ather, who
had volunteered to supervise her education. "He was just four times
my age; but the difference or agreement never crossed my mind. A
friendship more tender, or more unpolluted by interest or by vanity,
never existed. Love had no place at all in the connection, nor had he
any rival but my mother." The young Hester afterwards became the
famous Mrs. Thrale, to all the varied incidents of whose long and
close friendship with Dr. Johnson the world-Wide renown of that great
man has given a universal publicity. The relation of patroness,
sustained with such signal grace and generosity, and with such
soothing and inspiring effect, by many queenly ladies in former
times, is virtually obsolete now. But it has left memorials never to
die; and it is hard to imagine any office which at this day should be
more grateful and gracious, more full of happiness and good to a
woman of noble heart and mind, blessed with position, wealth, and
culture, than that of extending appreciative sympathy, aid, and
encouragement, to young men of genius, in their unbefriended, early
struggles. It has been strikingly said by that noble woman, Sarah
Austin, with reference to Madame Recamier, "All who were admitted to
her intimacy, hastened to her with their joys and their sorrows,
their projects and ideas; certain not only of secrecy and discretion,
but of the warmest and readiest sympathy. If a man had the rough
draught of a book, a speech, a picture, an enterprise, in his head,
it Was to her that he unfolded his half-formed plan, sure of an
attentive and sympathizing listener. This is one of the peculiar
functions of women. It is incalculable what comfort and encouragement
a kind and wise woman may give to timid merit, what support to
uncertain virtue, what wings to noble aspirations." Chaucer was thus
patronized by Philippa, queen of Edward III; by Anne of Bohemia, for
whom he composed his "Legend of Good Women;" and most of all by
Blanche of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, whose courtship he
celebrated allegorically in the "Parliament of Birds," whose
epithalamium he sang in his "Dream," and whose death he lamented in
his "Book of the Duchess." The beautiful and kindly Lady Venetia
Digby patronized and befriended Ben Jonson. The attentions of so fair
and gentle a creature as she was, according to the description of her
in his two poems, called, "The Picture of the Body," and "The Picture
of the Mind,"--could not have been otherwise than m