twenty years had been to her almost as a father.  On Feb. 18, 1784, she writes:—­’Johnson is in a sad way doubtless; yet he may still with care last another twelve-month, and every week’s existence is gain to him, who, like good Hezekiah, wearies Heaven with entreaties for life.  I wrote him a very serious letter the other day.’  On March 23 she writes:—­’ My going to London would be a dreadful expense, and bring on a thousand inquiries and inconveniences—­visits to Johnson and from Cator.’  It is likely that in other letters there were like passages, but these letters Miss Burney ‘for cogent reasons destroyed.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 305, 7, 8.

[1050]
     ’Bless’d paper credit! last and best supply! 
      That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!’

Pope, Moral Essays, iii. 39.

[1051] Who has been pleased to furnish me with his remarks.  BOSWELL.  No doubt Malone, who says, however:  ’On the whole the publick is indebted to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful, account of Dr. Johnson.’  Prior’s Malone, p. 364.

[1052] See ante, iii. 81.

[1053] Anec. p. 183.  BOSWELL.

[1054] Hannah More.  She, with her sisters, had kept a boarding-school at Bristol.

[1055] She first saw Johnson in June, 1774.  According to her Memoirs (i. 48) he met her ’with good humour in his countenance, and continued in the same pleasant humour the whole of the evening.’  She called on him in Bolt Court.  One of her sisters writes:—­’Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous exclamations [about him] on the road.  He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, “She was a silly thing."’ Ib. p. 49.  ’He afterwards mentioned to Miss Reynolds how much he had been touched with the enthusiasm of the young authoress, which was evidently genuine and unaffected.’ Ib. p. 50.  She met him again in the spring of 1775.  Her sister writes:—­’The old genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant.  They indeed tried which could “pepper the highest” [Goldsmith’s Retaliation], and it is not clear to me that he was really the highest seasoner.’ Ib. p. 54.  From the Mores we know nothing of his reproof.  He had himself said of ’a literary lady’—­no doubt Hannah More—­’I was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds to let her know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.’ Ante, iii.293.  Miss Burney records a story she had from Mrs. Thrale, ‘which,’ she continues, ’exceeds, I think, in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson’s saying.  When Miss More was introduced to him, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner.  For some time he heard her with that quietness which a long use of praise has given him:  she then redoubled her strokes, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, “Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly