letters of Voiture's to Madile. Rambouillet, &c., and sent them by the Penny Post to Curll as Pope's to Miss Blount, and Curll has not fail'd to publish them to the world as such.'-From a letter written by Mr. J. Plumtre to his wife Annabella, dated Jermyn Street, 1 May, 1744."

On turning to Burke's "Landed Gentry," we find notices of the Plumptre family. John Plumptre, Esq., of Nottingham (born in 1679, and died in 1751), married Annabella, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Molyneux, Bart., and had, with several other children, a son Charles, born in 1712, and afterwards D.D., Archdeacon of Ely, &c. Charles Plumptre, at the age of twenty-three, was likely enough perhaps to commit this hoax upon Curll, but the resemblance of the handwriting to that of Pope is remarkable. The form of the characters, the address in imitation of print, and the size and quality of the paper (small quarto), are precisely the same as those of the genuine Pope letters also in the Bodleian Library. Dr. Bandinell, and other gentlemen connected with the Bodleian, concurred with the editor in believing the rious letters to be by Pope, but similarity of handwriting is a fallible test, and the poet should have the benefit of the doubt caused by Douce's extract. The spurious letters are bound up in a volume with the letters addressed to Henry Cromwell by Pope, and others received by Corinna (Mrs. Thomas) from Dryden, Norris of Bemerton, Lady Chudleigh, &c. Rawlinson (who was a voracious and indiscriminate collector) had most likely purchased the manuscripts from Curll after they had been printed. On one of the pages in the correspondence is a clever pen-and-ink drawing by Pope, representing a robed figure in an attitude of contemplation, under which Curll has written: "This figure is the delineation of Mr. Pope's penmanship. E. CURLL."

spu

On the subject of these Voiture letters, we subjoin part of a communication, evidently from Pope, in the Grub-street Journal of January 8th, 1736:

66

'How unjustifiable is it, to speak in the mildest term, thus to

prostitute an author's name to three volumes of Letters, the first of which Mr. Pope has publicly disowned, and the two last can on no other ground be ascribed to this author but the insufferable assurance of the publisher of them. Not content with three volumes, he promises to trouble the world with another. It must, therefore, be highly reasonable to let those who have not an opportunity of examining before they purchase, know what they are likely to expect. Cl's second vol. has, I presume, been published long enough to be pretty well known. I shall, therefore, only say of it that there are contained in it, notwithstanding it bears the title of Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence, only eight letters pretended to be his, besides two fragments of letters and some verses, which either are not Mr. Pope's, or have been often in print before. As to the third volume, though it bears the same title, it has still less plea to it, and C- has here exceeded his usual exceedings. If the single letter to the Duchess of Bucks be Mr. Pope's, I aver it to be the only one that is so in the whole volume. For though there are given four others—and but four-as Mr. Pope's to Miss B., any one may soon be satisfied with how little foundation it is, who will but consult Voiture's Letters, from which they are word for word transcribed, excepting only two or three words to adapt them more to these times, and a quotation from Shakspeare. Nay, so notorious is this re-publisher that they are not so much as transcribed anew from the French, but taken from an old English translation by one J. Davies, printed at London for T. Dring and J. Starkey in the year 1657. The letters are in Voiture the 13th, 14th, 36th, and 71st. Thus, neither the knowledge he professes to have of Voiture's writings nor the uncouthness of the language of this old translation (for he would be thought a judge of language in his prefixed letters signed S. E.), so very unlike that of Mr. Pope's, could deter this doughty re-publisher from endeavouring to foist these things on the world as Mr. Pope's; and to countenance all this he has prefixed a formal letter, as if these four letters came from a person who was possessed of some of Mr. Pope's writings, and he is ready no doubt, on being called on, to produce the originals. But if encouragement be given to such proceedings there will never be wanting crowds of plagiaries of this kind to pester the world with the gleanings of their hard-bound brains, and of their shallow readings."

The phrase "hard-bound brains" Pope had, in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, applied to Philips.

POPE'S GARDEN AND GROTTO.

445

III.

PLAN OF POPE'S GARDEN AND GROTTO, BY J. SEARLE,
HIS GARDENER.

IN 1745 was published a slight pamphlet, entitled "A 'lan of Mr. Pope's Garden, as it was left at the time of his eath, with a Plan and Perspective View of the Grotto. All aken by J. Searle, his Gardener. With an account of all he Gems, Minerals, Spars, and Ores of which it is composed, nd from whom they were sent. To which is added a Chaacter of his Writings. London: R. Dodsley. Price 18. 6d."

EXPLANATION OF PLAN.

1. The Grass Plat before the House next the Thames.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE MATERIALS WHICH COMPOSE THE GROTTO.

Over the Entrance from the Garden :

"Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitæ."-HOR.

1. At the entrance of the Grotto next the Garden are various sorts of stones, thrown promiscuously together, in imitation of an Old Ruin; some full of holes, others like honeycombs, which came from RALPH ALLEN's, Esq., at Widcombe, near Bath. Several fine fossil and snake stones,