He
told Mrs. Thrale, without the smallest consciousness of presumption
or what Mr. Square would term the unfitness of things, of his and
Lord Lyttleton's having contended for Miss Boothby's preference with
an emulation that occasioned hearty disgust and ended in lasting
animosity. "You may see," he added, when the Lives of the Poets were
printed, "that dear Boothby is at my heart still. She would delight
in that fellow Lyttleton's company though, all that I could do, and I
cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like
hers." [1]
[Footnote 1: In point of personal advantages the man of rank and
fashion and the scholar were nearly on a par.
"But who is this astride the pony,
So long, so lean, so lank, so bony?
Dat be de great orator, Littletony."]
Mr. Croker surmises that "Molly Aston," not "dear Boothby," must have
been the object of this rivalry[1]; and the surmise is strengthened
by Johnson's calling Molly the loveliest creature he ever saw; adding
(to Mrs. Thrale), "My wife was a little jealous, and happening one
day when walking in the country to meet a fortune-hunting gipsy, Mrs.
Johnson made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented of her
curiosity,'for,' says the gipsy, 'your heart is divided between a
Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in
Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was
crying. Pretty charmer, she had no reason." This pretty charmer was
in her forty-eighth year when he married her, he being then
twenty-seven.
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