[345] When I mentioned this to the Bishop of Killaloe, ‘With the goat,’ said his Lordship.  Such, however, is the engaging politeness and pleasantry of Mr. Wilkes, and such the social good humour of the Bishop, that when they dined together at Mr. Dilly’s, where I also was, they were mutually agreeable.  BOSWELL.  It was not the lion, but the leopard, that shall lie down with the kid. Isaiah, xi. 6.

[346] Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, authour of tracts relating to natural history, &c.  BOSWELL.

[347] Mrs. Montagu, so early as 1757, wrote of Mr. Stillingfleet:—­’I assure you our philosopher is so much a man of pleasure, he has left off his old friends and his blue stockings, and is at operas and other gay assemblies every night.’  Montagu’s Letters, iv. 117.

[348] See ante, in. 293, note 5.

[349] Miss Burney thus describes her:—­’She is between thirty and forty, very short, very fat, but handsome; splendidly and fantastically dressed, rouged not unbecomingly yet evidently, and palpably desirous of gaining notice and admiration.  She has an easy levity in her air, manner, voice, and discourse, that speak (sic) all within to be comfortable....  She is one of those who stand foremost in collecting all extraordinary or curious people to her London conversaziones, which, like those of Mrs. Vesey, mix the rank and the literature, and exclude all beside....  Her parties are the most brilliant in town.’  Miss Burney then describes one of these parties, at which were present Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds.  ’The company in general were dressed with more brilliancy than at any rout I ever was at, as most of them were going to the Duchess of Cumberland’s.’  Miss Burney herself was ’surrounded by strangers, all dressed superbly, and all looking saucily....  Dr. Johnson was standing near the fire, and environed with listeners.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 179, 186, 190.  Leslie wrote of Lady Corke in 1834 (Autobiographical Recollections, i. 137, 243):—­’Notwithstanding her great age, she is very animated.  The old lady, who was a lion-hunter in her youth, is as much one now as ever.’  She ran after a Boston negro named Prince Saunders, who ’as he put his Christian name “Prince” on his cards without the addition of Mr., was believed to be a native African prince, and soon became a lion of the first magnitude in fashionable circles.’  She died in 1840.

[350] ’A lady once ventured to ask Dr. Johnson how he liked Yorick’s [Sterne’s] Sermons.  “I know nothing about them, madam,” was his reply.  But some time afterwards, forgetting himself, he severely censured them.  The lady retorted:—­“I understood you to say, Sir, that you had never read them.”  “No, Madam, I did read them, but it was in a stage-coach; I should not have even deigned to look at them had I been at large.”  Cradock’s Memoirs, p. 208.

[351] See ante, iii. 382, note 1.