Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/185

 was rapidly absorbed by creditors after her mother's death in January 1718–19. Hitherto she declares that ‘platonic love’ had been her ruling passion, and she published some ‘Poems’ inspired by this sentiment in 1722. In the meantime, as Scott observes with more probability than politeness, it would seem that ‘her person as well as her writings were dedicated to the service of the public.’ While under the protection of Henry Cromwell, the correspondent of Pope, some letters of Pope came into her clutches. In 1726 she sold twenty-five of these letters for ten guineas to Curll, by whom they were promptly published. They appeared on 12 Aug. 1726 as ‘Mr. Pope's familiar Letters … written to Henry Cromwell, Esq. between 1707 and 1712, with original Poems by Mr. Pope, Mr. Cromwell, and Sappho’ (cf., Papers of a Critic, i. 289–90). The transaction led to the long series of manœuvres by which Pope schemed to invest with an appearance of spontaneity and artless grace the publication of his carefully revised correspondence [see, and ]. The original letters sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll were bequeathed by Richard Rawlinson [q. v.] to the Bodleian. Pope having professed to believe that the letters were stolen, the fact was expressly denied upon the title-page of the second edition in 1727. It seems probable that Mrs. Thomas attempted to subsist for a time upon the products of blackmailing, but early in 1727 she became quite destitute, and was thrown into the Fleet prison, then under the wardenship of the infamous Thomas Bambridge. Under an act of insolvency a warrant was issued for her release in 1729; but in consequence of her extreme indigence and inability to pay the gaoler's fees, she was unable to regain her liberty. Probably about 1727, in order to raise a few shillings, she concocted a harrowing but almost entirely fictitious account of Dryden's death and funeral [see ]. This she disposed of to Curll, who introduced it into his Grub Street ‘Memoirs of Congreve’ in 1730. ‘Mrs.’ Thomas also contrived to extract some didactic letters from Henry Norris of Bemerton, which she published in a cheap duodecimo to relieve her necessities while in the Fleet. On 16 April 1730 she addressed to Sir Joseph Jekyll from prison a pitiable appeal for some means of support and a ‘few modest fig leaves’ to cover her. Two months later she was enabled to remove to lodgings in Fleet Street, where she died on 5 Feb. 1730–1 (Hist. Reg. 1731, Chron. Diary, p. 11). She was buried in the churchyard of St. Bride's, at the expense of Margaret, lady De La Warr. Swift's ‘Corinna, a Ballad,’ from the reference in the last stanza to the ‘Atalantis,’ would seem to have been aimed at Mrs. Manley; but the contents, as well as the title, make it more appropriate to Mrs. Thomas (, Works, ed. Scott, 1824, xii. 300).

The writings of ‘Corinna’ comprise:
 * 1) ‘Poems on several Occasions. By a Lady,’ 1722, 8vo, 1726 and 1727.
 * 2) ‘Codrus; or the Dunciad dissected. To which is added Farmer Pope and his Son,’ 1729, a small sixpenny octavo, written for, and perhaps in conjunction with, Edmund Curll.
 * 3) ‘The Metamorphoses of the Town; or a View of the present Fashions. A Tale, after the manner of Fontaine,’ 1730, 8vo; 2nd edit., to which is added Swift's ‘Journal of a Modern Lady,’ 1730, 1731; 1731 (4th edit.). ‘By the late celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, who has so often obliged the town under the name of Corinna’ (the British Museum has William Cowper's copy).
 * 4) ‘Pylades and Corinna; or Memoirs of the Lives, Amours, and Writings of Richard Gwinnet, Esquire, and Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, junior. … To which is prefixed the Life of Corinna, written by herself,’ 1731, 2 vols. 8vo (dedicated to the Duchess of Somerset and Lord and Lady De La Warr). The ‘autobiography,’ for the most part a tissue of absurdities, was abridged for Cibber's ‘Lives of the Poets’ (iv. 146 seq.).

An engraving of ‘Mrs. Eliz. Thomas, æt 30,’ by G. King, is prefixed to the first volume of ‘Pylades and Corinna.’



THOMAS, ERNEST CHESTER (1850–1892), bibliographer, the eldest son of John Withiel Thomas, born on 28 Oct. 1850 at Birkenhead, was educated at Manchester grammar school, matriculated from Trinity College, Oxford, on 17 Oct. 1870, and graduated B.A. in June 1875. He became a student at Gray's Inn on 7 May 1874, and, having won the Bacon scholarship of the inn in May 1875, published the following year a volume on ‘Leading Cases in Constitutional Law briefly stated’ (2nd edit. 1885). In 1875 and 1876 Thomas studied in the universities of Jena and Bonn, and produced in 1877 the first volume of a translation of