Oct. 30.-Lady Warren is immensely tall, and extremely beautiful; she is now but just nineteen, though she has been married two or three years.  She is giddy, gay, chatty, goodhumoured, and a little affected; she hazards all that occurs to her, seems to think the world at her feet, and is so young and gay and handsome that she is not much mistaken.  She is, in short, an inferior Lady Honoria Pemberton;(155) somewhat beneath her in parts and understanding, but strongly in that class of character.  I had no conversation with her myself; but her voice is loud and deep, and all she said was for the whole room.

Marriages being talked of, “I’ll tell you,” cried she, “a story; that is, it sha’n’t be a story, but a fact.  A lady of my acquaintance, who had 650,000 fortune, ran away to Scotland with a gentleman she liked vastly; so she was a little doubtful of him, and had a mind to try him:  so when they stopped to dine, and change horses, and all that, she said, ’Now, as I have a great regard for you, I dare say you have for me — so I will tell you a secret:  I have got no fortune at all, in reality, but only 5,000 pounds; for all the rest is a mere pretence :  but if you like me for myself, and not for my fortune, you won’t mind that.’  So the gentleman said, ’Oh, I don’t regard it at all, and you are the same charming angel that ever you was,’ and all those sort of things that people say to one, and then went out to see about the chaise.  So he did not come back; but when dinner was ready, the lady said ‘Pray, where is he?’ ‘Lor, ma’am,’ said they, ’why, that gentleman has been gone ever so long!’ So she came back by herself; and now she’s married to somebody else, and has her 50,000 pounds fortune all safe.”

Dr. Johnson A bore.

Saturday, November 2.-We went to Lady Shelley’s.  Dr. Johnson, again, excepted in the invitation.  He is almost constantly omitted, either from too much respect or too much fear.  I am sorry for it, as he hates being alone, and as, though he scolds the others, he is well enough satisfied himself, and having given vent to all his own occasional anger or ill-humour, he is ready to begin again, and is never aware that those who have so been “downed” by him, never can much covet So

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triumphant a visitor.  In contests of wit, the victor is as ill off in future consequences as the vanquished in present ridicule.

Monday, November 4.-This was a grand and busy day.  Mr. Swinerton has been some time arranging a meeting for all our house, with Lady De Ferrars, whom you may remember as Charlotte Ellerker, and her lord and sisters:  and this morning it took place, by mutual appointment, at his lodgings, where we met to breakfast.  Dr. Johnson, who already knew Lord De Ferrars, and Mrs. and Miss Thrale, and myself, arrived first and then came the Lord and Lady, and Miss Ellerker and her youngest sister, Harriet.  Lord De Ferrars is very ugly, but extremely well-bred, gentle, unassuming, sensible, and pleasing.  His lady is much improved since we knew her in former days, and seems good-humoured, lively, and rather agreeable.  Miss Ellerker is nothing altered.