rosity indeed! And true love! Could I do less than repay it to the child whose situation in life I now felt responsible for! I bred him with his friends at Oxford, yet he stood alone, insulated in a nation where he had no natural friend. Incapacitated to return where his religion would have rendered him miserable, and petted, and spoiled, till any profession would have been painful. What could I do? The boy had besides all this formed an attachment to his friend's sister. What could I do? You know what I did do. I gave them my estate; and resolving that Mr. Thrale's daughters should suffer as little as possible by this arrangement, I repaired and new fronted their house at Streatham Park, and by the enormous expense incurred there, and the loss of my rents from Denbighshire and Flintshire, reduced myself to the very wretched state you found me in, and lavished upon me a friendship, which, at the sauciest hour of my life, would by my mind have been esteemed an honour, but in this sad deserted stage of it the truest, very near the only cordial. Thus then, as Adam says to Raphael in Milton's "Paradise Lost :

"Thus have I told thee all my state; and brought

My story to that sum of earthly bliss

Which I enjoy: and since at length to part,

Go; sent of heaven, angelic messenger,

Gentle to me, and affable hath been

Thy conversation, to be honour'd ever
With grateful memory,"

by H. L. PIOZZI.

MINOR MARGINAL NOTES ON THE TWO VOLUMES OF PRINTED LETTERS.*

Mr. Seward.-Mr. Seward, who wrote the "Anecdotes": he was only son to a rich brewer, whom he disappointed and grieved by his preference of literature to riches. His head, however, was not quite right. I believe his principles were vitiated by his studies among the Swiss infidels: Helvetius, D'Alembert, and the rest of them. He kept his morality pure for the sake of his health perhaps, for he was a professed valetudinarian.

Mr. Keep.-Mr. Keep, when he heard I was a native of North Wales, told me that his wife was a Welsh woman, and desired to be buried at Ruthyn. "So," says the man, "I went with the corpse myself, because I thought it would be a pleasant journey, and indeed I found Ruthyn a very beautiful place.”

Sir Robert Chambers.-The box goes to Calcutta to Sir Robert Chambers, a favourite with them all. (I never could see why.) He was judge in India, married Fanny Wilton the statuary's daughter, who stood for Hebe at the Royal Academy. She was very beautiful indeed, and but fifteen years old when Sir Robert mar

• The name, or passage, suggesting the note is given when required for its elucidation.

ried her.

Park.

His portrait is in the library at Streatham 1815.

Bath is often mentioned in these letters, but I forgot among the baby anecdotes which precede them, to say how I remembered being carried about the rooms by Beau Nash, and taken notice of by Lady Caroline, mother to the famous Charles James Fox.

On Johnson's writing to congratulate her on making the conquest of the Prince of Castiglione, she writes: "The man who drank his health by name of Mr. Vagabond."

"Why should you suspect me of forgetting lilly lolly ?"--Johnson.

Ask me about this stuff, and I'll try to tell you: come, here it is. One of our Welsh squires had a halfwitted son, his sole heir, poor fellow ! and the parents fondled it accordingly. When Christmas came, and all the country was invited at Llewenney Hall, the seat of my mother's eldest brother, who married Lady Elizabeth Tollemache, came these dear Wynnes and their booby boy about eleven years old. "What does the child say?" cries my aunt, "it sounds like lilly lolly." "Indeed, my Lady Betty," replies the mother, in a sharp Welsh accent, "Dick does say lilly lolly, sure enough: but he mains: How do you do, Sir Robert Cotton ?" I had probably in some unprinted letter said: “Here's a deal of lilly lolly, which I suppose you forget, but it means How do you do, Dr. Johnson ?"

FOOTE.-RICHARDSON. THE BURNEYS.

77

Foote.-"Did you see Foote at Brighthelinstone?— Did you think he would so soon be gone?-Life, says Falstaff, is a shuttle. He was a fine fellow in his way; and the world is really impoverished by his sinking glories. Murphy ought to write his life, at least to give the world a Footeana. Now, will any of his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change his sex to weep? I would really have his life written with diligence." -Johnson.

Doctor Johnson was not aware that Foote broke his heart because of a hideous detection; he was trying to run away from England, and from infamy, but death stopped him. Doctor Johnson never could persuade himself that things were as bad as the sufferer or his friends represented them; he thought it wrong to believe so, and steadily made the best on't.

6

Richardson.- "Doctor Johnson said, that if Mr. Richardson had lived till I came out, my praises would have added two or three years to his life: For,' says Dr. Johnson, that fellow died merely for want of change among his flatterers: he perished for want of more, like a man obliged to breathe the same air till it is exhausted.""

The Burneys.-Doctor Burney and his family are often spoken of in these Memoirs. He was a man of very uncommon attainments: wit born with him, I

suppose;

* A very able essay on the "Life and Character of Foote" has been written by Mr. Forster, who clears his memory of the calumny which shortened his life,

learning, he had helped himself to, and was proud of the possession; elegance of manners he had so cultivated, that those who knew but little of the man, fancied he had great flexibility of mind. It was mere pliancy of body, however, and a perpetual show of obsequiousness by bowing incessantly as if acknowledging an inferiority, which nothing would have forced him to confess. I never in my life heard Johnson pronounce the words, "I beg your pardon, Sir," to any human creature but the apparently soft and gentle Dr. Burney. Perhaps the story inay be related in the "Anecdotes ": but as I now recollect it, thus it is. "Did you, Madam, subscribe 100%. to build our new bridge at Shrewsbury?" said Burney to me. "No, surely, Sir," was my reply. "What connexion have I with Shropshire? and where should I have money so to fling away?" "It is very comical, is it not, Sir?” said I, turning to Dr. Johnson, "that people should tell such unfounded stories ?" "It is," answered he, "neither comical nor serious, my dear; it is only a wandering lie." This was spoken in his natural voice, without a thought of offence, I am confident; but up bounced Burney in a towering passion, and to my much amaze, put on the hero, surprising Doctor Johnson into a sudden request for pardon, and protestation of not having ever intended to accuse his friend of a falsehood. The following lines written, sur le champ, with a gold pen I gave him, prove he could make more agreeable impromptus than this I have related: