to read, as somebody has remarked upon such an occasion, are the books that ought never to have been written. In Shakespeare's time there was nobody to investigate the Ann Hathaway business, or to ask what was implied by the famous 'second-best bed.' If there had been, we might have been spared some of the wild hypotheses which fill the void of authentic history. The inquisitorial system began, I take it, in England in the days of Queen Anne. Curll, as Arbuthnot told Pope, added a new terror to death. That prototype of piratical booksellers procured and published some of Pope's early letters; and Pope found that the injury had its advantages. He managed to get more of his letters 'stolen' and published by prompting the theft himself; and, while he exhibited his modesty by protesting against the outrage, he had also the pleasure of knowing that 'the nation'—as Johnson puts it—'was filled with the praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship.' That is a typical case: the morbidly sensitive poet, induced to connive at (or, in his case, to contrive) the violation of his rights to privacy, and driven to whole series of mean intrigues by the pleasure of
