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
The work is a farrago of low rubbish utterly beneath criticism; and I
should perhaps hardly think it worth while to say as much as I have said of
it, had it not been that, in turning it about, I could not help feeling a
suspicion that Daniel Defoe's hand was in the matter, at least so far as
that papers that had belonged to him might have come into Curll's hands,
and furnished materials for the work. It would be tedious to enter into
details; but the question seemed to me to be one of some interest, because,
in my own mind, it was immediately followed by another, namely, whether
Daniel had not more to do than has been suspected with the _History of
Formosa_? Those who are more familiar with Defoe than I am, will be better
able to judge whether he was, as Psalmanazar says, "the person who
Englished it from my Latin;" for the youth was as much disqualified for
writing the book in English, by being a Frenchman, as he would have been if
he had been a Formosan. He acknowledges that this person assisted him to
correct improbabilities; but I do not know that he anywhere throws further
light on the question respecting the help which he must have had. Daniel
would be just the man to correct some gross improbabilities, and at the
same time help him to some more probable fictions. Under this impression I
recently inquired (see "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 305.) respecting the
authorship of {480} _Pylades and Corinna_, and the possibility that it
might be the work of Defoe; but I believe that my question has not been
answered.
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