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When Hannah More came to London in 1773, or 1774, she was domesticated with Garrick, and was received with favour by Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke. Her sister has thus described her first interview with Johnson:—

“We have paid another visit to Miss Reynolds; she had sent to engage Dr. Percy, (‘Percy’s Collection,’ now you know him), quite a sprightly modern, instead of a rusty antique, as I expected: he was no sooner gone than the most amiable and obliging of women, Miss Reynolds, ordered the coach to take us to Dr. Johnson’s very own house: yes, Abyssinian Johnson! Dictionary Johnson! Ramblers, Idlers, and Irene Johnson! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion? The conversation turned upon a new work of his just going to the press (the ‘Tour to the Hebrides’), and his old friend Richardson. Mrs. Williams, the blind poet, who lives with him, was introduced to us. She is engaging in her manners, her conversation lively and entertaining. Miss Reynolds told the Doctor of all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said she was ‘a silly thing.’ When our visit was ended, he called for his hat, as it rained, to attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. I forgot to mention, that not finding Johnson in his little parlour when we came in, Hannah seated herself in his great chair hoping to catch a little ray of his genius: when he heard it, he laughed heartily, and told her it was a chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself when they stopped a night, as they imagined, where the weird sisters appeared to Macbeth. The idea so worked on their enthusiasm, that it quite deprived them of rest. However, they learned the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country.”