Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/59

Rh 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