By cultivating a variety of expensive tastes, without the knowledge to guide them, he managed to run through a splendid fortune and die in embarrassment.

His famous library was one of his special hobbies.

Pope now applied to him to allow the Wycherley letters to be deposited in the library, and further requested that the fact of their being in this quasi-public place might be mentioned in the preface as a guarantee of their authenticity.

Oxford consented, and Pope quietly took a further step without authority.

He told Oxford that he had decided to make his publishers say that copies of the letters had been obtained from Lord Oxford.