Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/64

46 even the author's self-vanity as an excuse, but only the still more wretched plea of mercenary motive. We will conclude our notice of Curll by an extract from "John Buncle," by Thomas Amory, who knew him personally and well. "Curll was in person very tall and thin—an ungainly, awkward, white-faced man. His eyes were a light gray large, projecting, goggle, and purblind. He was splay-footed and baker-kneed He was a debauchee to the last degree, and so injurious to society, that by filling his translations with wretched notes, forged letters, and bad pictures, he raised the price of a four-shilling book to ten. Thus, in particular, he managed Burnet's 'Archæology.' And when I told him he was very culpable in this and other articles he sold, his answer was, 'What would I have him do? He was a bookseller; his translators, in pay, lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn, in Holborn, and he and they were for ever at work deceiving the public.' He, likewise, printed the lewdest things. He lost his ears for the 'Nun in her Smock' and another thing. As to drink, he was too fond of money to spend any in making himself happy that way; but, at another's expense, he would drink every day till he was quite blind and as incapable of self-motion as a block. This was Edmund Curll. But he died at last as great a penitent, I think, in the year 1748 (it was 1747), as ever expired. I mention this to his honour."