"Talking of a very respectable author, he told us a curious circumstance in his life, which was, that he had married a printer's devil. _Reynolds_: 'A printer's devil, Sir! Why, I thought a printer's devil was a creature with a black face and in rags.' _Johnson_: 'Yes, Sir. But I suppose he had her face washed, and put clean clothes on her. (Then looking very serious and very earnest.) And she did not disgrace him;--the woman had a bottom of good sense.' The word _bottom_, thus introduced, was so ludicrous, when contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slily hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it; he therefore resolved to assume and exercise despotic power, glanced sternly around, and called out, in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?' Then collecting himself, and looking awful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the _woman_ was _fundamentally_ sensible'; as if he had said, hear this now, and laugh if you dare. We all sat composed as at a funeral. "He and I walked away together; we stopped a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay, Sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"