Johnson said to me. I shall therefore confine myself to a very short
state of the fact. The unfavourable opinion of Mrs. Montague's book,
which Dr. Johnson, is here reported to have given, is, known to have
been that which he uniformly expressed, as many of his friends well
remember. So much, for the authenticity of the paragraph, as far as it
relates to his own sentiments. The words containing the assertion, to
which Mrs. Piozzi objects, are printed from my manuscript Journal, and
were taken down at the time. The Journal was read by Dr. Johnson, who
pointed out some inaccuracies, which I corrected, but did not mention
any inaccuracy in the paragraph in question: and what is still more
material, and very flattering to me, a considerable part of my Journal,
containing this paragraph, _was read several years ago by, Mrs. Thrale
herself _[see _ante_, ii. 383], who had it for some time in her
possession, and returned it to me, without intimating that Dr. Johnson
had mistaken her sentiments.
When the first edition of my Journal was passing through the press, it
occurred to me that a peculiar delicacy was necessary to be observed in
reporting the opinion of one literary lady concerning the performance of
another; and I had such scruples on that head, that in the proof sheet I
struck out the name of Mrs. Thrale from the above paragraph, and two or
three hundred copies of my book were actually printed and published
without it; of these Sir Joshua Reynolds's copy happened to be one.
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