Oct. 13. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



277 



LONDON. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 18.5S. 



DR^DEN, POPE, AND CURLl's " COBINNA." 



Mr. Cafrutliers, in his Life of Pope (p. 30.), 

 speakinj:^ of Henry Cromwell, the friend of the 

 poet in his wild days, says : 



" He [Cromwell] had done more than take a pinch of 

 snuff out of Dryden's snuff-box, which was a point of 

 high honour and ambition at Will's : he had quarrelled 

 with him about a frail poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, 

 whom Dryden had christened Corinna, and who was also 

 known as Sappho." 



Most of the readers of "N. & Q." will know that 

 the lady referred to was the person who trans- 

 ferred Pope's early letters to Curll for publica- 

 tion, and duly suffered in The Dunciad : but can 

 any of them tell me the foundation of the story 

 above quoted? I suspect it has no other than 

 some lines in a poetical epistle attributed to Pope, 

 and published in one of Curll's "surreptitious" 

 volumes ; from which epistle Mr. Carruthers sub- 

 sequently quotes some verses. The lines alluded 

 to are as follows : 



" What mov'd you, pray, without compelling. 

 Like Trojan true, to draw for Helen — 

 Quarrel with Dryden for a strumpet ? 

 (For so she was, as e'er showed r — p yet; 

 Tho' I confess she had much grace, 

 Especially about the face.) 



from my soul I judge 

 He [Dryden] ne'er (good man) owed Helen grudge, 

 But lov'd her full as well, it may be. 

 As e'er he did his own good lady." 



Because Dryden, in a letter, christened Mrs. 

 Thomas " Corinna," and " would have called her 

 Sappho, but that he heard she was handsomer," 

 Mr. Carruthers seems to have assumed that she 

 was Dryden's mistress : and because he believed 

 her to have been afterwards the mistress of Crom- 

 well, he appears to have come to the conclusion 

 that the lady who " had much grace, especially 

 about the face," was no other than the famous Mrs. 

 Thomas, the conveyer of the Pope letters to Curll. 

 If the reputation of his friend was well-merited, 

 Pope might have drawn upon a list as long as Le- 

 porello's ; but the poem evidently refers to some 

 particular lady who jilted the author of Absalom 

 and Achitophel for Mr. Cromwell (who appears to 

 have got the title of " Beau Cromwell," by wear- 

 ing red breeches, a tie wig, or a long black un- 

 powdered periwig, no hat, and " not so much as the 

 extremities of clean linen in neckcloth or cuffs"); 

 and as the story was probably derived from him- 

 self, I have no doubt that it was highly creditable 

 to that gentleman's gallantry and power of fasci- 

 nation. But the lines not only do not mention 

 any such names as Elizabeth Thomas, Corinna, or 

 No. 311.] 



Sappho, but it is clear from the play upon the name 

 of the Trojan lady, that they refer to some mo- 

 dern frailty whose name was Helen. If it were not 

 so, the second line, quoted above, would be point- 

 less, and the subsequent repetition of the name 

 would have no meaning. Dryden does not appear 

 to have had any personal acquaintance with Co- 

 rinna, nor does Corinna, though ready enough with 

 a fiction at most times, and always anxious to 

 make the most of her acquaintance with " glorious 

 John," pretend that she had ever spoken to him. 

 The history of their acquaintance is simply this : — 

 Mrs. Thomas, then a stranger to Dryden, took it 

 in her head to forward to him a copy of verses, 

 which, with a letter, she left for him at a certain, 

 coffee-house which he frequented. Dryden read 

 them ; or, at all events, praised them. They had 

 come to him anonymously ; but he says, in his 

 reply, " I continued not a day in the ignorance of 

 the person to whom I was obliged : for, if you re- 

 member, you brought the verses to a bookseller's 

 shop, and inquired there how they might be sent 

 to me. There happened to be, in the same shop, 

 a gentleman, who, hearing you speak of me, and 

 seeing a paper in your hand, imagined it was 

 a libel against me, and had you watched by his 

 servant, till he knew both your name and where 

 you lived, of which he sent me word immedi- 

 ately. I have lost his letter; I remember you 

 live somewhere about St. Giles's, and are an only 

 daughter." Mrs. Thomas lived then with her 

 mother in Dyott Street, Bloomsbury. Though 

 Dryden wrote to her two other letters, the last of 

 which is dated December 29, 1699, the first two 

 have no dates, but they all refer to the poems which 

 Corinna sent him at the coffee-house, and which 

 he only returns in the last letter ; so that, although 

 he apologises for having kept them so long, it is 

 probable that the correspondence extended over 

 a very short period. Dryden was then nearly 

 seventy ; and it is evident, from these three letters, 

 that he felt himself to be sunk into the vale of 

 years, and well nigh at his journey's end : for he 

 speaks repentantly of his literary levities, and 

 recommends his fiiir correspondent to " avoid the 

 licences which Mrs. Behn allowed herself, of 

 writing loosely, and giving some scandal to the 

 modesty of her sex ;" and adds, " I confess I am 

 the last man who ought in justice to arraign her, 

 who have been myself too much a libertine in 

 most of my poems ; which I should be well con- 

 tented I had time, either to purge, or to see them 

 fairly burned. But this I need not say to you, 

 who are too well born, and too well principled, to 

 fall into that mire." In the third letter he speaks 

 of being always crazy, and at that time worse than 

 usual, by a St. Anthony's fire in one leg. Of this 

 complaint he died on May 1, in the following year — 

 four months after ; so that the closer intimacy with 

 Corinna, the jilting and the quarrel with Crom- 



