Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PRIOR'S CHLOE. In Southeys Common-Place Book, 1849, (p. 403) is the following note: ? I heard my eldest brother say?Her name Prior's Chloe] was Miss Taylor, that he knew her well; and that she once came to him in Dean's Yard, Westminster, purposely to Ask his advice. She told him, ' Sir, I know not what to do. Mr. Prior makes large professions of his love; but he never offers me marriage.' My brother advised her to bring the matter to a point at once. She went directly to Mr. Prior, and asked him plainly, ' Do you intend to marry me, or no?' He said many soft and pretty things: on which she said, ' Sir, in refusing to answer, you do answer. I will see you no more.' And she did see him no more to the day of his death. But afterwards she spent many hours standing and weeping at his tomb in Westminster Abbey. This is evidently an extract from some older authority. Southey has neglected to tell us whose eldest brother was Miss Taylor's confidant, and the editor of the Common- Place Book, as usual, does not help us in the difficulty. But there is another version of Prior's Chloe, of a somewhat different character. Dr. Arbuthnot, writing to a friend, Oct. 10, 1721, has the following passage: ? There is great care taken, now it is too late, to keep Prior's will secret, for it is thought not to be too reputable for Lord Harley to execute this will. Be so kind as to say nothing whence you had your intelligence. We are to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's. She would fain have put it upon Lewis that she was his Emma; she owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe. I have no security from these dotages in batchelors, but to repent of their misspent time and marry with all speed. J. T. Smith, in his entertaining Ramble in the Streets of London, (edit. 1849, p. 175) s...