[224] Described by the author as ‘a body of original essays.’  ’I consider The Observer,’ he arrogantly continues, ’as fairly enrolled amongst the standard classics of our native language.’  Cumberland’s Memoirs, ii.199.  In his account of this Feast of Reason he quite as much satirises Mrs. Montagu as praises her.  He introduces Johnson in it, annoyed by an impertinent fellow, and saying to him:—­’Have I said anything, good Sir, that you do not comprehend?’ ‘No, no,’ replied he, ‘I perfectly well comprehend every word you have been saying.’  ’Do you so, Sir?’ said the philosopher, ’then I heartily ask pardon of the company for misemploying their time so egregiously.’ The Observer, No. 25.

[225] Miss Burney gives an account of an attack made by Johnson, at a dinner at Streatham, in June 1781, on Mr. Pepys (post, p. 82), ’one of Mrs. Montagu’s steadiest abettors.’  ‘Never before,’ she writes, ’have I seen Dr. Johnson speak with so much passion.  “Mr. Pepys,” he cried, in a voice the most enraged, “I understand you are offended by my Life of Lord Lyttelton.  What is it you have to say against it?  Come forth, man!  Here am I, ready to answer any charge you can bring."’ After the quarrel had been carried even into the drawing-room, Mrs. Thrale, ’with great spirit and dignity, said that she should be very glad to hear no more of it.  Everybody was silenced, and Dr. Johnson, after a pause, said:—­“Well, Madam, you shall hear no more of it; yet I will defend myself in every part and in every atom."...  Thursday morning, Dr. Johnson went to town for some days, but not before Mrs. Thrale read him a very serious lecture upon giving way to such violence; which he bore with a patience and quietness that even more than made his peace with me.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 45.  Two months later the quarrel was made up.  ’Mr. Pepys had desired this meeting by way of a reconciliation; and Dr. Johnson now made amends for his former violence, as he advanced to him, as soon as he came in, and holding out his hand to him received him with a cordiality he had never shewn him before.  Indeed he told me himself that he thought the better of Mr. Pepys for all that had passed.’ Ib. p. 82.  Miss Burney, in Dec. 1783, described the quarrel to Mr. Cambridge:—­’"I never saw Dr. Johnson really in a passion but then; and dreadful indeed it was to see.  I wished myself away a thousand times.  It was a frightful scene.  He so red, poor Mr. Pepys so pale.”  “It was behaving ill to Mrs. Thrale certainly to quarrel in her house.”  “Yes, but he never repeated it; though he wished of all things to have gone through just such another scene with Mrs. Montagu; and to refrain was an act of heroic forbearance.  She came to Streatham one morning, and I saw he was dying to attack her.”  “And how did Mrs. Montagu herself behave?” Very stately, indeed, at first.  She turned from him very stiffly, and with a most distant air, and without even courtesying