When I brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown—­

“Now allow me to read you a scene, and then the present company can judge between your favourite, Mr. Boz, and Dr. Johnson.”

She read one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a high-pitched, majestic voice; and when she had ended, she said, “I imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr. Johnson as a writer of fiction.”  The captain screwed his lips out, and drummed on the table, but he did not speak.  She thought she would give a finishing blow or two.

“I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish in numbers.”

“How was the Rambler published, ma’am?” asked Captain Brown, in a low voice, which I think Miss Jenkyns could not have heard.

“Dr. Johnson’s style is a model for young beginners.  My father recommended it to me when I began to write letters—­I have formed my own style upon it; I recommend it to your favourite.”

“I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such pompous writing,” said Captain Brown.

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed.  Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte.  Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she “seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to assure” her friends of this or of that; and Dr. Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions.  She drew herself up with dignity, and only replied to Captain Brown’s last remark by saying, with marked emphasis on every syllable, “I prefer Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boz.”

It is said—­I won’t vouch for the fact—­that Captain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce, “D——­n Dr. Johnson!” If he did, he was penitent afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns’s arm-chair, and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject.  But she was inexorable.  The next day she made the remark I have mentioned about Miss Jessie’s dimples.

SALLY SIMPKIN’S LAMENT; OR JOHN JONES’S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE [Sidenote:  Hood]

  “Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
    And quite in middling haste? 
  It is the picture of my Jones,
    And painted to the waist.

  “It is not painted to the life,
    For where’s the trousers blue? 
  Oh, Jones, my dear!—­Oh dear! my Jones,
    What is become of you?”

  “Oh!  Sally dear, it is too true,—­
    The half that you remark
  Is come to say my other half
    Is bit off by a shark!

  “Oh!  Sally, sharks do things by halves,
    Yet most completely do! 
  A bite in one place seems enough,
    But I’ve been bit in two.

  “You know I once was all your own,
    But now a shark must share! 
  But let that pass—­for now to you
    I’m neither here nor there.