“Lady Crewe told me that her mother (Mrs. Greville), the Duchess of Portland, and Mrs. Montagu were the first who began the conversation parties in imitation of the noted ones, temp. Madame de Sevigne’, at Rue St. Honore.  Madame de Polignac, one of the first guests, came in blue silk stockings, then the newest fashion in Paris.  Mrs. Greville and all the lady members of Mrs. Montagu’s club, adopted the mode.  A foreign gentleman, after spending an evening at Mrs. Montagu’s soiree, wrote to tell a friend of the charming intellectual party, who had one rule; ’they wear blue stockings as a distinction.’”

Wraxall, who makes the same comparison, remarks:  “Mrs. Thrale always appeared to me to possess at least as much information, a mind as cultivated, and more brilliancy of intellect than Mrs. Montagu, but she did not descend among men from such an eminence, and she talked much more, as well as more unguardedly, on every subject.  She was the provider and conductress of Johnson, who lived almost constantly under her roof, or more properly under that of Mr. Thrale, both in Town and at Streatham.  He did not, however, spare her more than other women in his attacks if she courted and provoked his animadversions.”

Although he seldom appeared to greater advantage than when under the combined spell of feminine influence and rank, his demeanour varied with his mood.  On Miss Monkton’s (afterwards Countess of Cork) insisting, one evening, that Sterne’s writings were very pathetic, Johnson bluntly denied it.  “I am sure,” she rejoined, “they have affected me.”  “Why,” said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about, “that is because, dearest, you’re a dunce.”  When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said, with equal truth and politeness, “Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.”

He did not come off so well on another occasion, when the presence of women he respected might be expected to operate as a cheek.  Talking, at Mrs. Garrick’s, of a very respectable author, he told us, says Boswell, “a curious circumstance in his life, which was that he had married a printer’s devil. Reynolds.  ’A printer’s devil, Sir! why, I thought a printer’s devil was a creature with a black face and in rags.’ Johnson.  ’Yes, Sir.  But I suppose he had her face washed, and put clean clothes on her.’  Then, looking very serious, and very earnest.  ’And she did not disgrace him;—­the woman had a bottom of good sense.’  The word bottom thus introduced was so ludicrous when contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slily hid her face behind a lady’s back who sat on the same settee with her.  His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it:  he therefore resolved to assume and exercise