Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/335

 Street, Strand. He was mixed up with Eustace Budgell [q. v.] and the affair of Tindal's will, and had quarrelled with Budgell, who attacked him in the ‘Bee’ (7 July and 6 Oct. 1733). Curll printed both the will and memoirs of Tindal, the latter being dedicated to the Mrs. Price in whose handwriting the forged will was drawn up.

In 1726 Curll had printed Pope's ‘Familiar Letters to Henry Cromwell,’ purchased for ten guineas from Mrs. Thomas, Cromwell's mistress, and in the ‘Daily Post Boy’ of 12 May 1735 advertised ‘Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence for thirty years, from 1704 to 1734,’ price 5s. Pope having instigated Lord Islay to move in the matter, the stock was seized, and Curll and Wilford, the printer of the newspaper, ordered to appear at the bar of the House of Lords (Journals, 12 and 13 May 1735). It was suspected at the time, and has now been fully proved, that the publication of this volume was promoted by Pope himself, who wanted an excuse to print his letters. A go-between was invented in the mysterious P. T., who wrote to Curll in 1733 to offer a collection of Pope's letters. Nothing was done until March 1735, when Curll told Pope of this fact, which Pope answered by advertising in the ‘Daily Post Boy’ that he had received such a communication, that he knew of no such person as P. T., and that the letters in question must be forgeries. P. T. wrote to Curll again, and a short man calling himself Smythe (afterwards discovered to be a certain James Worsdale) called at the bookseller's with some printed sheets and real letters. Fifty copies were delivered and sold on 12 May, and a second batch of 190 came just in time to be seized by the lords' messenger. As directed by P. T., Curll advertised that the volume would contain letters to peers, which made it a breach of privilege, and Lord Islay informed the committee of the house that on p. 117 of a copy he possessed there was some reflection upon the Earl of Burlington. No such passage could be found in the copies seized on Curll's premises, as Pope had artfully suppressed it in the copies of the second batch. The house decided that the book contained no breach of privilege, and the copies were returned (Journals, 15 May 1735). The sale proceeded, and Curll boldly announced, 26 July, that ‘the first volume was sent me ready printed by [Pope] himself,’ and that a second and third volume were in preparation. He ultimately produced six volumes of ‘Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence’ (1735–41), of which, indeed, a large proportion of the contents had nothing to do with Pope or his correspondence. Pope's authentic edition, to which these intrigues were introductory, was issued in 1737–41.

In 1735 Curll was living in Rose Street, Covent Garden, having changed his sign to the Pope's Head. Hence the allusion in the ‘Dunciad’— Down with the Bible, up with the Pope's Arms. Mrs. Pilkington (Memoirs, 1749, ii. 189) tells a story of receiving a mysterious visit from ‘an ugly squinting old fellow’ about 1741, who turned out to be Curll trying to obtain, in his usual roundabout way, some letters of Swift which he wished to include in his forthcoming ‘Life of Barber.’ The last book entered to Curll on the ‘Registers of the Stationers' Company’ was ‘Achates to Varus’ on 20 Aug. 1746. He died 11 Dec. 1747, aged 72 (Gent. Mag. 1747, xvii. 592).

A figure of him appears in an engraving on the wall in the first state of Hogarth's ‘Distressed Poet’ (1736), and the frontispiece to Wesley's ‘Neck or Nothing’ (1716) represents three acts of his punishment by the Westminster boys (Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Div. I. ii. 408–9, iii. 212–14).

His son Henry had a separate shop in Henrietta Street in 1726, and advertised in the ‘Daily Post Boy’ of 7 Aug. 1730 that he was leaving off business (in Bow Street, Covent Garden), and that the standard antiquarian books issued by his father might be had for a time at a cheap rate. Like his father he seems to have suffered personal chastisement at Westminster, a fact which produced a satirical pamphlet, ‘Hereditary Right exemplified; or a Letter of Condolence from E.C.,’ 1728, 8vo.

The fame of ‘Dauntless Curll’ lives in some of the most unsavoury lines of the ‘Dunciad,’ but we know that the poet and the bookseller were quarrelling for twenty years. Nichols says that, whatever his demerits, ‘he certainly deserves commendation for his industry in preserving our national remains’ (Lit. Anecd. i. 456). He had knowledge and a ready pen, plenty of courage and more impudence. He had no scruples either in business or private life, but he published and sold many good books. At the end of Hale's ‘Discourse’ (1720) is a list of forty-three publications, and in a volume of Addison's ‘Miscellanies’ (1723) is a list of theological books also issued by him. In the second edition of Ashmole's ‘History of the Garter’ (1726) is a catalogue of sixteen pages of his books, which include no less than 167 standard works. All of his authors were not paid at a niggardly rate, as may be seen from some notes by Upcott extending from 1709 to 1740 (Gent.