"
The "Essay on Man" and the "Moral Epistles" were designed to be parts of
a great system of ethics, which Pope had long revolved in his mind, and
wished to incarnate in poetry. At this time occurred the strange,
mysterious circumstances connected with the publication of his letters.
It seems that, in 1729, Pope had recalled from his correspondents the
letters he had written them, of many of which he had kept no copies. He
was induced to this by the fact, that after Henry Cromwell's death, his
mistress, Mrs Thomas, who was in indigent circumstances, had sold the
letters which had passed between Pope and her keeper, to Curll the
bookseller, who had published them without scruple. When Pope obtained
his correspondence, he, according to his own statement, burned a great
many and laid past the others, after having had a copy of them taken,
and deposited in Lord Oxford's library. And his charge against Curll
was, that he obtained surreptitiously some of these letters, and
published them without Pope's consent. But, ere we come to the
circumstances of the publication, several other things require to be
noticed. In 1733, Curll, anxious to publish a Life of Pope, advertised
for information; and, in consequence, one P.T., who professed to be an
old friend of Pope's and his father's, wrote Curll a letter, giving an
account of Pope's ancestry, which tallied exactly with what Pope
himself, in a note to one of his poems, furnished the following year.
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