Later on in the same year the bookseller fell into a fresh scrape. A Latin discourse had been pronounced at the funeral of Robert South by the captain of Westminster School, and Curll, thinking it would be readily purchased by the public,
“did th’ oration print,
Imperfect, with false Latin in’t,”
and thereby aroused the anger of the Westminster scholars, who enticed him into Dean’s Yard on the pretence of giving him a more perfect copy; there, he met with a college salutation, for he was first presented with the ceremony of the blanket, in which, “when the skeleton had been well shook, he was carried in triumph to the school, and, after receiving a mathematical construction for his false concords, he was re-conducted to Dean’s Yard, and on his knees asking pardon of the aforesaid Mr. Barber (the captain whose Latin he had murdered) for his offence, he was kicked out of the yard, and left to the huzzas of the rabble.”
No sooner was Curll out of one scrape than he fell into another; for, still in this same year, he was summoned to the bar of the House of Lords for printing and publishing a paper entitled An Account of the Trial of the Earl of Winton, a breach of the standing orders of the House. However, having received kneeling a reprimand from the Lord Chancellor, he was dismissed upon payment of the fees.
While the authorities were quick enough to punish any violation of their own peculiar privileges, they were graciously pleased to wink at the perpetual offences Curll was committing against public morals, for Curll was a strong politician on the safe party side, and in his political publications had in view the interests of the government. However, he was attacked on all sides by public opinion and the press. Mist’s Weekly Journal for April 5, 1718, contained a very strong article on the “Sin of Curllicism.” “There is indeed but one bookseller eminent among us for this abomination, and from him the crime takes its just denomination of Curllicism. The fellow is a contemptible wretch a thousand ways; he is odious in his person, scandalous in his fame; ... more beastly, insufferable books have been published by this one offender than in thirty years before by all the nation.” Curll, “the Dauntless,” did not long remain in silence, and his reply is characteristically outspoken, for the writer was never a coward. “Your superannuated letter-writer was never more out than when he asserted that Curllicism was but of four years’ standing. Poor wretch! he is but a novice in chronology;” and then, after threatening the journalist with the terrors of an outraged government, he concludes “in the words of a late eminent controvertist, the Dean of Chichester.”
Curll was fond of the dignitaries of the Church, and endeavoured to play a shrewd trick upon one of them; he sent a copy of Lord Rochester’s Poems (certainly not the most innocent book he published) to Dr. Robinson, Bishop of London, with a tender of his duty, and a request that his lordship would please to revise the interleaved volume as he thought fit; but the bishop, not to be caught, “smiled” and said, “I am told that Mr. Curll is a shrewd man, and should I revise the book you have brought me, he would publish it as approved by me.”[5]
Public dissatisfaction seems to have been expressed more forcibly against Curll than heretofore, and to have taken the form of a remonstrance to government, for he published The Humble Representation of Edmund Curll, Bookseller and Citizen of London, containing Five Books complained of to the Secretary. As the books were eminently of a nature requiring an apology, we cannot do more than give their titles: 1. The Translation of Meibomius and Tractatus de Hermaphroditis; 2. Venus in the Cloister; 3. Ebrietatis Encomium; 4. Three New Poems, viz. Family Duty, The Curious Wife, and Buckingham House; and 5. De Secretis Mulierum. At last the government did interfere, as we learn from a notice in Boyer’s Political State, Nov. 1725:—
“On Nov. 30, 1725, Curll, a bookseller in the Strand, was tried at the King’s Bench Bar, Westminster, and convicted of printing and publishing several obscene and immodest books, greatly tending to the corruption and depravation of manners, particularly one translated from a Latin treatise entitled De Usu Flagrorum in Re Venereâ; and another from a French book called La Religieuse en Chemise.” In the indictment Curll is thus accurately summed up: homo iniquus et sceleratus ac nequiter machinans et intendens bonos mores subditorum hujus regni corrumpere et eos ad nequitiam inducere; and in the State Trials we read the following report of the sentence:—
“This Edmund Curll stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, but was not pelted or used ill; for being an artful, cunning (though wicked) fellow, he had contrived to have printed papers dispersed all about Charing Cross, telling the people how he stood there for vindicating the memory of Queen Anne.”
It does, in fact, appear that he received three sentences at once, and that not until Feb. 12, 1728. For publishing the Nun in her Smock, and the treatise De Usu Flagrorum, he was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five marks each, and to enter into recognizances of £100 for his good behaviour for one year; but for publishing the Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland, Esq. (a political offence), he was fined twenty marks, and ordered to stand in the pillory for the space of one hour.[6]