'[687] JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever
lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he
told you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I
loved Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for
religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle;
and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard[688].'
I told him, that I had been present the day before, when Mrs. Montagu,
the literary lady[689], sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture; and that she
said, 'she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's _History_ without the last two
offensive chapters[690]; for that she thought the book so far good, as it
gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers _medii
aevi_, which the late Lord Lyttelton advised her to read.' JOHNSON.
'Sir, she has not read them: she shews none of this impetuosity to me:
she does not know Greek, and, I fancy, knows little Latin. She is
willing you should think she knows them; but she does not say she
does[691].' BOSWELL. 'Mr. Harris, who was present, agreed with her.'
JOHNSON. 'Harris was laughing at her, Sir. Harris is a sound sullen
scholar; he does not like interlopers.
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