“Curll appeared at the bar,” says Johnson, “and knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. ‘He has,’ said Curll, ‘a knack at versifying; but in prose I think myself a match for him.’ When the Orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.” The fact, not mentioned by Johnson, is, that though Curll’s flourishing advertisement had announced letters written by lords, when the volumes were examined not one written by a lord appeared.
The letter Curll wrote on the occasion to one of these dark familiars, the pretended clergyman, marks his spirit and sagacity. It contains a remarkable passage. Some readers will be curious to have the productions of so celebrated a personage, who appears to have exercised considerable talents.
15th May, 1735.
“Dear Sir,—I am just again going to the Lords to finish Pope. I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first 297 fifty books, and likewise the remaining three hundred books; and pray be at the Standard Tavern this evening, and I will pay you twenty pounds more. My defence is right; I only told the lords I did not know from whence the books came, and that my wife received them. This was strict truth, and prevented all further inquiry. The lords declared they had been made Pope’s tools. I put myself on this single point, and insisted, as there was not any Peer’s letter in the book, I had not been guilty of any breach of privilege. I depend that the books and the imperfections will be sent; and believe of P. T. what I hope he believes of me.
“For the Rev. Mr. Smith.”
The reader observes that Curll talks of a great number of books not received, and of the few which he has received, as imperfect. The fact is, the whole bubble is on the point of breaking. He, masked in the initial letters, and he, who wore the masquerade dress of a clergyman’s gown with a lawyer’s band, suddenly picked a quarrel with the duped bibliopolist: they now accuse him of a design he had of betraying them to the Lords!
The tantalized and provoked Curll then addressed the following letter to “The Rev. Mr. Smith,” which, both as a specimen of this celebrated personage’s “prose,” in which he thought himself “a match for Pope,” and exhibiting some traits of his character, will entertain the curious reader.
Friday, 16 May, 1735.
“Sir,—1st, I am falsely accused. 2. I value not any man’s change of temper; I will never change my VERACITY for falsehood, in owning a fact of which I am innocent. 3. I did not own the books came from across the water, nor ever named you; all I said was, that the books came by water. 4. When the books were seized, I sent my son to convey a letter to you; and as you told me everybody knew you in Southwark, I bid him make a strict inquiry, as I am sure you would have done in such an exigency. 5. Sir, I have acted justly in this affair, and that is what I shall always think wisely. 6. I will be kept no longer in the dark; P. T. is Will o’ the Wisp; all the books I have had are imperfect; the first fifty had no titles nor prefaces; the last five bundles seized by the Lords contained but thirty-eight in each bundle, which amounts to one hundred and ninety, and fifty, is in all but two hundred 298 and forty books. 7. As to the loss of a future copy, I despise it, nor will I be concerned with any more such dark suspicious dealers. But now, sir, I’ll tell you what I will do: when I have the books perfected which I have already received, and the rest of the impression, I will pay you for them. But what do you call this usage? First take a note for a month, and then want it to be changed for one of Sir Richard Hoare’s. My note is as good, for any sum I give it, as the Bank, and shall be as punctually paid. I always say, gold is better than paper. But if this dark converse goes on, I will instantly reprint the whole book; and, as a supplement to it, all the letters P. T. ever sent me, of which I have exact copies, together with all your originals, and give them in upon oath to my Lord Chancellor. You talk of trust—P. T. has not reposed any in me, for he has my money and notes for imperfect books. Let me see, sir, either P. T. or yourself, or you’ll find the Scots proverb verified, Nemo me impune lacessit.
“Your abused humble servant,
“E. Curll.
“P.S. Lord —— I attend this day. Lord Delawar I sup with to-night. Where Pope has one lord, I have twenty.”
After this, Curll announced “Mr. Pope’s Literary Correspondence, with the initial correspondence of P. T., R. S. &c.” But the shadowy correspondents now publicly declared that they could give no title whatever to Mr. Pope’s letters, with which they had furnished Curll, and never pretended any; that therefore any bookseller had the same right of printing them: and, in respect to money matters between them, he had given them notes not negotiable, and had never paid them fully for the copies, perfect and imperfect, which he had sold.
Thus terminated this dark transaction between Curll and his initial correspondents. He still persisted in printing several editions of the letters of Pope, which furnished the poet with a modest pretext to publish an authentic edition—the very point to which the whole of this dark and intricate plot seems to have been really directed.[211]
Were Pope not concerned in this mysterious transaction, how happened it that the letters which P. T. actually printed were genuine? To account for this, Pope promulgated a 299 new fact. Since the first publication of his letters to his friend Cromwell, wrenched from the distressed female who possessed them, our poet had been advised to collect his letters; and these he had preserved by inserting them in two books; either the originals or the copies. For this purpose an amanuensis or two were employed by Pope when these books were in the country, and by the Earl of Oxford when they were in town. Pope pretended that Curll’s letters had been extracted from these two books, but sometimes imperfectly transcribed, and sometimes interpolated. Pope, indeed, offered a reward of twenty pounds to “P. T.” and “R. Smith, who passed for a clergyman,” if they would come forward and discover the whole of this affair; or “if they had acted, as it was reported, by the direction of any other person.” They never appeared. Lintot, the son of the great rival of Curll, told Dr. Johnson, that his father had been offered the same parcel of printed books, and that Pope knew better than anybody else how Curll obtained the copies.
Dr. Johnson, although he appears not to have been aware of the subtle intricacy of this extraordinary plot, has justly drawn this inference: “To make the copies perfect was the only purpose of Pope, because the numbers offered for sale by the private messengers, showed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression. It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion; when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously printed, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.”