'"
From similar notes we learn that the "somebody" who declared Johnson
"a tremendous converser" was George Grarrick; and that it was Dr.
Delap, of Sussex, to whom, when lamenting the tender state of his
_inside_, he cried out: "Dear Doctor, do not be like the spider, man,
and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels."
On the margin of the page in which Hawkins Browne is commended as the
most delightful of conversers, she has written: "Who wrote the
'Imitation of all the Poets' in his own ludicrous verses, praising
the pipe of tobacco. Of Hawkins Browne, the pretty Mrs. Cholmondeley
said she was soon tired; because the first hour he was so dull, there
was no bearing him; the second he was so witty, there was no bearing
him; the third he was so drunk, there was no bearing him." [1]
[Footnote 1: Query, whether this is the gentleman immortalised by
Peter Plymley: "In the third year of his present Majesty (George
III.) and in the thirtieth of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown,
then upon his travels, danced one evening at the court of Naples. His
dress was a volcano silk, with lava buttons. Whether (as the
Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under Saint Vitus, or
whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known;
but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour,
that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which
terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the
Neapolitan throne.
Pages:
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295