“‘Sir,’ said Mr. Selwyn (always willing to draw him out), ‘you know not how much he is improved since you knew him in Minorca; he is now the finest painter, perhaps, in the world.’
“‘Pho, pho, sir!’ cried he, ‘how can you talk so? you, Mr. Selwyn, who have seen so many capital pictures abroad?’
“‘Come, come, sir,’ said the ever odd Dr. Delap, ‘you must not go on so undervaluing him, for, I tell you, he is a friend of Miss Burney’s.’
“‘Sir,’ said Mr. B——y, ‘I tell you again I have no objection to the man; I have dined in his company two or three times; a very decent man he is, fit to keep company with gentlemen; but, ma’am, what are all your modern dabblers put together to one ancient? Nothing!—a set of—not a Rubens among them! I vow, ma’am, not a Rubens among them!’...
“Whenever plays are mentioned, we have also a regular speech about them.
“‘I never,’ he says, ‘go to a tragedy,—it’s too affecting; tragedy enough in real life: tragedies are only fit for fair females; for my part, I cannot bear to see Othello tearing about in that violent manner;—and fair little Desdemona—ma’am, ’tis too affecting! to see your kings and your princes tearing their pretty locks,—oh, there’s no standing it! ‘A straw-crown’d monarch,’—what is that, Mrs. Thrale?
‘A straw-crown’d monarch in mock majesty.’
I can’t recollect now where that is; but for my part, I really cannot bear to see such sights. And then out come the white handkerchiefs, and all their pretty eyes are wiping, and then come poison and daggers, and all that kind of thing,—Oh, ma’am, ’tis too much; but yet the fair tender hearts, the pretty little females, all like it!’
“This speech, word for word, I have already heard from him literally four times.
“When Mr. Garrick was mentioned, he honoured him with much the same style of compliment as he had done Sir Joshua Reynolds.