Note 237 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

At the time, to season the tale for the babble of Literary Tattlers, it was propagated that Pope intended, on the death of Bolingbroke, to sell this eighteenpenny pamphlet at a guinea a copy; which would have produced an addition of as many hundreds to the thousands which the poet had honourably reaped from his Homer. This was the ridiculous lie of the day, which lasted long enough to obtain its purpose, and to cast an odium on the shade of Pope. Pope must have been a miserable calculator of survivorships, if ever he had reckoned on this.