But, though my eyes ache as I strain them to look forward, the temptations before me are almost irresistible; and what you have transcribed from Mrs. Thrale may, perhaps, prove my destruction.

So you wish to have some of the sayings of the folks here about the book?  I am sure I owe you all the communications I can possibly give you; but I have nothing new to offer, for the same strain prevails here as in town; and no one will be so obliging to me as to put in a little abuse:  so that I fear you will be satiated with the sameness of people’s remarks.  Yet, what can I do? if they will be so disagreeable and tiresome as to be all of one mind, how is it to be helped?  I can only advise you to follow my example, which is, to accommodate my philosophy to their insipidity; and in this I have so wonderfully succeeded, that I hear their commendations not merely with patience but even with a degree of pleasure!  Such, my dear Susy, is the effect of true philosophy.

You desire Kitty Cooke’s remarks in particular.  I have none to give you, for none can I get.  To the serious part she indeed listens, and seems to think it may possibly be very fine; but she is quite lost when the Branghtons and Madame Duval are mentioned;—­she hears their speeches very composedly, and as words of course; but when she hears them followed by loud bursts of laughter from Hetty, Mr. Crisp, Mrs. Gast, and Mr. Burney, she stares with the gravest amazement, and looks so aghast, and so distressed to know where the joke can be, that I never dare trust myself to look at her for more than an instant.  Were she to speak her thoughts, I am sure she would ask why such common things, that pass every day, should be printed?  And all the derision with which the party in general treat the Branghtons, I can see she feels herself, with a plentiful addition of astonishment, for the author!

By the way, not a human being here has the most remote suspicion of the fact; I could not be more secure, were I literally unknown to them.  And there is no end to the ridiculous speeches perpetually made to me, by all of them in turn, though quite by accident.

‘An’t you sorry this sweet book is done?’ said Mrs. Gast.

A silly little laugh was the answer.

‘Ah,’ said Patty, ’’tis the sweetest book!—­don’t you think so, Miss Burney?’

N.B.—­Answer as above.

‘Pray, Miss Fan,’ says Mrs. Hamilton, ‘who wrote it?’

‘Really I never heard.’

‘Cute enough that, Miss Sukey!’

I desired Hetty to miss the verses; for I can’t sit them:  and I have been obliged to hide the first volume ever since, for fear of a discovery.  But I don’t know how it will end; for Mrs. Gast has declared she shall buy it, to take it to Burford with her.

TO SAMUEL CRISP

Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson

Streatham, March 1779.