Court Poems
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Edmund Curll's connection with the anonymously-published Court Poems in 1716 led to the long quarrel with Alexander Pope. Curll got three anonymous poems, by Pope, John Gay, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Pope wrote to Curll warning him not to publish the poems, which only confirmed for Curll the authorship. He published them. In response, Pope and Bernard Linton, Pope's publisher, met with Curll at the Swan tavern. Pope and Lintot seemed resigned and worried only for John Gay's prospects. However, they had filled Curll's glass with an emetic, causing him, when he went home, to go into convulsions of vomiting. Pope published two pamphlet accounts of the incident and informed the public (a la Swift's Bickerstaff Papers) that Curll was dead. Curll seized upon the publicity for his own purposes, as well. He published and advertised John Oldmixon's The Catholick Poet and John Dennis's The True Character of Mr Pope and his Writings. He reprinted these in 1716, when the atmosphere of England was highly charged after the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.
