Walpole's opinion of the book itself had been expressed in a preceding letter, dated March 28th, 1786:—

"Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed,—in her, I mean: not in him. I had conceived a favorable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago. . . . . The Signora talks of her doctor's expanded mind, and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor woman is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out, but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humor. Judge! The Piozzi relates that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied: 'In Ireland: it was a bog planted with palm-trees.'

Walpole's statement that the whole first impression was sold the first day is confirmed by one of her letters, and may be placed alongside of a statement of Johnson's reported in the book. Clarissa being mentioned as a perfect character, "on the contrary (said he) you may observe there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances; but that vile broken nose never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night."

In April, 1786, Hannah More writes:

"Mrs. Piozzi's book is much in fashion. It is indeed entertaining, but there are two or three passages exceedingly unkind to Garrick which filled me with indignation. If Johnson had been envious enough to utter them, she might have been prudent enough to suppress them."

In a preceding letter she had said:

"Boswell tells me he is printing anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, not his life, but, as he has the vanity to call it, his pyramid. I besought his tenderness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend, and begged he would mitigate some of his asperities. He

said roughly, he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please anybody." The retort will serve for both Mrs. Piozzi and himself.

The copy of the "Anecdotes" in my possession has two inscriptions on the blank leaves before the title-page. The one is in Mrs. Piozzi's handwriting: "This little dirty book is kindly accepted by Sir James Fellowes from his obliged friend, H. L. Piozzi, 14th February, 1816;" the other: "This copy of the 'Anecdotes' was found at Bath, covered with dirt, the book having been long out of print,* and after being bound was presented to me by my excellent friend, H. L. P. (signed) J. F.”

It is enriched by marginal notes in her handwriting, which enable us to fill up a few puzzling blanks, besides supplying some information respecting men and books, which will be prized by all lovers of literature.

One of the anecdotes runs thus: "I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted. 'He talked to me at the Club one day (replies our Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy; so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb.'"

In the margin is written "Charles James Fox." Mr. Croker came to the conclusion that the gentleman was Mr. Vesey. Boswell says that Fox never talked with any freedom in the presence of Johnson, who accounted for his reserve by suggesting that a man who is used to the applause of the House of Commons has no wish for that of a private company. But the real cause was his sensitiveness to rudeness, his own temper being singularly sweet. By an odd coincidence he occupied the presidential chair at the Club on the evening when Johnson emphatically declared every Whig to be a scoundrel. Again: "On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse: 'I am not obliged, Sir,' said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, 'to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark: what are stars and other signs of superiority made for?' The next even

The "Anecdotes" were reprinted by Messrs. Longman in 1856, and form part of their "Traveller's Library."

ing, however, he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature, and use, and abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking, received an answer which I will not write down."

The marginal note is: "He said, 'Why, Sir, I did not know the man. If he will put on no other mark of distinction, let us make him wear his horns.'" Lord Bolingbroke had divorced his wife, afterwards Lady Diana Beauclerc, for infidelity.

A marginal note, naming the lady of quality mentioned in the following anecdote, verifies Mr. Croker's conjectural statement concerning her:

"For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales, with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation: That woman,' cries Johnson, 'is like sour beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled.' This was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady,' that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive,' said he,' she would sting.'

From similar notes we learn that the "somebody" who declared Johnson a tremendous converser was George Garrick ; and that it was Dr. Delap, of Sussex, to whom, when lamenting the tender state of his inside, he cried out: "Dear Doctor, do not be like the spider, man, and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels." *

On the margin of the page in which Hawkins Browne is commended as the most delightful of conversers, she has written : "Who wrote the 'Imitation of all the Poets' in his own ludicrous verses, praising the pipe of tobacco. Of Hawkins Browne, the pretty Mrs. Cholmondeley said she was soon tired; because the first hour he was so dull, there was no bearing him; the sec

* Lord Melbourne complained of two ladies of quality, sisters, that they told him too much of their "natural history."

ond he was so witty, there was no bearing him; the third he was so drunk, there was no bearing him." *

"Perhaps,"

In the "Anecdotes" she relates that one day in Wales she meant to please Johnson with a dish of young peas. "Are they not charming?" said I, while he was eating them. said he, "they would be so-to a pig;" meaning (according to the marginal note), because they were too little boiled.

"Of the various states and conditions of humanity, he despised none more, I think, than the man who marries for maintenance : and of a friend who made his alliance on no higher principles, he said once, 'Now has that fellow,' it was a nobleman of whom we were speaking,' at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar.' The nobleman was Lord Sandys.

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"He recommended, on something like the same principle, that when one person meant to serve another, he should not go about it slyly, or, as we say, underhand, out of a false idea of delicacy, to surprise one's friend with an unexpected favor; 'which, ten to one,' says he, 'fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. O, never be seduced by such silly pretences,' continued he; if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate; as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron." This lady was Mrs. Montague.

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"I mentioned two friends who were particularly fond of looking at themselves in a glass. They do not surprise me at all by so doing,' said Johnson: they see, reflected in that glass,

*Query, whether this is the gentleman immortalized by Peter Plymley: "In the third year of his present Majesty (George III.) and in the thirtieth of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evening at the court of Naples. His dress was a volcano silk, with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under Saint Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigor, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the Neapolitan throne."

men who have risen from almost the lowest situations in life; one to enormous riches, the other to everything this world can give, rank, fame, and fortune. They see, likewise, men who have merited their advancement by the exertion and improvement of those talents which God had given them; and I see not why they should avoid the mirror.""

The one, she writes, was Mr. Cator, the other, Wedderburne. Another great lawyer and very ugly man, Dunning, Lord Ashburton, was remarkable for the same peculiarity, and had his walls covered with looking-glasses. His personal vanity was excessive; and his boast that a celebrated courtesan had died with one of his letters in her hand, provoked one of Wilkes's happiest repartees.

Opposite a passage descriptive of Johnson's conversation, she has written: "We used to say to one another familiarly at Streatham Park, Come, let us go into the library and make Johnson speak Ramblers.''

6

The Piozzis returned from Italy in March, 1787, and soon after their arrival hired a house in Hanover Square, where they resided till May, 1790, when they removed to Streatham. The Johnsonian circle was broken up, and some of its most distinguished members were no more. Still it is curious to mark how this woman, who had "fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen to a land where she was unknown," was received where she was best known after an absence of less than three years. According to the Autobiography, her reception was in all respects satisfactory, and it only depended upon herself to resume her former place in society. A few extracts from her Diary will help to show how far this conclusion was well founded or the contrary : —

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1787, May 1st.—It was not wrong to come home after all, but very right. The Italians would have said we were afraid to face England, and the English would have said we were confined abroad in prisons or convents, or some stuff. I find Mr. Smith (one of our daughter's guardians) told that poor baby Cecilia a fine staring tale how my husband locked me up at Milan and fed me on bread and water, to make the child hate Mr. Piozzi.