A false account of the funeral of this great poet having been circulated and believed for near seventy years, it is become necessary minutely to examine and refute it. It first made its appearance thirty years after Dryden's death, in some Memoirs of Congreve, published by Curll, and ascribed by him to Charles Wilson, Esq.,' probably a fictitious person: but the original fabricator of this curious tissue of falshood was Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, a gentlewoman of good birth, and some talents, who had become ac quainted with our author about six months before his death, and had been honoured by him with the title of CORINNA, and with three letters, which will be found in this volume. From her nativity now before me, which may be presumed to have been cast by Dryden's order, it appears, that she was born on the 30th of August, 1675; and being in London at the time of his death, she must have been well acquainted with all the circumstances respecting his last illness and his funeral, to

The writer perhaps was Oldmixon. These Memoirs are dedicated to his patron, George Ducket, Esq.

She appears to have become acquainted with Dryden in November, 1699, in consequence of sending him some of her verses for his perusal. In a letter written to her in that month, he says-" Since you do me the favour to desire a name from me, take that of CORINNA, if you please; I mean not the lady with whom Ovid was in love, but the famous Theban poetess, who overcame Pindar five times, as Historians tell us."

which the notice and countenance that he had shewn her, would naturally draw her attention. She did not therefore exhibit to the world this spurious tale from ignorance or errour, but with a full and perfect consciousness that every part of her relation was false. The only excuse that can be made for her is, that at the time of writing it she was in the Fleet Prison, in great poverty and distress; and that she was induced probably by some small sum of money to furnish Curll with this fictitious narrative. But however light and venial such

Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas was the daughter of Emma.. nuel Thomas, of the Inner Temple, Esq., Barrister at Law, who died when she was an infant. Her mother, according to her own account, was a daughter of William Osborne, Esq., of Sittingbourne, in Kent.

In some Memoirs of her Life, written by herself, and published by Curll in the year 1731, are the following curious circumstances. Her father was so affluent, that he kept his chariot! [not long after the Restoration!] The pall at his funeral, in 1677, was supported by " six right honourables ;" and one hundred and thirty mourning rings, of 20s. cach, were given away on that occasion.-When she was an infant, she never could endure to lie in a cradle. After the death of Lady Henrietta Wentworth, [1686,] the Countess Dowager of Wentworth [unluckily there was no such person, though there might have been a Countess Dowager of Cleaveland, Lady Henrietta's grand-mother, and there was Lady Wentworth, her mother,] having, as she said, lost her child, offered to take Elizabeth Thomas into her house, and to educate and provide for her; to which her mother refused to consent. The Countess, resenting this refusal, would never afterwards

offences may appear to the dealers in fiction, mankind are too well acquainted with the value of

see either of them; and "dying in a few years, left £.1500 per annum inheritance at Stepney, to her chambermaid."

Philadelpha, Lady Wentworth, Lady of the manor of Stepney, I find, died in April, 1696, ten years after her daughter, (the celebrated Lady Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness of Nettlested, and mistress of the Duke of Monmouth,) for whom she ordered a monument to be erected in the church of Tuddington, in Bedfordshire, of not less than 2,000 value; which, by the neglect of those to whom the Earl of Cleaveland's estate has since devolved, is now hastening fast to decay. Her will, which was made April 2, 1696, and proved, May 4, following, (Pr. OFF. Bond, qu. 84,) contains no such devise as that above mentioned. She bequeathed about £.10,000 in legacies to various noble relations and friends; £.200 to her servant, Mrs. Mary Fanningham, and £.330 to other servants; and she made her executors, Sir Robert Howard and two other gentlemen, her residuary legatees. By her will she confirmed, and appropriated a fund for the payment of, certain legacies bequeathed by her daugh. ter; among which was, an annuity of £100 for her life, "to Mrs. Flanningham," who probably had been Lady Henrietta Wentworth's servant, and was the same person to whoi she herself bequeathed £.200, though, perhaps, by a mistake in the transcript of this will, there is a slight variation in the names.-Here we have the germ of Mrs. Thomases fiction.

Her mother, in 1684, retiring with her daughter, for cheapness, to some place in Surrey, (she does not tell us where,) became acquainted with Dr. Glisson, [an eminent physician,] then (as she informs us) "near a hundred years of age." At his last visit to them, this gentleman

integrity and truth, in all human dealings, not to hold the whole tribe of impostors and forgers of

having drawn on "a pair of rich Spanish leather gloves, embossed on the backs and tops with gold embroidery, and fringed round with gold plate," he was asked their history; as" he seemed to touch them with particular respect." "I do so," returned he; "for the last time I had the honour of approaching my mistress, Queen ELIZABETII, she pulled them from her own royal hands, saying- Here, Glisson, wear them for my sake:' I have done so with veneration, and never drew them on, but when I had a mind to honour those whom I visit, as I now do you: and since thou lovest the memory of my royal mistress, take them, and preserve them carefully, when I am gone!-Too true a prediction! he went home, and died in a few days!"

It must be acknowledged that Corinna had a good sprag memory; for Dr. Francis Glisson, a celebrated physician and anatomist in the last century, (the person here meant,) died in the year 1677, at which time she was just two years old; but if we allow the speech which she has with great precision given as his, to have come to her by relation from her mother, then we are only to suppose that the Doctor made it seven years after he was dead. "Thus bad begins, and worse remains be-hind;" for Dr. Glisson, when he died, being in truth just eighty, (and not near one hundred, as she chose to represent him,) must have been born in 1597, and consequently in the last year of Elizabeth's reign, was only five years old. Here then we have an account of a very extraordinary phenomenon, well worthy the attention of our curious collectors of rarities;-a pair of gloves of so accommodating a nature, that in spite of their stiffened high tops, they not only equally suited either sex, but by a peculiar power of expansion and contraction exactly.

every kind in abhorrence; and however they may be elated by the praise of ingenuity, or the profits

fitted a boy of five years old, a Queen of seventy, and an old physician of eighty. As they are probably yet forthcoming, the representatives of this lady cannot do better than present them to the gentleman, who, we were frequently assured some time since, was possessed of a curious whole-length portrait of our great dramatick poet; as by an easy transition he may convert them into SHAKSPEARE'S GLOVES ; with neither of which inestimable treasures, though long and fondly expected, have the eyes of the steady BELIEVERS in this kind of trumpery yet been gratified.

In these extraordinary Memoirs we are next presented with the history of a chemical quack, whom the writer calls Dr. Quibus; who, being reduced to poverty, poisoned himself" with so strong a corrosive," that "in a few hours his belly burst, and his bowels gushed out.""Thus (adds Corinna) ended the life of a poor wretch under the most excruciating dolours, who had ruined many without benefit to himself." We shall hereafter find the very same excruciating dolours tormenting our author in his last moments.

Mrs. Thomases mother died in January, 1718-19; and a Mr. Richard Gwinnet, who had promised to marry her, having died about two years before, and by his will bequeathed to her, as she states, six hundred pounds, she was involved in a lawsuit for this sum. Though she prevailed in this suit, she received, (she says,) at the end of several years, only £.213 16s. od.; and in 1727, being utterly destitute, she was thrown into the Fleet. Probably, while she was confined there, she sold to Curll, the bookseller, a parcel of Pope's Letters to Henry Cromwell, Esq.,' which she had by some means procured from that gen.