Dr. JOHNSON’s HEROic forbearance.

Tuesday, December 9-This evening at Mrs. Vesey’s, Mr. George Cambridge came, and took the chair half beside me.  I told him of some new members for Dr. Johnson’s club!(179)

“I think,” said he, " it sounds more like some club that one reads of in the ‘Spectator,’ than like a real club in these times; for the forfeits of a whole year will not amount to those of a single night in other clubs.  Does Pepys belong to it?”

“Oh no! he is quite of another party!  He is head man on the side of the defenders of Lord Lyttelton.  Besides, he has had enough of Dr. Johnson; for they had a grand battle upon the ’Life of Lyttelton,’ at Streatham.”

“And had they really a serious quarrel?  I never imagined it had amounted to that.”

“yes, serious enough, I assure you.  I never saw Dr. Johnson really in a passion but then:  and dreadful, indeed, it was to see.  I wished myself away a thousand times.  It was a frightful scene.  He so red, poor Mr. Pepys so pale!”

“But how did it begin?  What did he say?”

276

" Oh, Dr. Johnson came to the point without much ceremony.  He called out aloud, before a large company, at dinner, ’What have you to say, sir, to me or of me?  Come forth, man!  I hear you object to my “Life of Lord Lyttelton.”  What are your objections?  If you have anything to say, let’s hear it.  Come forth, man, when I call you!’”

“What a call, indeed!  Why, then, he fairly bullied him into a quarrel!”

“Yes.  And I was the more sorry, because Mr. Pepys had begged of me, before they met, not to let Lord Lyttelton be mentioned.  Now I had no more power to prevent it than this macaroon cake in my hand.”

“It was behaving ill to Mrs. Thrale, certainly, to quarrel in her house.”

" Yes; but he never repeated it; though he wished of all things to have gone through just such another scene with Mrs, Montagu, and to refrain was an act of heroic forbearance.”

“Why, I rather wonder he did not ; for she was the head of the set of Lytteltonians.”

“Oh, he knows that; he calls Mr. Pepys only her prime minister.”

“And what does he call her ?

“Queen,’ to be sure!  ‘Queen of the blues.’  She came to Streatham one morning, and I saw he was dying to attack her.  But he had made a promise to Mrs. Thrale to have no more quarrels in her house, and so he forced himself to forbear.  Indeed he was very much concerned, when it was over, for what had passed; and very candid and generous in acknowledging it.  He is too noble to adhere to wrong.”

“And how did Mrs. Montagu herself behave?”

“Very stately, indeed, at first.  She turned from him very stiffly, and with a most distant air, and without even courteseying to him, and with a firm intention to keep to what she had publicly declared—­that she would never speak to him more!  However, he went up to her himself, longing to begin! and very roughly said,—­’Well, madam, what’s become of your fine new house?  I hear no more of it.’