Lady Lucan’s assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs. Hobart’s faro table; gave a ball herself in the evening of that morning, into which she must have got a good way:  and set out for Scotland the next day.  Hercules could not have achieved a quarter of her labours in the same space of time, What will the Great Duke think of our Amazons, if he has letters opened, as the Emperor was wont!  One of our Camillas,(795) but in a freer style, I hear, he saw (I fancy just before your arrival); and he must have wondered at the familiarity of the dame, and the nincompoophood of her Prince.  Sir William Hamilton is arrived—­ his Nymph of the Attitudes!(796) was too prudish to visit the rambling peeress.

The rest of my letter must be literary; for we have no news.  Boswell’s book is gossiping;(797) but, having numbers of proper names, would be more readable, at least by me, were it reduced from two volumes to one; but there are woful longueurs, both about his hero and himself; thefidus Achates; about whom one has not the smallest curiosity.  But I wrong the original Achates:  one is satisfied with his fidelity in keeping his master’s secrets and weaknesses, which modern led-captains betray for their patron’s glory, and to hurt their own enemies; which Boswell has done shamefully, particularly against Mrs. Piozzi, and Mrs. Montagu, and Bishop Percy.  Dr. Blagden says justly, that it is a new kind of libel, by which you may abuse any body, by saying some dead body said so and so of somebody alive.  Often, indeed, Johnson made the most brutal speeches to living persons; for though he was good-natured at bottom, he was very ill-natured at top.  He loved to dispute, to show his superiority.  If his opponents were weak, he told them they were fools; if they vanquished him, be was scurrilous—­to nobody more than to Boswell himself, who was contemptible for flattering him so grossly, and for enduring the coarse things he was continually vomiting on Boswell’s own country, Scotland.  I expected, amongst the excommunicated, to find myself, but am very gently treated.  I never would be in the least acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor’s putting bad arguments (purposely, out of Jacobitism,) into the speeches which he wrote fifty years ago for my father, in the Gentleman’s Magazine; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till Johnson died, nor have looked at since.  Johnson’s blind Toryism and known brutality kept me aloof; nor did I ever exchange a syllable with him:  nay, I do not think I ever was in a room with him six times in my days.  Boswell came to me, said Dr. Johnson was writing the Lives of the Poets, and wished I would give him anecdotes of Mr. Gray.  I said, very coldly, I had given what I knew to Mr. Mason.  Boswell hummed and hawed, and then dropped, “I suppose you know Dr. Johnson does not admire Mr. Gray.”