Four months afterwards she encountered Mr. Burke again at Miss Monckton’s[54] assembly. The gathering was a brilliant one: most of the ladies present were going to the Duchess of Cumberland’s, and were in full dress, oppressed by the weight of their sacques and ruffles; but as soon as Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds entered, Frances Burney had no eyes for anyone else. When the knight had paid his compliments, Burke sat down beside her, and a conversation ensued, in which the great man used the words to which we have referred. He began by repeating and amplifying the praises of his letter; and then, not to appear fulsome, proceeded to find fault: the famous masquerade he thought too long, and that something might be spared from Harrel’s grand assembly; he did not like Morrice’s part at the Pantheon, and he wished the conclusion either more happy or more miserable; ‘for in a work of imagination,’ said he, ‘there is no medium.’ But, he added, there was one further fault more serious than any he had mentioned, and that was the disposal of the book: why had not Mr. Briggs, the city gentleman of the novel, been sent for? he would have taken care that it should not be parted with so much below par. Had two thousand pounds, or any sum approaching that, been given for the copyright, the price could not have been considered insufficient. We are obliged, therefore, to conclude that the story told to the Edinburgh Reviewer was apocryphal.[55] The list of Miss Burney’s friends continued to enlarge itself. In the winter of 1782-3, besides being made free of certain fashionable houses, such as Miss Monckton’s and Mrs. Walsingham’s,[56] she became known to the two ‘old wits,’ Owen Cambridge and Soame Jenyns,[57] to Erskine, the Wartons, Benjamin West, Jackson of Exeter, William Windham, Dr. Parr, Mrs. Delany, and a host of others, till she began ‘to grow most heartily sick of this continual round of visiting, and these eternal new acquaintances.’ Soame Jenyns came to meet her at a reception arranged by his special request, and, at seventy-eight, arrayed himself for the occasion in a Court suit of apricot-coloured silk, lined with white satin, making all the slow speed in his power to address her, as she entered, in a studied harangue on the honour, and the pleasure, and the what not, of seeing so celebrated an authoress; while the whole of a large company rose, and stood to listen to his compliments.