Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/29

Rh unsuccessful drama would furnish household words long after the popular favourites of the day were forgotten. Soon after followed an entertainment at the amiable Sir Joshua Reynolds's, where the party dined, drank tea, and supped, and did not come away till one o'clock. There must have been at least eight hours of the "brilliant circle of both sexes, not in general literary, though partly so."

It must have been mid-winter, for in the next letter, written after visiting Hampton Court and Twickenham, she speaks of the Thames being frozen. This visit failed in making her acquainted with Dr. Johnson; that "Idler, that Rambler," she says, "was out of town." But Miss Reynolds promised to introduce her to him whenever it should be possible. The publisher Caddell, who was, like herself, a native of Stapylton, interested her by telling her that he had sold four thousand copies of the Journey to the Hebrides in the first week. "It is an agreeable work," says Hannah, though the subject is sterility itself." Another instance of the insensibility of the time to the marvels of nature.

But another great wish was fulfilled; she saw Garrick in some of his most famous parts, and a letter she wrote, describing him as King Lear, was handed about by her friends, and prepared the way for her introduction to him when she went to London the following year with her two sisters, Sally and Patty, both of whom were capital letter-writers.