2*"' S. No 49., Dec. 6. '56.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



441 



LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1856, 



STRAY NOTE3 ON EDMUND CURLL, HIS LIFE, AND 

 PUBLICATIONS. 



No. 7. — CurWs Correspondence with, Bishop Ken- 

 nett and Sir Mobert Walpole. 



We fear our present chapter will be considered 

 by the reader a very desultory one '. we trust the 

 next will not exhibit the same defect. We shall in 

 this pass through the period from 1718 to 1725, 

 during which time there can be little doubt that 

 Curll, despite his assertion to Walpole that he had 

 in a manner left off his business for the purpose 

 of serving the Government, was pretty active aa a 

 publisher. For instance, in 1720 appeared : 



Dooms Day^ or the Last Judgment; a Poem 

 written by the Right Honourable William Earl of 

 Sterline : London, printed for E. Curll, next the 

 Temple Coffee House in Fleet Street ,- and sold by 

 C. Rivington (and others). Price Is. 



It has a short preface, signed "^. Johnstoun;" 

 but in the copy before us, there is written in a 

 hand nearly, if not quite, contemporary, " i. e. 

 Edm. Curll." 



In 1721, we find him in a correspondence with 

 Bishop Kennett, in an apparently vain endeavour 

 to obtain his Lordship's sanction to his reprinting 

 the Bishop's Translations of Erasmus's Praise of 

 Folly and Pliny's Panegyric. 



The following are the Letters which passed 

 between them. They are preserved in the Lans- 

 down MS., 1038., fol. 96. : 



" To the Eight Eev. the Lord Bishop of Peterborough, at 

 his house in Petty France, Westminster. 



"Nov. 4, 1721. 

 " My Lord, 

 " Having lately purchased the copyright of two pieces 

 formerly translated by your Lordship (Erasmus's Praise 

 of Folly,* and Pliny's Panegyrickf), both which 1 intend 

 speedily to reprint ; but will not send them to the press 

 till 1 know your Lordship's mind whether you would be 

 pleased to revise them, or whether they may be reprinted 

 as they are. In hopes of being favoured with your Lord- 

 ship's answer, I am, my Lord, your Lordship's most duti- 

 ful and most obedient humble Servant, 



« E. CUKLL. 



" From my house over against 

 Catherine-street in the Strand." 



The following is the Bishop's answer : 



« Nov. 6, 1721. 



" Mr. Curll, 



" I received yours of Nov. 4th, and should be glad to 



know from whom you purchased the copyright of the 



translations of Erasmus and Pliny. 1 think they had no 



power of assigning them without the Author's consent, 



* Morice Encomium ; or. The Praise of Polly. Made 

 English from the Latin of Erasmus. By White Kennett, 

 of St. Edmund Hall, 8vo., 1683. 



t Plinv's Panegyric, translated by White Kennett, 8vo., 

 1686. ' 



who had invested them in the right only of a single im- 

 pression. 



« If you had a just right to the copies, I cannot think 

 the reprinting of them will tend much to the service of 

 the world or to your own interest. Such trifles cannot be 

 vendible, especially when Mr. Smith has published a later 

 translation.* I know the first translator did them when 

 a boy at Oxford, and as an exercise imposed by his tutor, 

 who seemed to commend them to the press, and yet did 

 not live to correct them. They were both finished in the 

 reign of King Charles II., though one of them was not 

 published till the beginning of the reign of James II. In 

 short, I cannot think It advisable for you to reprint them, 

 nor can 1 possibly take the pains to revise them. 1 hope 

 there is no obscenity, or other wrong lust in them, to de- 

 ceive the people into catching at them. If you despise 

 my advice, you had best however take care to insert no 

 name of a writer but what you find in the old title pages, 

 for you know property and privilege are valuable things. 

 I am, your loving friend 



" White Pbterboeoitgh. 



" Pliny and the Essay of Erasmus can never run so 

 well in English as in the Latin." 



Curll was not likely to be satisfied with this 

 refusal ; and in the following reply, he defends 

 himself from the charges brought against him in 

 Mist's Journal — charges obviously hinted at in 

 the conclusion of the Bishop's Letter : — 



"Nov. 7, 1721. 



" My Lord, 

 " In a ready compliance with your Lordship's request, 

 this is to inform you, that the copyright of Pliny and 

 Erasmus were purchased by Mr. Swalle and Mr. Nichol- 

 son, and though j^ou are pleased to say you vested the 

 original printers of them but in the right of a single im- 

 pression, yet I dare say, my Lord, you had never any 

 thoughts of resuming them, because I am assured you 

 gave them both without any premium. 



"There have already been two editions of Erasmus ; and 

 the expence Mr. Nicholson was at by engraving Holbein's 

 cuts in above fifty copper-plates, gave the book a new 

 turn, and makes it, among the rest of our translations 

 from the Latin, very saleable, as it deserves to be.f 



" As to Pliny, 1 knew Mr. Smith of North Nibley and 

 his abilities : his version will never be worth reviving, it 

 being too liable to the just observations your Lordship has 

 made upon Sir Robert Stapylton's former translation.}: 

 Besides, my design in reprinting yours, 1 am promised 

 some Select Epistles of Pliny, to subjoin to it. And I 

 humbly hope, since I have paid to Mr. Nicholson's exe- 

 cutors a considerable sum of money for these two transla- 

 tions and the plates of Holbein, that your Lordship will 

 be pleased to revise them for a new edition, being content 

 to wait your Lordship's leisure ; and as I had the happi- 

 ness of your brother's friendship, and received many 

 favours from him, so I hope my conduct will in no aifair 

 prove disagreeable to your Lordship. 1 am sorry, my 

 Lord, that rumour only (or some idle paragraphs, in- 

 serted against me, in that sink of scandal, Mist's Journal, 

 wherein the best characters have been traduced) should 

 move your Lordship to cast an aspersion upon me from 



* Pliny's Panegyric, translated by George Smith. 

 London, 1702, 8vo. 



f The Praise of Folly. To which is prefixed Eras- 

 mus's Epistle to Sir Thomas More, and an Account of 

 Hans Holbeines Pictures, &c., and where to be seen. 

 London, 1709, 8vo., with portrait, and forty-six plates. 



X Pliny's Panegyricke, translated by Sir Eobert Sta- 

 pylton, Knt. Oxon, 1644, 4to. 



