Had she providentially married him, she had been secure from the insults of poverty; but her duty to her parent was more prevalent than considerations of convenience. After the death of her lover, she was barbarously used: His brother, stifled the will, which compelled her to have recourse to law; he smothered the old gentleman's conveyance deed, by which he was enabled to make a bequest, and offered a large sum of money to any person, who would undertake to blacken Corinna's character; but wicked as the world is, he found none so compleatly abandoned, as to perjure themselves for the sake of his bribe. At last to shew her respect to the memory of her deceased lover, she consented to an accommodation with his brother, to receive 200 l. down, and 200 l. at the year's end. The first payment was made, and distributed instantly amongst her mother's creditors; but when the other became due, he bid her defiance, stood suit on his own bond, and held out four terms. He carried it from one court to another, till at last it was brought to the bar of the House of Lords; and as that is a tribunal, where the chicanery of lawyers can have no weight, he thought proper to pay the money without a hearing: The gentlemen of the long-robe had made her sign an instrument, that they should receive the money and pay themselves: After they had laid their cruel hands upon it, of the 200 l. the poor distressed lady received but 13 l. 16 s. which reduced her to the necessity of absconding from her creditors, and starving in an obscure corner, till she was betrayed by a false friend, and hurried to jail.
Besides all the other calamities of Corinna, she had ever a bad state of health, occasioned by an accident too curious to be omitted.
In the year 1730 her case was given into the college of physicians, and was reckoned a very surprizing one. It is as follows.
'In April 1711 the patient swallowed the middle bone of the wing of a large fowl, being above three inches long; she had the end in her mouth, and speaking hastily it went forcibly down in the act of inspiration. After the first surprize, feeling no pain she thought no more of it; in a few days after, she complained what she eat or drank lay like a stone in her stomach, and little or nothing pass'd through her. After three weeks obstruction, she fell into a most violent bloody flux, attended with a continual pain at the pit of her stomach, convulsions, and swooning fits; nor had she any ease but while her stomach was distended with liquids, such as small beer, or gruel: She continued in this misery, with some little intervals, till the Christmass following, when she was seized with a malignant fever, and the convulsions encreased to so high a degree, that she crowed like a cock, and barked like a dog, to the affrightment of all who saw her, as well as herself. Dr. Colebatch being called to her relief, and seeing the almost incredible quantity of blood she voided, said it was impossible she could live, having voided all her bowels. He was however prevailed with to use means, which he said could only be by fetching off the inner coat of her stomach, by a very strong vomit; he did so, and she brought the hair-veel in rolls, fresh and bleeding; this dislodged the bone, which split length ways, one half pass'd off by siege, black as jet, the cartilaginous part at each end consumed, and sharp on each side as a razor; the other part is still lodged within her. In this raw and extream weak condition, he put her into a salivation, unknown to her mother or herself, to carry off the other part, which shocked them to such a degree, that they sent for Dr. Garth, who with much difficulty, and against his judgment, was prevailed on to take it off, and using a healing galenical method, she began to recover so much strength as to be turned in her bed, and receive nourishment: But she soon after was seized with the Iliac Passion, and for eleven days, her excrements came upwards, and no passage could be forced through her, till one day by Dr. Garth, with quick-silver. After a few weeks it returned again, and the same medicine repeated, upon which she recovered, and for some months was brought to be in a tolerable state of health, only the region of the spleen much swelled; and at some times, when the bone moved outwards, as it visibly did to sight and touch, was very painful.—In July 1713, on taking too strong a purge, a large imposthume bag came away by stool, on which it was supposed, the cystus, which the bone had worked for itself, being come away, the bone was voided also; but her pains continued so extraordinary, she willingly submitted to the decree of four surgeons, who agreed to make an incision in the left side of the abdomen, and extract the bone; but one of the surgeons utterly rejecting the operation, as impracticable, the bone being lodged in the colon, sent her to Bath, where she found some relief by pumping, and continued tolerably well for some years, even to bear the fatigue of an eight years suit at law, with an unjust executor; save that in over-walking, and sudden passion, she used to be pained, but not violent; and once or twice in a year a discharge of clean gall, with some portions of a skin, like thin kid leather, tinged with gall, which she felt break from the place, and leave her sore within; but the bone never made any attempt out-wards after the first three years. Being deprived of a competent fortune, by cross accidents, she has suffered all the extremities of a close imprisonment, if want of all the necessaries of life, and lying on the boards for two-years may be termed such, during which time she never felt the bone. But on her recovering liberty, and beginning to use exercise, her stomach, and belly, and head swelled to a monstrous degree, and she was judged in a galloping dropsy; but no proper medicines taking place, she was given over as incurable, when nature unexpectedly helped itself, and in twelve hours time by stool, and vomit, she voided about five gallons of dirty looking water, which greatly relieved her for some days, but gathered again as the swelling returned, and always abounded with a hectic, or suffocating asthma in her stomach, and either a canine appetite or loathing. She has lately voided several extraneous membranes different from the former, and so frequent, that it keeps her very low, some of which she has preserved in spirits, and humbly implores your honours judgment thereon.'
Under all these calamities, of which the above is a just representation, did poor Corinna labour; and it is difficult to produce a life crouded with greater evils. The small fortune which her father left her, by the imprudence of her mother, was soon squandered: She no sooner began to taste of life, than an attempt was made upon her innocence. When she was about being happy in the arms of her amiable lover Mr. Gwynnet, he was snatched from her by an immature fate. Amongst her other misfortunes, she laboured under the displeasure of Mr. Pope, whose poetical majesty she had innocently offended, and who has taken care to place her in his Dunciad. Mr. Pope had once vouchsafed to visit her, in company with Henry Cromwel, Esq; whose letters by some accident fell into her hands, with some of Pope's answers. As soon as that gentleman died, Mr. Curl found means to wheedle them from her, and immediately committed them to the press. This so enraged Pope, that tho' the lady was very little to blame, yet he never forgave her.
Not many months after our poetess had been released from her gloomy habitation, she took a small lodging in Fleet street, where she died on the 3d of February 1730, in the 56th year of her age, and was two days after decently interred in the church of St. Bride's.
Corinna, considered as an authoress, is of the second rate, she had not so much wit as Mrs. Behn, or Mrs. Manley, nor had so happy a power of intellectual painting; but her poetry is soft and delicate, her letters sprightly and entertaining. Her Poems were published after her death, by Curl; and two volumes of Letters which pass'd between her and Mr. Gwynnet. We shall select as a specimen of her poetry, an Ode addressed to the duchess of Somerset, on her birth-day.
An ODE, &c.
I.
Great, good, and fair, permit an humble muse,
To lay her duteous homage at your feet:
Such homage heav'n itself does not refuse,
But praise, and pray'rs admits, as odours sweet.