Talbot." She had attained this distinction
by her great cultivation. She had studied astronomy and geography, was
"mistress of French and Italian," and knew a little Latin. When she was
only twenty years of age, the Dean of Canterbury spoke of her with high
admiration. Her acquaintance was eagerly sought by accomplished young
ladies, and by none more successfully than "the learned" Miss Carter.
Both of these girls read the novels of the day, and fortunately
recorded some of their opinions in the letters which passed between
them.[182] "I want much to know," wrote Miss Talbot, "whether you have
yet condescended to read 'Joseph Andrews.'" "I must thank you," replied
Miss Carter, "for the perfectly agreeable entertainment I have met in
reading 'Joseph Andrews.' It contains such a surprising variety of
nature, wit, morality, and good sense, as is scarcely to be met with in
any one composition, and there is such a spirit of benevolence through
the whole, as, I think renders it peculiarly charming," Some years
later the Bishop of Gloucester came to visit Miss Talbot's family, and
read "Amelia," the young lady wrote, while he was nursing his cold by
the fireside. Miss Carter replied that "in favor of the bishop's cold,
his reading 'Amelia' in silence may be tolerated, but I am somewhat
scandalized that, since he did not read it to you, you did not read it
yourself." "The more I read 'Tom Jones,'" wrote Miss Talbot, "the more
I detest him, and admire Clarissa Harlowe,--yet there are in it things
that must touch and please every good heart, and probe to the quick
many a bad one, and humor that it is impossible not to laugh at." "I am
sorry," replied Miss Carter, "to find you so outrageous about poor Tom
Jones; he is no doubt an imperfect, but not a detestable character,
with all that honesty, good-nature, and generosity." Miss Talbot, in a
later letter, said that she had once heard a lady piously say to her
son that she wished with all her heart he was like Tom Jones.[183] In
1747 "Clarissa" was read aloud at the palace of the Bishop of Oxford,
Miss Talbot's uncle. "As for us," she wrote, "we lived quite happy the
whole time we were reading it, and we made that time as long as we
could, too, for we only read it _en famille_, at set hours, and all the
rest of the day we talked of it. One can scarcely persuade one's self
that they are not real characters and living people." Even "Roderick
Random" made part of the young ladies' readi