244 Mrs. Montagu. [A.D. 1778. not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in conversation if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved Campbell he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard'.' I told him, that I had been present the day before, when Mrs. Montagu, the literary lady', sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture; and that she said, 'she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's History without the last two offensive chapters3; for that she thought the book so far good, as it gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers medii ævi, which the late Lord Lyttelton advised her to read.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, she has not read them she shews none of this impetuosity to me: she does not know Greek, and, I fancy, knows little Latin. She is willing you should think she knows them; but she does not say she does. BOSWELL. 'Mr. Harris, who was present, agreed with all the time, and drank equally.' BOSWELL. See ante, i. 417. : In the following September she is thus mentioned by Miss Burney:'Mrs. Thrale. "To-morrow, Sir, Mrs. Montagu dines here, and then you will have talk enough." Dr. Johnson began to see-saw, with a countenance strongly expressive of inward. fun, and after enjoying it some time in silence, he suddenly, and with great animation, turned to me and cried; "Down with her, Burney! down with her! spare her not! attack her, fight her, and down with her at once! You are a rising wit, and she is at the top; and when I was beginning the world, and was nothing and nobody, the joy of my life was to fire at all the established wits, and then everybody loved to halloo me on." Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 117. 'She has,' adds Miss Burney, 'a sensible and penetrating countenance and the air and manner of a woman accustomed to being distinguished and of great parts. Dr. Johnson, who agrees in this, told us that a Mrs. Hervey of his acquaintance says she can remember Mrs. Montagu trying for this same air and manner.' Ib. p. 122. See ante, ii. 88. 3 Only one volume had been published; it ended with the sixteenth chapter. 4 Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 462) saysShe did not take at Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a welleducated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and in that town, where there was no audience for such an actress as she was, her natural character was displayed, which was that of an active manager of her affairs, a crafty chaperon, and a keen pursuer of her interest, not to be outdone by the sharpest coal-dealer on the Tyne; but in this capacity she was not dis her.' |