Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
Having long felt a great respect for this person, and a great interest in
all that concerns his history, I am induced to mention the grounds on which
I have been led to doubt whether the letter in the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
to which MR. CROSSLEY refers, is worthy of credit. When I first saw it, I
considered it as so valuable an addition to the information which I had
collected on the subject, that I was anxious to know who was the writer. It
had no signature; but the date, "Sherdington, June, 1704," which was
retained, gave me a clue which, by means not worth detailing, led me to the
knowledge that what thus appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for
February, 1765, had issued from "Curll's chaste press" more than thirty
years before, in the form of a letter from the person now known in literary
history as "Curll's Corinna," but by her cotemporaries (see the index of
Mr. Cunningham's excellent _Handbook of London_) as Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas,
sometime of Dyot Street, St. Giles's, and afterwards of a locality not
precisely ascertained, but within the rules of the Fleet, and possibly
(though Mr. Cunningham does not corroborate this) at some period of her
life resident in the more genteel quarters which Curll assigns to her. To
speak more strictly, and make the matter intelligible to any one who may
look at it in the Magazine, I should add that the first paragraph
(seventeen lines, on p. 78., dated from "Sherdington," and beginning "I
dined," says the letter writer, "last Saturday with Sir John Guise, at
Gloucester") is part of a letter purporting to be written by her lover;
while all the remainder (on pp. 79-81.) is from Corinna's answer to it.
The worthless and forgotten work of which these letters form a part,
consists of two volumes. The copy which I borrowed when I discovered what I
have stated, consisted of a first volume of the second edition (1736), and
a second volume of the first edition (1732). The title of the second volume
(which I give as belonging to the earlier edition) is:
"The Honourable Lovers: or, the second and last Volume of Pylades and
Corinna. Being the remainder of Love Letters, and other Pieces (in
Verse and Prose), which passed between Richard Gwinnett, Esq.; of Great
Shurdington, in Gloucestershire, and Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, Jun., of
Great Russel Street, Bloomsbury. To which is added, a Collection of
familiar Letters between Corinna, Mr. Norris, Capt. Hemington, Lady
Chudleigh, Lady Pakington, &c. &c. All faithfully published from their
original Manuscripts. London: printed in the Year M.DCC.XXXII. (Price
5s.)"
The title-page of the first volume (second edition) differs principally in
having the statement that the book was "printed for E. Curll" (whose name
does not appear in the earlier second volume, though perhaps it may have
done so in the first of that earlier edition), and an announcement that the
fidelity of the publication is "attested, by Sir Edward Northey, Knight."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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