The sheets common to the two volumes had been traced to his possession.

Nor was there a word in the P.T.narrative to diminish the force of these presumptions.

Indeed it was curiously inconsistent, for it vaguely accused Curll of stealing the letters himself, whilst in the same breath it told how he had bought them from P.T.In fact, P.T.was beginning to resolve himself into thin air, like the phantom in the Dunciad.

As he vanished, it required no great acuteness to distinguish behind him the features of his ingenious creator.

It was already believed at the time that the whole affair was an elaborate contrivance of Pope's, and subsequent revelations have demonstrated the truth of the hypothesis.