Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/50

38 from, Roman Catholic priests, that would certainly be met with by a person in her situation in the present day.

With Hampton as her head-quarters, she kept up intercourse with her London friends, and had sundry sparrings with Johnson. She says,—

"I never saw Johnson really angry with me but once; and his displeasure did him so much honour, that I loved him the better for it. I alluded, rather flippantly I fear, to some passage in Tom Jones. He replied, 'I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it—a confession which no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work.'

"I thanked him for his correction, assured him I thought full as ill of it now as he did, and had only read it at an age when I was more subject to be caught by the wit than able to discern the mischief. Of Joseph Andrews I declared my decided abhorrence. He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great talents which are ascribed to him, and broke out into a noble panegyric on his competitor, Richardson, who, he said, was as superior to him in talents as in virtue, and whom he pronounced to be the greatest genius that had shed its lustre on this path of literature."

Johnson came to enliven Hannah while she was sitting for her portrait to Miss Reynolds, and was induced to promise his autograph for Patty's