Note 1228 — A JOURNEY

Lady Catharine Percival, daughter of the second Earl of Egmont: this was, it appears, the lady of whom Mrs. Piozzi relates, that 'For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation:—"That woman," cried Johnson, "is like sour small beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled."' [Anec. p. 171.] And it is probably of her, too, that another anecdote is told:—'We had been visiting at a lady's house, whom, as we returned, some of the company ridiculed for her ignorance:—"She is not ignorant," said he, "I believe, of any thing she has been taught, or of any thing she is desirous to know; and I suppose if one wanted a little run tea, she might be a proper person enough to apply to.'" [Ib. p. 219.] Mrs. Piozzi says, in her MS. letters, 'that Lady Catharine comes off well in the diary. He said many severe things of her, which he did not commit to paper.' She died in 1782. CROKER.