OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.

1763- prose, on a subject from the Spectator; and was now on a
m's5' round of visitings, reading her tragedy, breakfasting with
Walpole, dining with the Duke of Grafton, supping at
Beauclerc's, out of patience with every body's ridiculous
abuse of every body that meddled in politics, and out of
breath with her own social exertions. " Dans ce pays-ci,"
she exclaimed, " c'est un effort perpetuel pour se divertir; •"
and, exhausted with it herself, she did not seem to think that
any one else succeeded any better. It was a few days after
Horace Walpole's great breakfast at Strawberry-hill, where
he describes her with her eyes a foot deep in her head, her
hands dangling and scarce able to support her knitting-bag,
that Beauclerc took her to see Johnson. They sat and
talked with him some time; and were retracing their way up
Inner Temple-lane to the carriage, when all at once they
heard a voice like thunder, and became conscious of Johnson
hurrying after them. On nothing priding himself more than
on his politeness, he had taken it into his head, after a little
reflection, that he ought to have clone the honours of his
literary residence to a foreign lady of quality; and, eager to
show himself a man of gallantry, was now hurrying down
the staircase in violent agitation. lie overtook them before
they reached the Temple-gate, and, brushing in between
Beauclerc and the Countess, seized her hand and conducted
her to her coach.* His dress was a rusty brown morning
suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled

* Boswell, vi. 25-6. "When our visit was ended," says Hannah More, describing
herself and her sister calling on Johnson in the year of Goldsmith's death, "he
"called for Ms hat, as it rained, to attend us down a long winding to our coach."
Memoirs, i. 49. And Miss Eeynolds expressly tells us (Croiker, 832), that he never
suffered any lady to walk from his house to her carnage, through Bolt-court, un-
attended by himself to hand her into it; and if any obstacle prevented it from
driving off, "there'he would stand by the door of it, and gather a mob around
" him : indeed they would begin to gather the moment he appeared handing the
" lady down the steps into Fleet-street."ms JBoswell, "that Mrs. Desmoulins