Leiters of Anna Sewards 
eounties. To the free-school the boys of 
the city had aright to come, but every 
body knows how superficial, in general, 
is unpaid instruction, Wowever, my 
grandfather, aware of Johnson’s genius, 
took the highest pains with him, though 
his parents were poor, and mean in their 
situation, keeping market stalls, as bat- 
tle-dore booksellers. Johnson has not 
had the gratitude once to mention his 
generous master, in any of his writings; 
but all this is foreign to your inquiries, 
who Miss Molly Aston was, and at what 
period his fame for her commenced? It 
was during those school-days, when the 
reputation of Johnson’s talents, and ras 
pid progress in the classics, induced the 
noble-minded Walmsley to endure, at 
his elegant table, the low-born squalid 
youth—here that he suffered him and 
Garrick to “imp their eagle wings,” a 
delighted «spectator and auditor of their 
efforts. It was here that Miss Molly 
Aston was frequently a visitor in the fa- 
tnily of her brother-in-law, and probably 
amused herself with the uncouth adora- 
tions of the learned, though dirty strip- 
ling, whose mean appearance was over- 
looked, because of the genius and know- 
ledge that blazed through him; though 
with “umbered flames,” from constitu- 
tional melancholy and spleen. Lucy 
Porter, whose visit to Lichfield had been 
but for a few weeks, was then gone back 
to her parents at Birmingham, and the 
brighter Molly Aston became the Laura 
of our Petrarch. Fired, however, at 
length, with ideal love, and incapable of 
inspiring mutual inclinations in the young 
and lively, he married, at twenty-three, 
the mother of his Lucy, ana went to seek 
his fortune in London. She had borne 
an indificrent character, during the life 
of her first husband. He died insolvent, 
leaving his three grown-up children, de- 
endent on the bounty of his rich bache- 
or brother in London, who left them 
largely, but would never do any thing for 
the worthless widow, who had married 
“the literary cub,” as he used to call 
him, She lived thirty years with John- 
son; if shuddering, half-famished, in an 
-author’s garret, could be called living. 
During her life, the fair and learned 
devotee, Miss H. Bootliby, in the wane 
of her youth, a woman of family and gen- 
teel fortune, encouraged him to resume 
his Platonisms. After the death of this 
wife, and this spiritualized mistress, Mrs. 
Thrale took him up. We loved her for 
her wit, her beauty, her luxurious table, 
her coach, and her library; aud she loved 
613. 
him for the literary consequence his resi< 
dence at Streatham. threw around her. 
The rich, the proud, and titled literati, 
would not have sought Johuson in his. 
dirty garret, nor the wealthy brewer’s 
then uncelebrated wife, without the 
actual presence, in her salaon d’ Apollon, 
of a votary known to be of the nuinber 
of the inspired. 
POLITICAL OPINIONS AND WRITERS. 
You inquire after my opinions on the 
momentous event, which draws to itself 
the anxious eyes of all Europe. Mine 
did not coldly behold a great nation 
emancipating itself from a tyrannous go- 
vernment—but I soon began to appre- 
hend that its deliverers were pushing the 
levelling principle into extremes more 
fatal to civilized liberty than even an ar- 
bitrary monarchy, with all its train of 
evils. I read tl. Williams’s interesting 
letters from. France. They do not at- 
tempt to reason, they only paint, and 
shew the illmined side of the prospect, 
My own enthusiasm, which apprehension 
had damped, rekindled beneath the glow 
of her feelings and imagination—but not 
into a firm dependence that France pos- 
sessed a band of leaders, sufliciently 
exempted from selfish ambition, to pro- 
mote the success and felicity of a new. 
and hazardous experiment; in which all 
the links were broken in that great 
chain of subordination which binds to 
each other the various orders of existence. 
Mr. Burke’s book then came before 
me—and though I read, with contempt, 
his nonsensical quixotism about the 
Queen of France—though I saw, with 
indignation, the apostate whig labouring 
to overturn the principles which produced 
the revolution, and to prove a king of 
England’s right to reign in despite of the 
wills of his subjects, yet I saw also a sys- 
tem of order and polity, elucidated and 
rendered interesting by every appeal to 
the affections of the huinan bosom; and 
it appeared to me more consonant to 
human nature, as it és, and less injurious 
to the public safety, than the levelling 
extreme into which France has. rushed. 
Depending that the persuasive orator 
would not dare to misrepresent facts, f 
thought there was every thing to fear for 
France, and much to detest in her co- 
ercive circulation of the assignats, and 
in the wantonly tyrannous restraints she 
laid upon her monarch. 
Sir Brooke Boothby’s ingenious and 
eloquent reply to Bulke, was the first 
answer I perused. It was with pleasure 
that I saw hiin clearly refuting his oppo- 
nents 
