“Nay,” cried I, “nobody more, for her husband quite adores her.”  “So I find,” said he; “and Mrs. Thrale says men in general like her.”

“They certainly do,” cried I, “and all the oddity is in you who do not, not in them who do.”

“May be so,” answered he, “but it don’t do for me, indeed.”

We then came to two gates, and there I stopped short, to wait till they joined us ; and Mr. Crutchley, turning about and looking at Mrs. Davenant, as she came forward, said, rather in a muttering voice, and to himself than to me, “What a thing for an attachment!  No, no, it would not do for me!—­too much glare! too much flippancy! too much hoop! too much gauze! too much slipper! too much neck!  Oh, hide it! hide it! muffle it up! muffle it up!  If it is but in a fur cloak, I am for muffling it all up!”

A “Poor wretch of A painter.”

I had new specimens to-day of the oddities of Mr. Crutchley, whom I do not yet quite understand, though I have seen so much of him.  In the course of our walks to-day we chanced, at one time, to be somewhat before the rest of the company, band soon got into a very serious conversation; though we began it by his relating a most ludicrous incident which had happened to him last winter.

There is a certain poor wretch of a villainous painter, one Mr. Lowe,(137) who is in some measure under Dr. Johnson’s pro-

210 tection, and whom, therefore, he recommends to all the people he thinks can afford to sit for their pictures.  Among these he made Mr. Seward very readily, and then applied to Mr. Crutchley.

“But now,” said Mr. Crutchley, as he told me the circumstance, “I have not a notion of sitting for my picture,—­for who wants it?  I may as well give the man the money without; but no, they all said that would not do so well, and Dr. Johnson asked me to give him my picture.  ‘And I assure you, sir,’ says he, ’I shall put it in very good company, for I have portraits of some very respectable people in my dining-room.’  ‘Ay, sir,’ says I, ’that’s sufficient reason why you should not have mine, for I am sure it has no business in such society.’  So then Mrs. Thrale asked me to give it to her.  ‘Ay sure, ma’am,’ says I, ’you do me great honour; but pray, first, will you do me the favour to tell me what door you intend to put it behind?’ However, after all I could say in opposition, I was obliged to go to the painter’s.  And I found him in such a condition! a room all dirt and filth, brats squalling and wrangling, up two pair of stairs, and a closet, of which the door was open, that Seward well said was quite Pandora’s box—­it was the repository of all the nastiness, and stench, and filth, and food, and drink, and — oh, it was too bad to be borne! and ‘Oh!’ says I, ’Mr. Lowe, I beg your pardon for running away, but I have just recollected another engagement;’ so I poked the three guineas in his hand, and told him I would come again another time, and then ran out of the house with all my might.”