Most faithful servant
Nov. 12, 1699. JOHN DRYDEN.
Our amiable poetess, in a letter to Dr. Talbot, Bishop of Durham, has
given some farther particulars of her life. We have already seen that
she was addressed upon honourable terms, by Mr. Gwynnet, of the
Middle Temple, son of a gentleman in Gloucestershire. Upon his
first discovering his passion to Corinna, she had honour enough to
remonstrate to him the inequality of their fortune, as her affairs
were then in a very perplexed situation. This objection was soon
surmounted by a lover, especially as his father had given him
possession of the greatest part of his estate, and leave to please
himself. Mr. Gwynnet no sooner obtained this, than he came to London,
and claimed Corinna's promise of marriage: But her mother being then
in a very weak condition, she could not abandon her in that distress,
to die among strangers. She therefore told Mr. Gwynnet, that as she
had not thought sixteen years long in waiting for him, he could not
think six months long in expectation of her. He replied, with a deep
sigh, 'Six months at this time, my Corinna, is more than sixteen years
have been; you put it off now, and God will put it off for ever.'--It
proved as he had foretold; he next day went into the country, made his
will, sickened, and died April the 16th, 1711, leaving his Corinna the
bequest of six-hundred pounds; and adds she, 'Sorrow has been my food
ever since.'
Had she providentially married him, she had been secure from the
insults of poverty; but her duty to her parent was more prevalent than
considerations of convenience. After the death of her lover, she was
barbarously used: His brother, stifled the will, which compelled her
to have recourse to law; he smothered the old gentleman's conveyance
deed, by which he was enabled to make a bequest, and offered a large
sum of money to any person, who would undertake to blacken Corinna's
character; but wicked as the world is, he found none so compleatly
abandoned, as to perjure themselves for the sake of his bribe. At last
to shew her respect to the memory of her deceased lover, she consented
to an accommodation with his brother, to receive 200 l. down, and
200 l. at the year's end. The first payment was made, and distributed
instantly amongst her mother's creditors; but when the other became
due, he bid her defiance, stood suit on his own bond, and held out
four terms. He carried it from one court to another, till at last
it was brought to the bar of the House of Lords; and as that is
a tribunal, where the chicanery of lawyers can have no weight, he
thought proper to pay the money without a hearing: The gentlemen
of the long-robe had made her sign an instrument, that they should
receive the money and pay themselves: After they had laid their cruel
hands upon it, of the 200 l. the poor distressed lady received but
13 l. 16 s. which reduced her to the necessity of absconding from her
creditors, and starving in an obscure corner, till she was betrayed by
a false friend, and hurried to jail.
Besides all the other calamities of Corinna, she had ever a bad state
of health, occasioned by an accident too curious to be omitted.
In the year 1730 her case was given into the college of physicians,
and was reckoned a very surprizing one. It is as follows.
'In April 1711 the patient swallowed the middle bone of the wing of
a large fowl, being above three inches long; she had the end in
her mouth, and speaking hastily it went forcibly down in the act of
inspiration. After the first surprize, feeling no pain she thought no
more of it; in a few days after, she complained what she eat or drank
lay like a stone in her stomach, and little or nothing pass'd through
her. After three weeks obstruction, she fell into a most violent
bloody flux, attended with a continual pain at the pit of her stomach,
convulsions, and swooning fits; nor had she any ease but while her
stomach was distended with liquids, such as small beer, or gruel:
She continued in this misery, with some little intervals, till the
Christmass following, when she was seized with a malignant fever, and
the convulsions encreased to so high a degree, that she crowed like a
cock, and barked like a dog, to the affrightment of all who saw her,
as well as herself. Dr. Colebatch being called to her relief, and
seeing the almost incredible quantity of blood she voided, said it
was impossible she could live, having voided all her bowels. He was
however prevailed with to use means, which he said could only be by
fetching off the inner coat of her stomach, by a very strong vomit;
he did so, and she brought the hair-veel in rolls, fresh and bleeding;
this dislodged the bone, which split length ways, one half pass'd off
by siege, black as jet, the cartilaginous part at each end consumed,
and sharp on each side as a razor; the other part is still lodged
within her. In this raw and extream weak condition, he put her into a
salivation, unknown to her mother or herself, to carry off the other
part, which shocked them to such a degree, that they sent for Dr.
Garth, who with much difficulty, and against his judgment, was
prevailed on to take it off, and using a healing galenical method,
she began to recover so much strength as to be turned in her bed,
and receive nourishment: But she soon after was seized with the Iliac
Passion, and for eleven days, her excrements came upwards, and no
passage could be forced through her, till one day by Dr. Garth,
with quick-silver. After a few weeks it returned again, and the same
medicine repeated, upon which she recovered, and for some months was
brought to be in a tolerable state of health, only the region of
the spleen much swelled; and at some times, when the bone moved
outwards, as it visibly did to sight and touch, was very painful.--In
July 1713, on taking too strong a purge, a large imposthume bag came
away by stool, on which it was supposed, the cystus, which the bone
had worked for itself, being come away, the bone was voided also; but
her pains continued so extraordinary, she willingly submitted to the
decree of four surgeons, who agreed to make an incision in the left
side of the abdomen, and extract the bone; but one of the surgeons
utterly rejecting the operation, as impracticable, the bone being
lodged in the colon, sent her to Bath, where she found some relief by
pumping, and continued tolerably well for some years, even to bear the
fatigue of an eight years suit at law, with an unjust executor; save
that in over-walking, and sudden passion, she used to be pained, but
not violent; and once or twice in a year a discharge of clean gall,
with some portions of a skin, like thin kid leather, tinged with gall,
which she felt break from the place, and leave her sore within; but
the bone never made any attempt out-wards after the first three years.
Being deprived of a competent fortune, by cross accidents, she has
suffered all the extremities of a close imprisonment, if want of all
the necessaries of life, and lying on the boards for two-years may
be termed such, during which time she never felt the bone. But on her
recovering liberty, and beginning to use exercise, her stomach, and
belly, and head swelled to a monstrous degree, and she was judged in a
galloping dropsy; but no proper medicines taking place, she was given
over as incurable, when nature unexpectedly helped itself, and in
twelve hours time by stool, and vomit, she voided about five gallons
of dirty looking water, which greatly relieved her for some days, but
gathered again as the swelling returned, and always abounded with
a hectic, or suffocating asthma in her stomach, and either a canine
appetite or loathing. She has lately voided several extraneous
membranes different from the former, and so frequent, that it keeps
her very low, some of which she has preserved in spirits, and humbly
implores your honours judgment thereon.'
Under all these calamities, of which the above is a just
representation, did poor Corinna labour; and it is difficult to
produce a life crouded with greater evils. The small fortune which her
father left her, by the imprudence of her mother, was soon squandered:
She no sooner began to taste of life, than an attempt was made upon
her innocence. When she was about being happy in the arms of her
amiable lover Mr. Gwynnet, he was snatched from her by an immature
fate. Amongst her other misfortunes, she laboured under the
displeasure of Mr. Pope, whose poetical majesty she had innocently
offended, and who has taken care to place her in his Dunciad. Mr. Pope
had once vouchsafed to visit her, in company with Henry Cromwel,
Esq; whose letters by some accident fell into her hands, with some of
Pope's answers. As soon as that gentleman died, Mr. Curl found means
to wheedle them from her, and immediately committed them to the press.
This so enraged Pope, that tho' the lady was very little to blame, yet
he never forgave her.
Not many months after our poetess had been released from her gloomy
habitation, she took a small lodging in Fleet street, where she died
on the 3d of February 1730, in the 56th year of her age, and was two
days after decently interred in the church of St. Bride's.
Corinna, considered as an authoress, is of the second rate, she had
not so much wit as Mrs. Behn, or Mrs. Manley, nor had so happy a power
of intellectual painting; but her poetry is soft and delicate, her
letters sprightly and entertaining. Her Poems were published after her
death, by Curl; and two volumes of Letters which pass'd between her
and Mr. Gwynnet. We shall select as a specimen of her poetry, an Ode
addressed to the duchess of Somerset, on her birth-day.
An ODE, &c.