The alarm proved to be false as to the nature of the maid’s illness, and they returned the next day to the paternal mansion.
EDMUND CURLL
On November 12 Elizabeth writes from Bath to her sister a long and indignant letter upon some poems brought out in the name of Prior. She says—
“I got at last this morning the poems just published under Prior’s[60] name, brought them home under my arm, locked my door, sat me down by my fireside, and opened the book with great expectation, but to my disappointment found it to be the most wretched trumpery that you can conceive, the production of the meanest of Curl’s[61] band of scribblers.”
[60] Matthew Prior, born 1664, died 1721.
[61] Edmund Curll, born 1675, died 1747; publisher, etc., ridiculed by Pope in the “Dunciad.”
She continues to inveigh against this forgery in eloquent terms, and towards the end of the letter remarks “that mankind can’t support above two dead languages at a time, so as to have any tolerable knowledge or use of them, therefore in all probability Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Prior, and Pope are but short-lived, in comparison of those Methuselahs the Classicks.”
BATH —
GRACE FREIND
The first letter to the duchess from Bath is dated—
“December 15, Friday, Bath.