I remember that my dear old Dr. Johnson once asked me, 'What was the greatest compliment you could pay to an author ? ' I replied, * To quote him V * Thou art right, my child/ said he. Memoirs, iv. 20.
Dr. Johnson once said to me : ' Never mind whether they praise or abuse your writings ; anything is tolerable, except oblivion 2 .' Memoirs, ii. 169.
' I have lost so many of my contemporaries within the last year [1824] that I am ready to ask with Dr. Johnson, " where is the world into which I was born ? " Memoirs, iv. 203.
1829 [February or March}.
Joy, joy, joy to you, to me ! Joy to the individual victorious Protestant ! Joy to the great Protestant cause ! That dear valu able Sir T. Acland brought the first news of a great majority 3 ; and though I could scarcely doubt of our success, yet I applied the words once used to me by my old friend, Dr. Johnson, ' My dear, I must always doubt of that which has not yet happened.' Memoirs, iv. 297.
1 Perhaps she got this from The a dissenting meeting-house at Bath.' Tatler, No. 205, where it is said of The same orthodox Review quotes Dr. South : ' The best way to praise (1802, p. 429) from a scurrilous Life this author is to quote him.' of Hannah More a foul attack on
2 Life, iii. 375 ; v. 273. her, in which it is implied that at In 1803 writing of the attacks the expense of her chastity * she pur- made on her, including ' Three years' chased an annuity of ^200 at a very monthly attack from the Anti- easy rate' [the italics are in the Jacobin] she says: 'I have to original]. The canting reviewer adds lament that through my want of his that ' such loose imputations disgrace [Baxter's] faith and piety, they had the biographer.'
nearly destroyed my life. In one 3 The news was the defeat of Peel
thing only I had the advantage, at the Oxford University election,
I never once replied to my calum- when the Duke of Wellington and he
niators.' Memoirs , iii. 203. To judge brought in their Catholic Relief Bill,
by the index of the Anti-Jacobin the ' The Convocation,' wrote Greville
attacks were rather yearly than on Feb. 27, 'presents a most dis-
monthly. In the volume for 1802, graceful scene of riot and uproar.'
p. 429, she is charged ' with having C. C. Greville's Journals, ed. 1874,
received the Sacrament from the 1st Ser. i. 177. hands of Mr. Jay, the pastor of
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