Note 1023 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 6)

Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (Letters, ii. 206):—'There is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton: my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the tea-pot. Ante, ii. 403. Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his Life of Hume, ii. 213:—'The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented her house. "Elle était d'une figure aimable," says Grimm, "elle est bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens d'esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l'embarras de lui parler avec peu de sincérité de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."'