Note 8 — I. TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

Sir Robert Thomas White-Thomson, K.C.B., wrote to me in reference to this estimate of Miss Seward from Broomford Manor, Exbourne, North Devon, and his letter seemed of sufficient importance from a genealogical standpoint for me to ask his permission to make an extract from the letter: “I have read your address in a Lichfield newspaper. Apart from the wider and more important bearings of your words, those which had reference to the Seward family were especially welcome to me. You will understand this when I tell you that, with the exception of the Romney portrait of Anna, and a few other objects left ‘away’ by her will, my grandfather, Thomas White, of Lichfield Close, her cousin and residuary legatee, became possessed of all the contents of her house. Some of the books and engravings were sold by auction, but the remainder were taken good care of, and passed to me on my mother’s death in 1860. As thus, ‘in a way’ the representative of the ‘Swan of Lichfield,’ you can easily see what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. Of course I know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must suffer in trying to ‘bump’ the pot of iron in midstream, but I also know that she was no ordinary personage in her day, when the standard of feminine culture was low, and I have resented some things that have been written of her. Mrs. Oliphant treats her kindly in her Literary History of England, and now I have your ‘appreciation’ of her, for which I beg to thank you.”