Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 August 1751:
'Our present after-supper author is Mr Pope, in Mr Warburton's edition. Is it because one's strongest partialities, when in any point deceived, turn to the strongest prejudice of dislike, that I read those admirable poems and letters with a considerable mixture of pain and indignation? [...] one can scarce help looking upon all those eloquent expressions of benevolence and affection as too much paradox, while one sees them overbalanced by such bitterness and cutting severity [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 22 April 1752:
'At last we have begun Amelia, it is very entertaining. I do love Dr Harrison and the good Serjeant; and Mrs James's visit to Amelia has extremely diverted me. How many Mrs James's in that good-for-nothing London! But Mr Fielding's heroines are always silly loving runaway girls. Amelia makes an excellent wife, but why did she marry Booth?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family. Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 December 1752:
'Pray can you tell me any history of a new paper called the Adventurer? We hope much from it, though we have seen but one. It seems, with a style not unlike the Rambler, to go upon that amusing scheme which people expected from the title of the Rambler.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Serial / periodical
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 29 January 1753:
'I like the Adventurers; we all like them exceedingly [...] They do not abound in hard words, they are varied with a thousand amusing stories, they touch with humour the daily follies and peculiarities of the times.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Serial / periodical
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, from Cuddesdon, 21 July 1753, in account of a day excursion in the local countryside (around Oxford):
'Yesterday we set off soon after four [...] Our road lay through a most pleasant country. In the coach we amused ourselves with some of the seventh volume of Mad. de Sevigne's Letters, and some of Mrs Fielding's. 'Tis vexatious in the last-named book to find such a mixture of refinement a perte de vue proceeding from her inclination to support, I fancy, a false system [...] But where she writes naturally one loves and honours her extremely; there is a goodness of heart and a delicacy of sentiment that makes me think you happy in her acquaintance.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, from Cuddesdon, 21 July 1753, in account of a day excursion in the local countryside (around Oxford):
'Yesterday we set off soon after four [...] Our road lay through a most pleasant country. In the coach we amused ourselves with some of the seventh volume of Mad. de Sevigne's Letters, and some of Mrs Fielding's. 'Tis vexatious in the last-named book to find such a mixture of refinement a perte de vue proceeding from her inclination to support, I fancy, a false system [...] But where she writes naturally one loves and honours her extremely; there is a goodness of heart and a delicacy of sentiment that makes me think you happy in her acquaintance.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, on life at Cuddesdon, 8 September 1753:
'Our days here pass too pleasantly to want any foreign enlivening [...] country scenes, charming weather, agreeable companions, and every evening an hour's reading en famille of Sir C. Grandison.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 24 February 1756:]
'We have looked in Johnson [i.e. his Dictionary] for [italics] Athlete [end italics], no such word there, nor any thing of the kind but Athletic, with explanations every body knows.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter [1758]:]
'"Henrietta" has been useful to us here, but there are many things in it that I dislike, and that tally with my opinion of the writer. That brother is execrable. -- There are bits of pride and sauciness in Henrietta, and reflections in one place tending to ridicule the belief of a particular Providence, to which I object very greatly.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 27 November 1759:]
'The book you enquire after is "The History of some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House." I think that is the title of the very pretty book we have been reading. I know not who writ it, but it is at least a very good likeness of Mrs Fielding.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 May 1763:]
'Some of [Carlo Maggi's] prose is delightful. Pray do not read the death of Adam. It is
extremely fine, but so painful, that at first it gives one's thoughts a wrong turn -- one cannot get it out of one's head; yet if one thinks it thoroughly over, one may get a great deal of good out of it. We shall have a very different one after supper, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. They are very amusing for that half hour, and I dare say genuine. Mrs Montagu whom I saw a few days ago, first told me of them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 October 1763:
'Our after-supper book is Hume -- his English history however; but I hear it with infinite caution.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 27 November 1765:]
'What an agreeable fellow was that Philip of Macedon! We are reading his history; but the wise and elegant Athenians put me out of all patience, they are so like moderns: and all the Greeks of that time, some three or four excepted, appear such arrant scoundrels, that Philip, who was a clever scoundrel and made fools of them all, appears to great advantage.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 August 1766, on her pursuit of her 'journal-letter scheme':]
'I shall fancy if I write thus Journal-wise, by bits and scraps, that I am Dean Swift, and you Stella and Mrs Dingley, for we are reading those three new volumes, in which he writes to them in that style [...] I love him in those letters very well'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 9 July 1767:]
'We are deep (for our after supper book) in Lord Lyttleton [i.e. his History of Henry II]. For my own amusement I am glad he digresses so much; but does he not digress too much for a biographer? I am much entertained with the History of the Crusades, though indeed it is terrible. If you ever meet with the History of Nourjahad it will interest and amuse you [...] the only shocking part is when he grows what the author meant for very pious, and aspires after the beatific vision of that rascal Mahomet.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
