“ Jonathan Swift arranged for a sample part of Gulliver’s Travels, transcribed in another man’s handwriting, to be dropped in secret by an intermediary at the house of publisher Benjamin Motte. It was accompanied by a letter from one ‘Richard Sympson’, supposedly Lemuel Gulliver’s cousin, offering the whole of the Travels for publication in return for £200. Motte was told that, within three days, he should either return the ‘Papers’ or give the money ‘to the Hand from whence you receive this, who will come in the same manner exactly at 9 a clock [sic] at night on Thursday’. Motte bravely accepted the mysterious offer and a few nights later he duly got the rest of the book. Soon afterwards, Swift’s friend and probable co-conspirator Alexander Pope discussed the business with the puzzled publisher, pretending to be equally mystified. He reported the conversation in a letter to Swift: ‘Motte receiv’d the copy (he tells me) he knew not from whence, nor from whom, dropped at his house in the dark, from a hackney coach.’