PSALMANAZAR.
(Vol. vii., pp. 206. 435.)
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."
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
Pylades and Corinna, and the possibility that it might be the work of Defoe; but I believe that my question has not been answered.
I have already trespassed unreasonably on your columns; but still I must beg, in justice to a man whose character, as I have said, I very highly respect, to add one remark. When his imposture is referred to, it is not always remembered that when he came to this country he was not his own master. It seems that he rambled away from his home in the South of France, when about fifteen years old; that he spent about two years in wandering about France and Germany, and astonishing people by pretending to be, at first a converted, and afterwards an unconverted, Formosan; that when performing this second, pagan, character, he arrived at Sluys, where a Scotch regiment in the Dutch service, under Brigadier Lauder, was stationed; that the chaplain, named Innes, detected the fraud, but instead of reproving the lad for his sin and folly, only considered how he might turn the cheat to his own advantage, and render it conducive to his own preferment. The abandoned miscreant actually went through the blasphemous mockery of baptizing the youth as a convert from heathenism; named him after the brigadier, who stood godfather: claimed credit from the Bishop of London for his zeal; and was by the kind prelate invited to bring his convert to London. The chaplain lost no time in accepting, was graciously received by the bishop and the archbishop, snapped up the first piece of preferment that would answer his views (it happened to be the office of chaplain-general to the forces in Portugal), and made off, leaving his convert to bear the storm which was sure to burst on him, as best he might. That a youth thus tutored and thus abandoned, before Johnson was born, should have lived to attract his society, and win from him the testimony that he was "the best man" whom he had ever known, gives him a claim to our respect, which seems to me to be strengthened by everything which I have been able to learn respecting him.
S. R. Maitland.
Gloucester.