It is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the literary gentlemen and gentlewomen who used to breakfast with Richardson in the summer-house at North End; the gentlemen in their many-coloured velvet suits, the ladies wearing broad hoops, loose sacques, and Pamela hats. One of these ladies was Charlotte Ramsay, better known by her married name of Mrs. Lennox. Her father, Colonel James Ramsay, was lieutenant-governor of New York, where his daughter Charlotte was born in 1720. She was sent to England at the age of fifteen, and soon after her father died, leaving her unprovided for. She turned her attention to literature as a means of livelihood, and at once became a favourite in the literary circles of London, where she met and won the esteem of the great Dr. Johnson. When her first novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, was published, he showed his appreciation of its author in a unique manner. At his suggestion, the Ivy Lane Club and its friends entertained Mrs. Lennox and her husband at the Devil's Tavern with a night of festivity. After an elaborate supper had been served, a hot apple-pie was brought in, stuffed full of bay-leaves, and Johnson with appropriate ceremonies crowned the author with a wreath of laurel. The night was passed in mirth and conversation; tea and coffee were often served; and not until the creaking of the street doors reminded them that it was eight o'clock in the morning did the guests, twenty in number, leave the tavern. Mrs. Lennox's claim to a place in English literature rests solely upon her novel, _The Female Quixote_, published in 1752. Arabella, the heroine, is the daughter of a marquis who has retired into the country, where he lives remote from society. Her mother is dead; her father is immersed in his books, so that Arabella is left alone, and whiles away the hours by reading the novels of Mademoiselle de Scudéri. Her three great novels, _Clelia_, _The Grand Cyrus_ and _Ibrahim_, are historical allegories, in which the France of Louis XIV is given an historical setting, and his courtiers masquerade under the names of famous men of antiquity. There is no attempt at historical accuracy. But to Arabella these books represented true history and depicted the real life of the world. In a fine satirical passage Arabella informs Mr. Selvin, a man so deeply read in ancient history that he fixed the date of any occurrence by Olympiads, not years, that Pisistratus had been inspired to enslave his country because of his love for Cleorante. Mr. Selvin wonders how this important fact could have escaped his own research, and conceives a great admiration for Arabella's learning.