Syriac Scriptures.—I am very anxious to know what editions of the Scriptures in Syriac (the Peshito) were published between Leusden and Schaaf's New Testament, and the entire Bible in 1816 by the Bible Society.
B. H. C.
Replies.
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."