Note 72 — DR. JOHNSON.
Reading edition
This bore reference to an expression of Dr. Johnson’s, upon hearing that Mrs. Montagu resented his Life of Lord Lyttleton.
The Diary Letter to Susannah, whence these two billets are copied, finishes with this paragraph.
“Our dear father, as eager as myself that our most reverenced Dr. Johnson should not be hurt or offended, spared me the coach, and to Bolt Court I went in the evening: and with outspread arms of parental greeting to mark my welcome, was I received. Nobody was there but our brother Charles and Mr. Sastres: and Dr. Johnson, repeatedly thanking me for coming, was, if possible, more instructive, entertaining, and exquisitely fertile than ever; and so full of amenity, and talked so affectionately of our father, that neither Charles nor I could tell how to come away. While he, in return, soothed by exercising his noble faculties with natural, unexcited good-humour and pleasantry, would have kept us, I believe, to this moment—
“You have no objection, I think, my Susan, to a small touch of hyperbole?——
if the coachman and the horses had been as well entertained as ourselves.”