[Footnote 1:  “Pray, Doctor, said a gentleman to Johnson, is Mr. Thrale a man of conversation, or is he only wise and silent?’ ’Why, Sir, his conversation does not show the minute hand; but he generally strikes the hour very correctly.’”—­Johnsoniana.]

No one would have expected to find her as much at home in Greek and Latin authors as a man of fair ability who had received and profited by an University education, but she could appreciate a classical allusion or quotation, and translate off-hand a Latin epigram.

“Mary Aston,” said Johnson, “was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her.  She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!

  “’Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria,
  Ut maneam liber, pulchra Maria, vale!’

“Will it do this way in English, Sir? (said Mrs. Thrale)—­

  “’Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you,
  If freedom we seek, fair Maria, adieu.”

Mr. Croker’s version is:—­

  “’You wish me, fair Maria, to be free,
  Then, fair Maria, I must fly from thee.’

Boswell also has tried his hand at it; and a correspondent of the “Gentleman’s Magazine” suggests that Johnson had in his mind an epigram on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade in Paris, habited as a Jesuit, during the height of the contention between the Jansenists and Molinists concerning free will:—­

  “On s’etonne ici que Calviniste
  Eut pris l’habit de Moliniste,
  Puisque que cette jeune beaute
  Ote a chacun sa liberte,
  N’est ce pas une Janseniste."[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Menagiana,” vol. iii. p. 376.  Edition of 1716.  Equally happy were Lord Chesterfield’s lines to a young lady who appeared at a Dublin ball, with an orange breastknot:—­

Mrs. Thrale took the lead even when her husband might be expected to strike in, as when Johnson was declaiming paradoxically against action in oratory:  “Action can have no effect on reasonable minds.  It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument.” Mrs. Thrale.  “What then, Sir, becomes of Demosthenes’ saying, Action, action, action?” Johnson.  “Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes, to a barbarous people.”  “The polished Athenians!” is her marginal protest, and a conclusive one.

In English literature she was rarely at fault.  In

  “Pretty Tory, where’s the jest
  To wear that riband on thy breast,
  When that same breast betraying shows
  The whiteness of the rebel rose?”

White was adopted by the malcontent Irish as the French emblem.  Johnson’s epigram may have been suggested by Propertius: 

  “Nullus liber erit si quis amare volet.”]

reference to the flattery lavished on Garrick by Lord Mansfield and Lord Chatham, Johnson had said, “When he whom everybody else flatters, flatters me, then I am truly happy.” Mrs. Thrale.  “The sentiment is in Congreve, I think.” Johnson.  “Yes, Madam, in ’The Way of the World.’