of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he
employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the
public, with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm
with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it
proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate
the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but
to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be
denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the
motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have
induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity
by usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been
shown to a number more than sufficient to preserve the author's
claim; he could not gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his
plunder till Bolingbroke was dead; and even then, if the copy was
left to another, his fraud would be defeated, and if left to himself
would be useless.

Warburton therefore supposes, with great appearance of reason, that
the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for
Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, which
Pope thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's
approbation. To this apology an answer was written in "A letter to
the most impudent man living." He brought some reproach upon his
own memory by the petulant and contemptuous mention made in his will
of Mr. Allen and an affected repayment of his benefactions. Mrs.
Blount, as the known friend and favourite of Pope, had been invited
to the house of Allen, where she comported herself with such
indecent arrogance that she parted from Mrs. Allen in a state of
irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for ever barred against
her. This exclusion she resented with so much bitterness as to