[208] Curll was a bookseller, from whose shop issued many works of an
immoral class, yet he chose for his sign "The Bible and Dial,"
which were displayed over his shop in Fleet-street. The satire
of Pope's Dunciad seems fairly to have been earned, as we may
judge from the class of books still seen in the libraries of
curious collectors, and which are certainly unfitted for more
general circulation. For these publications he was fined by
the Court of King's Bench, and on one occasion stood in the
pillory as a punishment. Yet himself and Lintot were the chief
booksellers of the era, until Tonson arose, and by taking a
more enlarged view of the trade, laid the foundation of the
great publishing houses of modern times.--ED.
[209] Cromwell was one of the gay young men who frequented
coffee-houses and clubs when Pope, also a young man, did the
same, and corresponded freely with him for a few years, when
the intimacy almost entirely ceased. The lady was a Mrs.
Thomas, who became a sort of literary hack to Curll, and is
celebrated in the Dunciad under the name of Corinna. Roscoe,
in his edition of Pope, says, "Of Henry Cromwell little is
known, further than what is learnt from this correspondence,
from which he appears to have been a man of respectable
connections, talents, and education, and to have intermingled
pretty freely in the gallantries of fashionable life." He
seems to have been somewhat eccentric, and the correspondence
of Pope only lasted from 1708 to 1711.--ED.
[210] Pope, in his conversations with Spence, says, "My letters to
Cromwell were written with a design that does not generally
appear: they were not written in sober sadness."--ED.
[211] Pope's victory over Curll is represented by Hogarth in a print
ostentatiously hung in the garret of his "Distressed
Poet."--ED.