2»d S. V. 129., June 19. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



489 



LONDON, SATURDAY. JUNE 19. 1858. 



STRAY NOTES ON EDMUND OUHLL, HIS lilFE, AND 

 PUBLICATIONS. 



No. 10. — Curll, Budgell, and Pope. 

 Although the author of 27te Man of Taste, 

 when he says : 



" Long live old Curll ! He ne'er to publish fears 

 The speeches, verses, and last wills of Peers," 



would lead us to infer that Curll confined his 

 publications of wills to those made by peers, such 

 was by no means the ca.se. For in the curious 

 volume issued by him in 1741, entitled An Impar- 

 tial History of the Life, Character, Amours, 

 Travels, and Transactions of Mr. John Barber, 

 Citi) Printer, Common-Councilman, Alderman, and 

 Lord Mayor of London, (in which, by the bye, he 

 prints Barber's own will,) he announces that — 



" The Lives and last Wills and Testaments of the fol- 

 lowing Thirty-one Persons are all printed for E. Curll 

 in Covent Garden : — 



19. Dr. Williams. 



20. Dr. South, 2 vols., with 

 his Posthumous Works. 



21. Dr. Hickes. 



22. Dr. Burnet of the Char- 

 ter House. 



23. Mr. Partridge, the As- 

 trologer. 



24. Mr. Mahomet, Servant 

 to his late Majesty. 



25. Mr. John Gay. 



26. Mr. Wilks, the Come- 



27. Elias Ashmole, Esq. 



28. Arthur Maynwaring, 



Esq. 



29. Walter Moyle, Esq. 



30. William King, LL.D. 



31. Mrs. Manley, Author of 



the Atalantis." 



1. Archbishop Tillotson. 



2. Bishop Atterbury. 



3. Bishop Burnet. 



4. Bishop Curll. 



5. Earl of Halifax, 



6. Lord Carpenter. 



7. Lord Chancellor Talbot. 



8. Lord Chancellor B. /'en - 



gelly. 



9. Judge Price. 



10. Rev. Mr. George Kelly. 



1 1 . Mr. Wright of Neioing- 



ton. 



12. William Congreve, Esq. 



13. Mr. Addison. 



14. Mr. Prior. 



15. Mr. Loc/ie, with his Let- 



ters and llemains. 



16. Matthew Tindall, LL.D. 



17. Mr. Nelson. 



18. Dr. Radcliffe. 



This list is a curious one, and we suspect con- 

 tains several articles which are comparatively 

 unknown to students of English biography. It 

 certainly goes a good way towards justifying 

 Arbuthnot's observation to Swift, that Curll " is 

 one of the new terrors of Death." 



In it will be found one will to which we propose 

 to draw attention ; not only from the controversy 

 in which its publication involved Curll, but from 

 its being a matter alluded to in The Dunciad, and 

 therefore deserving especial notice. 



It is the will of Matthew Tindal, — that will 

 which, by enriching Budgell at the expense of the 

 testator's nephew, gave rise to the suspicion that 

 Budgell himself made it — a suspicion which lends 

 all its bitterness to Pope's well-known couplet : — 



" Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on my quill. 

 And write whate'er he please — except my Will." 



Pope never wrote a line or used a word without 

 a meaning, and the present Note will throw much 

 light on the foregomg couplet; for we shall see 

 in the course of it that it was Budgell who especi- 

 ally "charged low Grub Street" on Pope's quill. 



As for the controversy between Curll and Bud- 

 gell there probably existed some ill-will between 

 them before Tindal's death; for we find the fol- 

 lowing Advertisement from " The Pegasus in 

 Grub Street," given by Budgell in The Bee of 

 July 7, 1733, No. xx., vol. ii. p. 874. : — 



" Whereas it is very probable, that one or other of my 

 brother scribblers may have finished some Poem or Pam'- 

 phlet, and is now ransacking his Pericranium for a title- 

 page for the same, this is to signify to any such person, 

 that if he will take the trouble to come to an apartment 

 five stories high, at Timothy Stitchum's, a collator of old 

 Cloaths in Rag-Fair, he may be furnished with a very 

 taking one for that purpose, at a moderate price; the 

 Author being at present greatly distrest for a little of the 

 readj', to make up his last week's rent; his landlady 

 keeping him a prisoner at discretion, bj' removing the 

 ladder (the only means of descent) from his chamber, till 

 he shall have tendered her the sum total. 



" N.B. He has been confined these five days, and has 

 not tasted a drop of home-brewed in all that time, to the 

 no small damping of his poetical fury. 



" To be had at the same place, wholesale or retail 

 (cheaper than of any other Garretteer in town, the Author 

 designing to give over business), a large quantity of 

 taking title-pages, serious, comical, or political on both 

 sides, &c. Some dozens of last Wills and Testaments, 

 and Lives of remarkable persons not yet dead (all these • 

 bespoke by Mr. Edmund Curll), many last dying 

 speeches and confessions of men as yet unhanged : stores 

 of doleful ditties, horrid murders, and Cases of Impo- 

 tency." 



Dr. Tindal's death took place August 16, 1733 ; 

 and from the announcement of it in The Bee, No. 

 XXV. vol. ii. p. 1104, we make the following curi- 

 ous extracts : — 



" We shall not in this place either justify or condemn 

 the Doctor's Notions with respect to Reason and Revela- 

 tio7i. Thus far we cannot help saying, that he led a life 

 conformable to the sublimest Rules of Morality ; and that 

 his last Will is an undeniable instance, and will stand 

 as such to future Ages, that he was possessed in the 

 highest degree of the most valuable virtues — namelj-. The 

 Love of his Country, the Love of Merit, and the Hatred 

 of Oppression." 



" His discourse to his friends and those about 



him while he lay under these Melancholy Circumstances, 

 and saw inevitable Death approaching, have been taken 

 down in writing, and carefully preserved. They will in 

 due time be communicated to the Publick, together with 

 his Life, prefixed to several curious Pieces which he has 

 left behind him, and which some days before his death 

 he committed with his own hands to the care of a Gen- 

 tleman in whose honour he placed the highest confidence, 

 and whose knowledge in every branch of learning quali- 

 fies him for the discharge of so important a Trust." 



This gentleman was Eustace Budgell himself; 

 who was no doubt the writer of the paragraph 

 which we have just quoted, and who by Tindal's 

 will, executed on the 7th of August, nine days 

 preceding his death, was bequeathed a legacy of 



