Curll was the chief of all piratical booksellers, and versed in every dirty trick of the Grub-street trade.
He is described in that mad book, Amory's _John Buncle_, as tall, thin, ungainly, white-faced, with light grey goggle eyes, purblind, splay-footed, and "baker-kneed." According to the same queer authority, who professes to have lodged in Curll's house, he was drunk, as often as he could drink for nothing, and intimate in every London haunt of vice.
"His translators lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn in Holborn," and helped to compile his indecent, piratical, and catchpenny productions.

He had lost his ears for some obscene publication; but Amory adds, "to his glory," that he died "as great a penitent as ever expired." He had one strong point as an antagonist.

Having no character to lose, he could reveal his own practices without a blush, if the revelation injured others.
Pope had already come into collision with this awkward antagonist.

In 1716 Curll threatened to publish the Town Eclogues, burlesques upon Ambrose Philips, written by Lady Mary, with the help of Pope and perhaps Gay.

Pope, with Lintot, had a meeting with Curll in the hopes of suppressing a publication calculated to injure his friends.