How “objectionable” Johnson could be to others is well known; but they took it good-naturedly. Soame Jenyns having been roughly treated by the doctor on one of these occasions, revenged himself by writing an anticipatory epitaph. It was probably read aloud at one of Mrs. Montagu’s coteries. The original is preserved, with half a hundred sprightly letters by Garrick, among the MSS. belonging to Earl Spencer. “Here lies poor Johnson! Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear! Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was; but, self-sufficient, rude, and vain. Ill-bred, and overbearing in dispute, A scholar, and a Christian, and a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy, Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and coughed, and spit!” Mrs. Garrick was among the ladies who met in Mrs. Montagu’s drawing-room, and she remained the fast friend of the latter till death parted them. About a quarter of a century had elapsed since, as Eva Violetti, Mrs. Garrick had made her first appearance on the stage as a dancer. In what guise she made her début was, doubtless, laughingly alluded to by the Bluestockings. The Earl of Strafford, who died childless, in 1791, has left a record of the fact in an unpublished letter (March, 1746) in the Cathcart collection. “She surprised her audience at her first appearance on the stage; for at her beginning to caper, she showed a neat pair of black velvet breeches, with roll’d stockings; but finding they were unusual in England, she changed them the next time for a pair of white drawers.” This was a joke for the more intimate circle in Hill Street. It is probable that it was at the more exclusive gatherings at Mrs. Montagu’s that the satirists, who had no title to enter, flung their shafts. “Beattie used to dwell with enthusiasm and delight,” says Sir William Forbes, “on those more private parties into which he had had the happiness of being admitted at Mrs. Montagu’s, consisting of Lord Lyttelton, Mrs. Carter, and one or two other most intimate friends, who spent their evenings in an unreserved interchange of thoughts; sometimes on critical and literary subjects; sometimes on those of the most serious and interesting nature.”