422 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"d S. No 48., Nov. 29. '56. 



upon such subjects as were never before known to be 

 brought under the pen.' 



" 2. ' That no nation would permit the publication of 

 such books but our own.' 



" As to the first of these calumnies, I think I stand 

 pretty clear, by the concurrent testimonies of the canon- 

 ists and civilians, from the original institution of the law 

 of nature and nations. And as to the latter, whenever 

 any of these points have been debated in our own king- 

 dom, the main support of the charge, as well as the judg- 

 ment given, have been wholly confirmed by precedents 

 cited from the ecclesiastical institutions, and the authority 

 of the Fathers themselves. 



"3. The other articles of the charge against me, are, 

 ' That these books would not have been suffered to be 

 printed four years ago ; ' when (if we ma}' believe your 

 old gentleman) none but persons of exemplary piety and 

 virtue, such as the Ormonds, the Marrs, the Bolinsbrokes, 

 &c., and their agents the Swifts, the Oldisworths, the 

 Sacheverells, &c., shared the royal favour, and defended 

 that Church which has of late been so much in danger. 



"4. And lastly, ' That these books are now printed by 

 the connivance of the present government.' 



" To which it is suflacient to answer, ' That the five 

 volumes of llie Cases of Impotency and Divorce were all 

 printed in the reign of her late so pious Majesty; and 

 that these books, which have given such grievous offence, 

 were so far from appearing in public, by the connivance 

 of this, or indeed any former government, that most of 

 them were published by the immediate command and 

 authority of the government itself. 



" And now, Mr. Mist, having made good my promise, 

 and refuted every particular of the charge against me, 

 with relation to the publishing these books, I am farther 

 to assure j'our old man, that they cannot by the laws of 

 nature and nations be termed bawdy books, since they 

 treat only of matters of the greatest importance to so- 

 ciety, conduce to the mutual happiness of the nuptial 

 state, and are directh' calculated for antidotes against 

 debauchery and unnatural lewdness, and not for incen- 

 tives to them. For which reason I shall not desist from 

 printing such books, when any occasion offers, nor am I 

 either concerned or ashamed to have them distinguished 

 by the facetious name of ' Curlicism.' 



" This, I think, Mr. Mist, an unexceptionable answer 

 to the allegations of your antiquated letter- writer ; and 

 to prevent one objection, which he might otherwise pos- 

 sibly hereafter make, I shall frankly acknowledge to him, 

 that as considerable a person as he may seem in the eyes 

 of your admirers, nothing which either he or you could 

 say of me, should have moved me to vouchsafe any reply, 

 had not an opportunity thereby offered itself to me of 

 publishing to the world the contents at large of these 

 several pieces, which have of late been so severally in- 

 veighed against, and of demonstrating to your corre- 

 spondent in particular (who I take for granted never read 

 a syllable in either of them beyond the title-page) that 

 his zeal has been employed against such books, as are not 

 onh' inoffensive, but very useful ; and that his indigna- 

 tion against what he calls Curlicism, proceeds from a 

 partial infatuated bigotry, and an implicit spirit of cen- 

 soriousness, into which "he has been led by what I call 

 Mysticism and Poperycism. Whether he be really an old 

 fellow, or only affects a formal gravity, to give his argu- 

 ments the greater weight among the rabble of malcon- 

 tents, to whose service alone his pen is devoted — I shall 

 however be glad to see him in town, whither I suppose 

 he is coming to some emplo3-ment under j-ou, either to 

 solve cases of conscience, which your tattered customers 

 are continually furnishing you with, or to strengthen 

 your political reasonings and zealous insinuations against 



the government, with quotations from the fathers of the 

 first four centuries, in which sort of learning the gentle- 

 man seems to me to be chiefly remarkable ; and like the 

 rest of his regular brethren in Christianity, to be pas- 

 sionately fond of their venerable errors, for the sake of 

 their antiquity, and peremptorily to condemn the profane 

 politeness of the classics, as much as he does the damna- 

 ble conscientious sincerity of our modern prevailing free- 

 thinkers. 



"Notwithstanding our present difference, Mr. Mist, I 

 am willing to give you a piece of wholesome friendly ad- 

 vice : whereas 3'ou publicly declared in my presence, 

 before several witnesses, who will attest it upon oath, that 

 the first letter against me was inserted designedly to 

 reflect on His Majesty under my cover; and likewise, 

 that as for any passages in your Journal, whether they 

 should be true or false, they equally conduce to the in- 

 terest of the cause in which you are embarked, and to the 

 reputation of your paper amongst the party your only 

 constant readers. And whereas on another occasion j'ou 

 have made your boast, that whenever the government has 

 tiiought fit to take notice of you, you have alwaj'S brought 

 them to your own terms, I wish you would accept the 

 advice of a generous enemj', and take particular care lest 

 your repeated insolences and treasonable glances on your 

 indulgent superiors, should at length, contrary to their 

 innate and unexampled clemency, prevail with them to 

 put a stop to such flagrant enormities, and oblige them 

 for once to bring you to their terms. 



"Having thus given the world an impartial account 

 of the books I have printed, which is the sole design of 

 this letter ; and being therefore resolved to enter into no 

 future debate, either with j'ourself or your champion cor- 

 respondent, I shall conclude all in the words of a late 

 eminent and learned controvertist [the Dean of Chi- 

 chester] : — ' I now submit what I have said to the reader's 

 judgment : whatever your letter- writer may be, the world 

 I am persuaded is tired of such altercations, as I am sure 

 I am.' E. CuKLL. 



" Fleet Street, May 26, 1718." 



We have said that political feeling may have 

 had something to do with this attack on Curll. 

 Our reason for this is, that Misfs Journal was of 

 the opposite political faction to that which Curll 

 espoused. 



Mist was the proprietor of the Weehly Journal, 

 generally called Misfs Journal, and, like Curll, 

 was condemned to mount the pillory for some po- 

 litical ofi'ence. His paper was staunch in its 

 support of the Tories. His name appears in 

 Negus' List, not among those "well affected to 

 King George," but among those " said to be high- 

 flyers." Curll, on the other hand, was a zealous 

 partisan of the House of Planover and the Pro- 

 testant Succession. 'J'herefore, although Curll 

 was obnoxious to the charge made against him, 

 so many others were open to the same censure, 

 that there can be little doubt politics had some- 

 thing to do with the attack. 



In this very year Curll published some tracts 

 on the Bangorian Controversy, two of which we 

 have before us at the present moment. The 

 first is by Nicholas Amhurst*, whose name does 



* The reader of Amhurst's well-known Terra Filius 

 will remember in that Journal what is called Curll's 



