Burney, Fanny. Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney
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June 5. --

   Mr. Turbulent at this time outstayed the tea-party one evening, not for his former rhodomontading, but to seriously and earnestly advise me to resign. My situation, he said, was evidently death to me.


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   He was eager to inquire of me who was Mrs. Lenox? He had been reading, like all the rest of the world, Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, and the preference there expressed of Mrs. Lenox to all other females had filled him with astonishment, as he had never even heard her name.

   These occasional sallies of Dr. Johnson, uttered from local causes and circumstances, but all retailed verbatim by Mr. Boswell, are filling all sort of readers with amaze, except the small party to whom Dr. Johnson was known, and who, by acquaintance with the power of the moment over his unguarded conversation, know how little of his solid opinion was to be gathered from his accidental assertions.


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   The King, who was now also reading this work,


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applied to me for explanations without end. Every night at this period he entered the Queen's dressing room, and delayed Her Majesty's proceedings by a length of discourse with me upon this subject. All that flowed from himself was constantly full of the goodness and benevolence of his character; and I was never so happy as in the opportunity thus


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graciously given me of vindicating, in instances almost innumerable, the serious principles and various excellences of Dr. Johnson from the clouds so frequently involving and darkening them, in narrations so little calculated for any readers who were strangers to his intrinsic worth, and therefore worked upon and struck by what was faulty in his temper and manners.

   I regretted not having strength to read this work to Her Majesty myself. It was an honour I should else have certainly received; for so much wanted clearing! so little was understood! However, the Queen frequently condescended to read over passages and anecdotes which perplexed or offended her; and there were none I had not a fair power to soften or to justify. Dear and excellent Dr. Johnson! I have never forgot nor neglected his injunction given me when he was ill -- to stand by him and support him, and not hear him abused when he was no more, and could not defend himself! but little -- little did I think it would ever fall to my lot to vindicate him to his King and Queen.

   This day had been long engaged for breakfasting with Mrs. Dickenson and dining with Mrs. Ord.

   The breakfast guests were Mr. Langton, Mr. Foote, Mr. Dickenson, jun., a cousin, and a very agreeable and pleasing man; Lady Herries, Miss Dickenson, another cousin, and Mr. Boswell.

   This last was the object of the morning. I felt a strong sensation of that displeasure which his lo


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quacious communications of every weakness and infirmity of the first and greatest-good man of these times have awakened in me at his first sight; and though his address to me was courteous in the extreme, and he made a point of sitting next me, I felt an indignant disposition to a nearly forbidding reserve and silence. How many starts of passion and prejudice has he blackened into record, that else might have sunk, for ever forgotten, under the preponderance of weightier virtues and excellences!

   Angry, however, as I have long been with him, he soon insensibly conquered, though he did not soften me: there is so little of ill design or ill nature in him, he is so open and forgiving for all that is said in return that he soon forced me to consider him in a less serious light, and change my resentment against his treachery into something like commiseration of his levity; and before we parted, we became good friends. There is no resisting great good-humour, be what will in the opposite scale.

   He entertained us all as if hired for that purpose, telling stories of Dr. Johnson, and acting them with incessant buffoonery. I told him frankly that if he turned him into ridicule by caricature, I should fly the premises: he assured me he would not, and indeed, his imitations, though comic to excess, were so far from caricature that he omitted a thousand gesticulations which I distinctly remember.

   Mr. Langton told some stories himself in imitation


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of Dr. Johnson; but they became him less than Mr. Boswell, and only reminded of what Dr. Johnson himself once said to me -- "Every man has some time in his life, an ambition to be a wag." If Mr. Langton had repeated anything from his truly great friend quietly, it would far better have accorded with his own serious and respectable character.




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