“The fashionable dress for a widow is a gown with two broad plaits in the back, a short cuff which comes a little below the elbow, round double ruffles very shallow. The dress weed is made of silk made on purpose, undress crape, a black silk long apron, black handkerchief, black hood, and a plain sort of night-cap. Either a night-gown or sack may be worn with a short train, no flounce or ornament of any sort, and if a sack scanty, and only two broad plaits. Many women of condition who are not young, wear merely a common crape sack, the younger sort wear the dress that denotes their widowhood, and in a country town I should suppose the full form must be observed. I imagine your enquiry is for poor Mrs. Primrose.” [Page heading: A CALL FOR POETRY] On November 17 Mrs. Montagu writes from Hill Street to Mrs. Carter-- “MY DEAR FRIEND, “I had this day the pleasure of receiving my dear Friend’s most charming ode. I, alas! am like Monsr. Jourdain, I speak nothing but prose, but I believe my heart feels with all the enthusiasm of poetry.... My Lord Bath is vastly happy that you are to be in town the 1st of January. My Lord Lyttelton is better, but his fever is not quite gone.... I think you should print the verses my Lord Lyttelton addressed to you from Penshurst. Pray write some more odes, and let your seamstresses do your plain work, and the Clerk transcribe your verses.” This year an edition of Mrs. Carter’s various works was printed. When Mrs. Carter was in London she lodged with Mrs. Norman in Clarges Street. Mrs. Montagu having ascertained that she could have her lodgings there from the 1st of January, adds-- “You do not deign to mention Fingal, etc., but that I could pardon, for Poet Ossian has been dead full many a day, but there is a head on which laurels now grow, and it bears more than Parnassian bays, even wreaths of sacred Virtue, and this head is apt to ake, and then my heart akes for sympathy. Poor Lady Pomfret by weary stages reached Marlborough, from thence she yesterday morning quitted the weary journey of human life and passed with resignation to a better. I am angry with Dr. James for sending her in so hopeless a state from her quiet home to the noise and inconvenience of Inns.... I think Mr. Rivington must be bewitched. I will send the books as you direct. I had a quadrille table last night; and last week the Bard Macpherson and many others of the tuneful train and we had the feast of shells and drank out of a nautilus to the immortal memory of Ossian. The Nautilus, you know, is a perfect sailor as the other is a poet by nature. I am a little mortified that you had not a word to fling at Ossian. Take a modern Poet Laureate and put out his eyes and see whether he will sing as sweetly, tho’ he sings darkling.” [Page heading: THE _BAS-BLEUS_ AND SHELLS]