Horace Walpole, sportively desirous, as he whispered to Dr. Burney, that the Doctor’s daughter should see the humours of a man so near to counting his age by a century, insisted, one night at this house, upon forming a little group for that purpose; to which he invited, also, Mr. and Mrs. Locke: exhibiting thus the two principal points of his own character, from which he rarely deviated: a thirst of amusement from what was singular; with a taste yet more forcible for elegance from what was excellent.
At the side of General Oglethorpe, Mr. Walpole, though much past seventy, had almost the look, and had quite the air of enjoyment of a man who was yet almost young: and so skeleton-like was the General’s meagre form, that, by the same species of comparison, Mr. Walpole almost appeared, and, again, almost seemed to think himself, if not absolutely fat, at least not despoiled of his _embonpoint_; though so lank was his thinness, that every other person who stood in his vicinity, might pass as if accoutred and stuffed for a stage representation of Falstaff.[48]
But—previously to the late Streatham catastrophe—blither, more bland, and more gleeful still, was the personal celebrity of Mrs. Thrale, than that of either Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Vesey, indeed, gentle and diffident, dreamed not of any competition: but Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Thrale had long been set up as fair rival candidates for colloquial eminence; and each of them thought the other alone worthy to be her peer. Openly, therefore, when they met, they combatted for precedence of admiration; with placid, though high-strained intellectual exertion on one side, and an exuberant pleasantry of classical allusion or quotation on the other, without the smallest malice in either; for so different were their tastes as well as attributes, that neither of them envied, while each did justice to the powers of her opponent.
The blue parties at Mrs. Thrale’s, though neither marked with as much splendour as those of Mrs. Montagu, nor with so curious a selection of distinguished individuals as those of Mrs. Vesey, were yet held of equal height with either in general estimation, as Dr. Johnson, “himself a host,” was usually at Mrs. Thrale’s; or was always, by her company, expected: and as she herself possessed powers of entertainment more vivifying in gaiety than any of her competitors.