May 14. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



479 



Balfour, Bart., of Portland Castle, Orkney. An- 

 other daughter would appear to have become the 

 wife of Thomas Wilson, or Volusenus, as he calls 

 himself, the editor of his father-in-law's poems and 

 Other publications. E. H. A. 



Cursitor Barons of the Exchequer. — Will you 

 allow me to repeat a question which you inserted 

 in Vol. v., p. 346., as to a list of these officers, and 

 any account of their origin and history ? Surely 

 some of your correspondents, devoted to legal an- 

 tiquities, can give me a clue to the labyrinth which 

 Madox has not ventured to enter. The office still 

 €xists — with peculiar duties which are still per- 

 formed — and we know that it is an ancient one ; 

 all sufficient grounds for inquiry, which I trust 

 will meet with some response. Edward Foss. 



Syriac Scriptures. — I am very anxious to know 

 ■what editions of the Scriptures in Syriac (the 

 Peshito) were published between Leusden and 

 -Schaaf's New Testament, and the entix-e Bible in 

 1816 by the Bible Society. B. H. C. 



aaepit'cs. 



PSALM ANAZAE. 



* (Vol. vii., pp. 206. 435.) 



Having long felt a great respect for this person, 

 :and a great interest in all that concerns his history, 

 I am induced to mention the grounds on which I 

 Lave been led to doubt whether the letter in the 

 Gentleman s Magazine, to which Mr. Crossley 

 refers, is worthy of credit. When I first saw it, I 

 ^considered it as so valuable an addition to the 

 information which I had collected on the subject, 

 that I was anxious to know who was the writer. 

 It had no signature ; but the date, " Sherdington, 

 ■June, 1704," which was retained, gave me a clue 

 which, by means not worth detailing, led me to 

 the knowledge that what thus appeared in the 

 Gentlernans Magazine for February, 1765, had 

 issued from " Curll's chaste press " more than 

 thirty years before, in the form of a letter from 

 "the person now known in literary history as 

 *' Curll's Corinna," but by her cotemporaries (see 

 the index of Mr. Cunningham's excellent Handbook 

 ■of London) as Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, sometime 

 •of Dyot Street, St. Giles's, and afterwards of a 

 locality not precisely ascertained, but within the 

 rules of the Fleet, and possibly (though Mr. Cun- 

 ningham does not corroborate this) at some period 

 of her life resident in the more genteel quarters 

 which Curil assigns to her. To speak more strictly, 

 and make the matter intelligible to any one who 

 may look at it in the Magazine, I should add that 

 the first paragraph (seventeen lines, on p. 78., 

 •dated from " Sherdington," and beginning " I 

 dined," says the letter writer, " last Saturday with 



Sir John Guise, at Gloucester") is part of a letter 

 purporting to be written by her lover; while all 

 the remainder (on pp. 79 — 81.) is from Corinna's 

 answer to it. 



The worthless and forgotten work of which these 

 letters form a part, consists of two volumes. The 

 copy which I borrowed when I discovered what I 

 have stated, consisted of a first volume of the 

 second edition (1736), and a second volume of the 

 first edition (1732). The title of the second 

 volume (which I give as belonging to the earlier 

 edition) is: 



" The Honourable Lovers : or, the second and last 

 Volume of Pylades and Corinna. Being the remainder 

 of Love Letters, and other Pieces (in Verse and Prose), 

 which passed between Richard Gwinnett, Esq. ; of 

 Great Shurdington, in Gloucestershire, and Mrs. Eliza- 

 beth Thomas, Jun., of Great Russel Street, Blooms- 

 bury. To which is added, a Collection of familiar 

 Letters between Corinna, Mr. Norris, Capt. Reming- 

 ton, Lady Chudleigh, Lady Pakington, &c. &c. All 

 faithfully published from their original Manuscripts. 

 London : printed in the Year m.dcc.xxxii. ( Price 5«.)" 



The title-page of the first volume (second edi- 

 tion) differs principally in having the statement 

 that the book was "printed for E. Curll" (whose 

 name does not appear in the earlier second volume, 

 though perhaps it may have done so in the first 

 of that earlier edition), and an announcement that 

 the fidelity of the publication is " attested, by Sir 

 Edward Northey, Knight." 



The work is a farrago of low rubbish utterly 

 beneath criticism; and I should perhaps hardly 

 think it worth while to say as much as I have said 

 of it, had it not been that, in turning it about, I 

 could not help feeling a suspicion that Daniel 

 Defoe's hand was in the matter, at least so far as 

 that papers that had belonged to him might have 

 come into Curll's hands, and furnished materials 

 for the work. It would be tedious to enter into 

 details ; but the question seemed to me to be one 

 of some interest, because, in my own mind, it was 

 immediately followed by another, namely, whether 

 Daniel had not more to do than has been suspected 

 with the History of Formosa ? Those who are 

 more familiar with Defoe than I am, will be bet- 

 ter able to judge whether he was, as Psalmanar 

 zar says, " the person who Englished it from my 

 Latin ;" for the youth was as much disqualified 

 for writing the book in English, by being a French- 

 man, as he would have been if he had been a For- 

 mosan. He acknowledges that this person assisted 

 him to correct improbabilities ; but I do not know 

 that he anywhere throws further light on the ques- 

 tion respecting the help which he must have had. 

 Daniel would be just the man to correct some 

 gross improbabilities, and at the same time help 

 him to some more probable fictions. Under this 

 impression I recently inquired (see " N. & Q.," 

 Vol. vii., p. 305.) respecting the authorship of 



