'I told him, that I had been present the day before when Mrs. Montagu, the literary lady, 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; 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 Lyttleton advised her to read." [Johnson retorts that she has not read these authors]