Miss Gregory (a friend and companion of the writer) was very much liked at Cambridge. “Her sweet temper, good sense, and elegant simplicity of manners much charm every one who is well acquainted with her. She is perfectly free from missy pertnesses, airs, and minanderies, which put many of our girls of fashion upon a line with milliners’ apprentices. Though she has lived so much with me I never saw her out of humour. She seems as pleased with retirement as in a publick place; and is as sober and discreet in a publick place as in retirement. “There is a report that Captain Darby is going to be married to a widow worth fourscore thousand pounds. It seems her first husband was a good-humoured, quiet, dull man. _Elle s’en trouvait bien_, and is going to take such another; but still, fourscore thousand pounds is a great price for a dull man.... Miss Snell is married to a gentleman of good character and six thousand pounds. “I beg my best respects and most affectionate compliments to my brother Robinson. Will he never let us have the pleasure of seeing him? I wish he would visit the farmer and farmeress of Sandleford.” In the course of the above year, 1774, when an invitation to Mrs. Montagu’s house in Hill Street was not lightly sent and was highly esteemed, she despatched a card of invitation to Doctor Johnson. The philosopher neither went to her assembly nor acknowledged the invitation. In a subsequent apologetic note, he said: “Having committed one fault by inadvertency, I will not commit another by sullenness.... The favour of your notice can never miss a suitable return but from ignorance or thoughtlessness; and to be ignorant of your eminence is not easy but to him who lives out of reach of the public voice.” Allegiance could not be more perfect! But Mrs. Montagu was not influenced by it, when, in 1775, she settled a small annuity on Doctor Johnson’s friend, Mrs. Williams, saving her from misery; for which rescue Mrs. Williams expressed her thanks in words almost of divine adoration. Doctor Johnson was moved by the generous act, when he subsequently heard that Mrs. Montagu was in town, ill. He wrote like a gallant. “To have you detained among us by sickness is to enjoy your presence at too dear a rate.” He wishes she may be “so well as to be able to leave us, and so kind as not to be willing.”... Here is more: “All that the esteem and reverence of mankind can give you, are already yours; and the little I can add to the voice of nations will not much exalt. Of that little, however, you are, I hope, very certain.”