Neck or Nothing: a Consolatory Letter from Mr. D-nt-n to Mr. C--rll upon his being tost in a blanket, &c.

[WESLEY, SAMUEL].

Editore: [London:] Sold by Charles King in Westminster-Hall, 1716.

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16pp., 8vo. Engraved frontispiece (included in the pagination) in three compartments (see below), the blank lower corner showing part of a red duty inkstamp. A couple of minor spots, but an excellent copy in early nineteenth-century half calf. With the engraved armorial bookplate of the Marquess of Crewe on the front pastedown, acquired by me from the Crewe books at Bernard Quaritch in the 1980s, at which time I still occasionally inserted my own little book-label in books I planned to keep, so it is also present here. First and only edition, based on a real event, although of course the conceit of the "consolatory epistle" from eccentric bookseller John Dunton is a fiction. Only a few months before the incident described in this poem Curll had been subjected by Alexander Pope to an "emetick" in his sherry, an adventure described in Pope s A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison, on the body of Mr. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Unfazed, Curll persisted in his piratical ways, publishing without permission (and also mangling the Latin) a funeral elegy to the famous preacher Robert South composed by the head boy of Westminster school. The schoolboys invited Curll to visit on August 2nd, and the bookseller unwisely complied. As the poem puts it: And couldst Thou, Mun, be such a Sot As not to smell a Powder-Plot? . . . Perhaps thy Soul, to Gain inclin d Did gratis Copies think to find. . . No! let it ne er by Man be said, The Pirate s frighted from his Trade: Tho vengeful Birch should flea his Thighs, Tho toss d from Blankets he should rise. . . . And so it was, with Curll flogged, tossed in a blanket, and forced to beg on his knees for the head boy s pardon. All three of these scenes are depicted in the three panels of the engraved frontispiece here. The author of the poem, Samuel Wesley (younger brother of John and Charles) was an usher or assistant teacher at Westminster School. He shows himself fully conversant with Curll s history, not just publishing but also his recent experience at Pope s hands: This tossing up, and tumbling down so; And well thy Stomach might incline To spue without Emetick Wine. . . . The poem offers ironic sympathy at the end: Tho tis vexatious, Mun, I grant, To hear the passing Truants taunt, And ask Thee at thy Shop in jeer, Which is the way to Westminster? . . . Why Pope will write an Epick on t! Bernard [i.e. Lintot, the publisher of Pope s Homer] will chuckle at thy Moan, And all the Booksellers in Town, From Tonson down to Boddington. . . . Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750, W343.

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• Titolo: Neck or Nothing: a Consolatory Letter from Mr. D-nt-n to Mr. C--rll upon his being tost in a blanket, &c.
• Editore: [London:] Sold by Charles King in Westminster-Hall, 1716.
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Condizione: Fine