om
Litchfield. Who did you know in Litchfield in your youth? Oh, nobody
of any note, I'll warrant: I knew one _David Garrick_, indeed, but I
once heard that he turned strolling player, and is probably dead long
ago; I also knew an obscure man, _Samuel Johnson_, very good he was
too; but who can know anything of poor Johnson? I was likewise
acquainted with _Robert James_, a quack doctor. _He_ is, I suppose,
no very reputable connection if I could find him. Thus did this woman
name and discriminate the three best known characters in
London--perhaps in Europe."

"'Such,' says Mrs. Montagu, 'is the dignity of Mrs. Thrale's virtue,
and such her superiority in all situations of life, that nothing now
is wanting but an earthquake to show how she will behave on _that_
occasion.' Oh, brave Mrs. Montagu! She is a monkey, though, to
quarrel with Johnson so about Lyttleton's life: if he was a great
character, nothing said of him in that book can hurt him; if he was
not a great character, they are bustling about nothing."

"Mr. Crutchley lives now a great deal with me; the business of
executor to Mr. Thrale's will makes much of his attendance necessary,
and it begins to have its full effect in seducing and attaching him
to the house,--Miss Burney's being always about me is probably
another reason for his close attendance, and I believe it is so. What
better could befall Miss Burney, or indeed what better could befall
_him_, than to obtain a woman of honour, and character, and
reputation for superior understanding? I would be glad, however, that
he fell honestly in love with her, and was not trick'd or trapp'd
into marriage, poor fellow; he is no match for the arts of a
novel-writer. A mighty particular character Mr. Crutchley is:
strangely mixed up of meanness and magnificence; liberal and splendid
in large sums and on serious occasions, narrow and confined in the
common occurrences of life; warm and generous in some of his motives,
frigid and suspicious, however, for eighteen hours at least out of
the twenty-four; likely to be duped, though always expecting fraud,
and easily disappointed in realities, though seldom flattered by
fancy. He is supposed by those that knew his mother and her
connections to be Mr. Thrale's natural son, and in many things he
resembles him, but not in person: as he is both ugly and awkward. Mr.
Thrale certainly believed he was his son, and once told me as much
when Sophy Streatfield's affair was in ques