��would have been handsome for a queen (replied the panegyrist) ; her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit.' The friend of this lady, Miss B thby 1 , succeeded her in the management of Mr. F tzh b t's family, and in the esteem of Dr. Johnson ; though he told me she pushed her piety to bigotry, her devotion to enthusiasm ; that she somewhat disqualified herself for the duties of this life, by her perpetual aspirations after the next : such was however the purity of her mind, he said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly dis gust, and ended in lasting animosity 2 . * You may see (said he to me, when the Poets Lives were printed), that dear B thby is at my heart still. She would delight in that fellow Lyttelton's company though, all that I could do ; and I cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like her's V I have heard Baretti say, that when this lady died, Dr. Johnson was almost distracted with his grief; and that the friends about him had much ado to calm the violence of his emotion 4 . Dr. Taylor too related once to Mr. Thrale and me, that when he lost his wife, the negro Francis ran away, though in the middle of the night, to Westminster, to fetch Dr. Taylor to his master, who
1 Miss Hill Boothby. Her mother resentment so long 1 . He was un- was a Fitzherbert. Letters, i. 45, willing to write the Life, and tried n. 6. For Johnson's letters to her to get it done by Lyttelton's bro- see ib. i. 45-53. ther. On his refusal he wrote to
2 Boswell carelessly says that him : ' I shall certainly not wan- ' Mrs. Thrale suggests that Johnson tonly nor willingly offend.' Letters, was offended by Molly Aston 's pre- ii. 188.
ference of his Lordship to him.' The Rev. John Hussey says in
Life, iv. 57. a marginal note on the Life, iv. 57 :
3 Miss Boothby died in 1756 at 'Johnson said to me many years the age of forty-seven. An Account before he published his Preface 1 , of the Life of Dr. Johnson, &c., " Lord Lyttelton was a worthy, good p. 143. The Life of Lyttelton was man, but so ungracious that he did published in 1781. It is incredible not know how to be a Gentle- that Johnson, in whom malice never man."'
dwelt, should have nursed a petty 4 Ante, p. 18, and Letters, i. 52.
1 The ' Preface ' was the Life of Lyttelton. Johnson wrote * a Preface, biographical and critical, to each Authour.' Life, iii. 108.
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