“Miss Burney,” added the sage, “is a real wonder. What she is, she is intuitively. Dr. Burney told me she had had the fewest advantages of any of his daughters, from some peculiar circumstances. And such has been her timidity, that he himself had not any suspicion of her powers.” About this time, Johnson began teaching his favourite Latin, an attention with which she would gladly have dispensed, thinking it an injury to be considered a learned lady. In the autumn of this year, Miss Burney accompanied the Thrales to Tunbridge Wells, and thence to Brighton. Her Diary contains some lively sketches of incidents on the Pantiles and the Steyne, for which we cannot find space. At Brighton she encountered Sir Fretful Plagiary: “‘It has been,’ said Mrs. Thrale warmly, ‘all I could do not to affront Mr. Cumberland to-night!’ “‘Oh, I hope not!’ cried I; ‘I would not have you for the world!’ “‘Why, I have refrained; but with great difficulty!’ “And then she told me the conversation she had just had with him. As soon as I made off, he said, with a spiteful tone of voice: “‘Oh, that young lady is an author, I hear!’ “‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Thrale, ‘author of Evelina!’ “‘Humph—I am told it has some humour!’ “‘Ay, indeed! Johnson says nothing like it has appeared for years!’ “‘So,’ cried he, biting his lips, and waving uneasily in his chair, ‘so, so!’ “‘Yes,’ continued she; ‘and Sir Joshua Reynolds told Mr. Thrale he would give fifty pounds to know the author!’ “‘So, so—oh, vastly well!’ cried he, putting his hand on his forehead. “‘Nay,’ added she, ‘Burke himself sat up all night to finish it!’ “This seemed quite too much for him; he put both his hands to his face, and waving backwards and forwards, said: “‘Oh, vastly well!—this will do for anything!’ with a tone as much as to say, Pray, no more! Then Mrs. Thrale bid him good-night, longing, she said, to call Miss Thrale first, and say, ‘So you won’t speak to my daughter?—why, she is no author!’” At another time, Mrs. Thrale said: “Let him be tormented, if such things can torment him. For my part I’d have a starling taught to halloo ‘Evelina’!” At Brighton, also, Miss Burney met with one of those humorous characters which her pen loved to describe: “I must now have the honour to present to you a new acquaintance, who this day dined here-Mr. B——-y, an Irish gentleman, late a commissary in Germany. He is between sixty and seventy, but means to pass for about thirty; gallant, complaisant, obsequious, and humble to the fair sex, for whom he has an awful reverence; but when not immediately addressing them, swaggering, blustering, puffing, and domineering. These are his two apparent characters; but the real man is worthy, moral, religious, though conceited and parading.