was a chair on which
he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself, when
they stopped a night at the spot--as they imagined--where the weird
sisters appeared to Macbeth; the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm
that it deprived them of rest; however, they learned, the next
morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were
quite in another part of the country."

Johnson was not always, however, in the humor to swallow the flattery
which she lavished upon him; Mrs. Thrale records a surly enough rebuke
which the doctor administered to her: "Consider, madam, what your
flattery is worth before you choke me with it." As he was complaining,
upon another occasion, that he had been obliged to ask Miss Reynolds
to give her a hint on the subject, somebody observed that she
flattered Garrick also; "Ay," said the doctor, "and she is right
there; first, she has the world with her; and, secondly, Garrick
rewards her. I can do nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a
better market." But in this flattery there was no want of sincerity
and no disingenuousness. At the age of thirty-one she had brought to
London the fresh, ecstatic enthusiasm of a country girl of seventeen;
when, instead of having Johnson pointed out to her as he rolled along
the pavement of Fleet Street, and gazing at Garrick from the side
boxes, she found herself at once admitted to the inmost circle of the
literary magnets--it is not wonderful that her feelings should
overflow in language and gesture rather too warm for the acclimated
inhabitants of the temperate zone.

The same hyperbolical style is to be found in the letters intended
only for the eyes of her sisters. "Mrs. Montagu is not only the finest
genius, but the finest lady, I ever saw; she lives in the highest
style of magnificence; her apartments and tables are in the most
splendid taste; but what baubles are these when speaking of a Montagu!
Her form--for she has no body--is delicate to fragility; her
countenance the most animated in the world; she has the sprightly
vivacity of sixteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor.
Mrs. Carter has in her person a great deal of what the gentlemen mean
when they speak of a 'poetical lady:' independently of her great
talents and learning, I like her much: she has affability, kindness,
and goodness; and I honor her heart more than her talents; but I do
not like one of them better than Mrs. Boscawen; she is at once
lea