Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/33

A few weeks later Sally writes:—

Tuesday evening we drank tea at Sir Joshua's with Dr. Johnson. Hannah is certainly a great favourite. She was placed next to him, and they had the entire conversation to themselves. They were both in remarkably high spirits: it was certainly her lucky night. I never heard her say so many good things. The Old Genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant. Yon would have imagined we had been at some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter. They indeed tried which could pepper the highest, and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest seasoner.

It has been said that Johnson was importuned by Hannah's compliments, and that he once told her that she should consider what her praise was worth before she was so lavish of it. That he may have said something of the kind in an ill-humour is quite possible; but it is evident that he was very fond of her in general, and that her bright readiness and power of repartee amused him greatly. It was an age of compliments that would now sound fulsome, if not absurd, and Hannah was a demonstrative person, so that what seems like flattery was the expression of genuine enthusiasm, and was usually accepted as such. From her letters, the drollery of Hannah can quite be perceived. For instance, she writes to one of her sisters:—

"Bear me, some god, O quickly bear me hence,
To wholesome Solitude, the nurse of——

'sense' I was going to add in the words of Pope, till I recollected that pence had a more appropriate meaning."

 

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