merited ban as Rochester's best verses, resolved not to pass
twenty-five, and had her passport made out accordingly till her death
at eighty-five. She used to boast that, whenever a foreign official
objected, she never failed to silence him by the remark, that he was
the first gentleman of his country who ever told a lady she was older
than she said she was. Actuated probably by a similar feeling, and in
the hope of securing to herself the benefit of the doubt, Mrs. Thrale
omitted in the "Anecdotes" the year when these verses were addressed
to her, and a sharp controversy has been raised as to the respective
ages of herself and Dr. Johnson at the time. It is thus summed up by
one of the combatants:

"In one place Mr. Croker says that at the commencement of the
intimacy between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was
twenty-five years old. In other places he says that Mrs. Thrale's
thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth. Johnson was
born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year
coincided with Johnson's seventieth, she could have been only
twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another
place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines
which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth birthday. If this
date be correct Mrs. Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could
have been only twenty-three when her acquaintance commenced. Mr.
Croker, therefore, gives us three different statements as to her age.
Two of the three must be incorrect. We will not decide between
them."[1]

[Footnote 1: Macaulay's Essays.]

Mr. Salusbury, referring to a china bowl in his possession, says: