Note 15 — BOOK III.—THE CLASSIC AGE

Rev. W. Elwin, in his edition of Pope's Works, II. 224, says: "The authenticity of the Latin letters has usually been taken for granted, but I have a strong belief that they are a forgery.... It is far more likely that they are the fabrication of an unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with a latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards themselves. The suspicion is strengthened when the second party to the correspondence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits the same exceptional depravity of taste."—Tr.