(64) Robert Levett—­not Levat, as Fanny writes it—­was a Lichfield man, “an obscure practiser in pbysick amongst the lower people,” and an old acquaintance of Dr. Johnson’s, in whose house he was supported for many years, until his death, at a very advanced age, in 1782, “So ended the long life of a very useful and very blameless man,” Johnson wrote, in communicating the intelligence to Dr, Lawrence.-Ed.

(65) Boswell tells us nothing of Poll, except that she was a Miss Carmichael.  Domestic dissensions seem to have been the rule with this happy family, but Johnson’s long-suffering was inexhaustible, On one occasion he writes Mrs. Thrale, “Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, who does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them."-Ed.

(66) The lives of Cowley and Waller, from Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets.”  They were not published till 1781, but were already in print.-Ed.

(67) “The Theory and Regulation of Love:  A Moral Essay.”  By the Rev. John Norris, Oxford, 1688.-Ed.

(68) Miss Gregory was the daughter of a Scotch physician.  She married the Rev. Archibald Alison, and was the mother of Sir Archibald Alison, the historian.-Ed.

(69) The house in which she died, in Portman Square.-Ed.

(70) No doubt Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet, a French author, who published numerous works, historical and political, both before and after this date.-Ed.

(71) In the original edition:  perhaps “vexation” was the word intended.-Ed.

(72) Sir John Ladd, Mr, Thrale’s sister’s son, a young profligate who subsequently married, not Miss Burney, but a woman of the town!  Dr. Johnson’s satirical verses on his coming of age are printed near the end of Boswell’s “Life."-Ed.

111

Section2
(1779)

The author of “Evelina” In society:  She visits
Brighton and Tunbridge Wells.

(Fanny’s circle of acquaintance was largely extended in 1779, in which year she was introduced to Mrs. Horneck and her daughter Mary (Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride"), to Mr. and Mrs. cholmondeley, to Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, and best of all, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his beautiful wife.  The Hornecks and the Cholmondeleys she met at one of those delightful parties at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square,—­parties composed of the wisest and wittiest in English society of the day, though nowhere among the guests could there be found a man of more genuine worth or more brilliant genius than the mild-mannered host.  Mrs. Horneck had been a noted beauty in her younger days, and she, as well as her two lovely daughters, had been painted by Sir Joshua.  The elder daughter, Catherine (Goldsmith’s “Little Comedy"), was now (1779) Mrs. Bunbury, wife of Henry Bunbury the caricaturist.