Note 8: — Chapter XII

Miss Burney indeed can hardly be excused for not giving her assistance to Boswell, since she afterwards talks of vindicating Johnson to his King and Queen,8 which she would hardly have found necessary had she contributed largely herself to Boswell's 'Life.' And even Miss Burney alludes to the fear in which Johnson was held by his contemporaries, and reports a terrible, if deserved, rebuke to Hannah More, when Johnson, after politely bearing the lady's adulation for some little time, exclaimed, 'Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.'9 Mrs. Piozzi, too, in whose house it was that she met Dr. Johnson, has, in her own account of him, emphasised very much the other side of the picture.