Fendall saw no nearer way to safety than that hasty and compendious one. Many people think 't is a good thing for me, but as I never trusted the man, I see little harm he could have done me."

In the fury of his onslaught Baretti forgot that he was strengthening her case against Johnson, of whom he says: "His austere reprimand, and unrestrained upbraidings, when face to face with her, always delighted Mr. Thrale and were approved even by her children. 'Harry,' said his father to her son, 'are you listening to what the doctor and mamma are talking about?' 'Yes, papa.' And quoth Mr. Thrale, 'What are they saying?' 'They are disputing, and mamma has just such a chance with Dr. Johnson as Presto (a little dog) would have were he to fight Dash (a big one)." He adds that she left the room in a huff, to the amusement of the party. If scenes like this were frequent, no wonder the "yoke" became unendurable.

Baretti was obliged to admit that, when Johnson died, they were not on speaking terms. His explanation is that Johnson irritated him by an allusion to his being beaten by Omai, the Sandwich Islander, at chess. Mrs. Piozzi's marginal note on Omai is: "When Omai played at chess and at backgammon with Baretti, everybody admired at the savage's good breeding and at the European's impatient spirit."

Amongst her papers was the following sketch of his character, written for "The World" newspaper.

"Mr. Conductor. Let not the death Baretti pass unnoticed by The World,' seeing that Baretti was a wit if not a scholar : and had for five-and-thirty years at least lived in a foreign country, whose language he so made himself completely master of that he could satirize its inhabitants in their own tongue better than they knew how to defend themselves; and often pleased, without ever praising man or woman in book or conversation. Long supported by the private bounty of friends, he rather delighted to insult than flatter; he at length obtained competence from a public he esteemed not; and died, refusing that assistance he considered as useless, leaving no debts (but those of gratitude) undischarged; and expressing neither regret of the past, nor fear of the future, I believe. Strong in his prejudices,

― even

haughty and independent in his spirit, cruel in his anger,
when unprovoked; vindictive to excess, if he through misconcep-
tion supposed himself even slightly injured, pertinacious in his
attacks, invincible in his aversions; the description of Menelaus
in' Homer's Iliad' as rendered by Pope exactly suits the char-
acter of Baretti :

"So burns the vengeful Hornet, soul all o'er,
Repulsed in vain, and thirsty still for gore;
Bold son of air and heat, on angry wings,

Untamed, untired, he turns, attacks, and stings.'

Yet

In reference to this article, she remarks in "Thraliana": — "There seems to be a language now appropriated to the newspapers, and a very wretched and unmeaning language it is. a certain set of expressions are so necessary to please the diurnal readers, that when Johnson and I drew up an advertisement for charity once, I remember the people altered our expressions and substituted their own, with good effect too. The other day I sent a Character of Baretti to the World,' and read it two mornings after more altered than improved, in my mind: but no matter: they will talk of wielding a language, and of barbarous infamy, sad stuff, to be sure, but such is the taste of the times. They altered even my quotation from Pope; but that was too impudent."

6

The comparison of Baretti to the hornet was truer than she anticipated animamque in vulnere ponit. Internal evidence leads almost irresistibly to the conclusion that he was the author or prompter of "The Sentimental Mother: a Comedy in Five Acts. The Legacy of an Old Friend, and his 'Last Moral Lesson' to Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale, now Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi. London: Printed for James Ridgeway. York Street, St. James's Square, 1789. Price three shillings." The principal dramatis persone are Mr. Timothy Tunskull (Thrale), Lady Fantasma Tunskull, two Misses Tunskull, and Signor Squalici.

Lady Fantasma is vain, affected, silly, and amorous to excess. Not satisfied with Squalici as her established gallant, she makes compromising advances to her daughter's lover on his way to a tête-à-tête with the young lady, who takes her wonted place on his knee with his arm round her waist. Squalici is also a domes

tic spy, and in league with the mother to cheat the daughters out of their patrimony. Mr. Tunskull is a respectable and complacent nonentity.

The dialogue is seasoned with the same malicious insinuations which mark Baretti's letters in the "European Magazine;" without the saving clause with which shame or fear induced him to qualifiy the signed abuse, namely, that no breach of chastity was suspected or believed. It is difficult to imagine who else would have thought of reverting to Thrale's establishment eight years after it had been broken up by death.

Mrs. Piozzi had somehow contracted a belief, to which she alludes more than once with unfeigned alarm, that Mr. Samuel Lysons had formed a collection of all the libels and caricatures of which she was the subject on the occasion of her marriage. His collections have been carefully examined, and the sole semblance of warrant for her fears is an album or scrap-book containing numerous extracts from the reviews and newspapers, relating to her books. The only caricature preserved in it is the celebrated one by Sayers entitled "Johnson's Ghost." The ghost, a flattering likeness of the doctor, addresses a pretty woman seated at a writing-table : —

"When Streatham spread its pleasant board,

I opened learning's valued hoard,

And as I feasted, prosed.

Good things I said, good things I eat,
I gave you knowledge for your meat,
And thought the account was closed.

"If obligations still I owed,

You sold each item to the crowd,

I suffered by the tale.

For God's sake, Madam, let me rest,

No longer vex your quondam guest,
I'll pay you for your ale."

When addresses were advertised for on the rebuilding of Drury Lane, Sheridan proposed an additional reward for one without a phoenix. Equally acceptable for its rarity would be a squib on Mrs. Piozzi without a reference to the brewery.

Her manuscript notes on the two volumes of Letters are numerous and important, comprising some curious fragments of auto

biography, written on separate sheets of paper and pasted into the volumes opposite to the passages which they expand or explain. They would create an inconvenient break in the narrative if introduced here, and they are reserved for a separate section.

In 1789 she published "Observations and Reflections made in the course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany," in two volumes octavo of about 400 pages each. As happened to almost everything she did or wrote, this book was by turns assailed with inveterate hostility and praised with animated zeal. Walpole writes to Mrs. Carter, June 13, 1789 :

:

"I do not mean to misemploy much of your time, which I know is always passed in good works, and usefully. You have, therefore, probably not looked into Piozzi's Travels. I who have been almost six weeks lying on a couch have gone through them. It was said that Addison might have written his without going out of England. By the excessive vulgarisms so plentiful in these volumes, one might suppose the writer had never stirred out of the parish of St. Giles. Her Latin, French, and Italian, too, are so miserably spelt, that she had better have studied her own language before she floundered into other tongues. Her friends plead that she piques herself on writing as she talks: methinks, then, she should talk as she would write. There are many indiscretions too in her work, of which she will perhaps be told though Baretti is dead."

Miss Seward, much to her credit, repeated to Mrs. Piozzi both the praise and the blame she had expressed to others. On December 21st, 1789, she writes:

"Suffer me now to speak to you of your highly ingenious, instructive, and entertaining publication; yet shall it be with the sincerity of friendship, rather than with the flourish of compliment. No work of the sort ever read possesses, in an equal degree, the power of placing the reader in the scenes, and amongst the people it describes. Wit, knowledge, and imagination illuminate its pages - but the infinite inequality of the style! — Permit me to acknowledge to you, what I have acknowledged to others, that it excites my exhaustless wonder, that Mrs. Piozzi, the child of genius, the pupil of Johnson, should pollute, with the vulgarisms of unpolished conversation, her animated pages!

that, while she frequently displays her power of commanding the most chaste and beautiful style imaginable, she should generally use those inelegant, those strange dids, and does, and thoughs, and toos, which produce jerking angles, and stop-short abruptness, fatal at once to the grace and ease of the sentence; which are,

in language, what the rusty black silk handkerchief and the brass ring are upon the beautiful form of the Italian countess she mentions, arrayed in embroidery, and blazing in jewels."

Mrs. Piozzi's theory was that books should be written in the same colloquial and idiomatic language which is employed by cultivated persons in conversation. "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;" and vulgar she certainly was not, although she sometimes indulged her fondness for familiarity too far. The period was unluckily chosen for carrying such a theory into practice; for Johnson's authority had discountenanced idiomatic writing, whilst many phrases and forms of speech, which would not be endured now, were tolerated in polite society.

The laws of spelling, too, were unfixed or vague, and those of pronunciation, which more or less affected spelling, still more so. "When," said Johnson, "I published the plan of my dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it grait. Now here were two men of the highest rank, one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely." Mrs. Piozzi has written on the margin: "Sir William was in the right." Two well-known coup

lets of Pope's imply similar changes :

"Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,

And so obliging that he ne'er obliged.

Imperial Anna, whom three realms obey,

Here sometimes counsel takes, and sometimes tea."

Within living memory, elderly people of quality, both in writing and conversation, stuck to Lunnun, Brummagem, and Cheyny (China). Lord Byron wrote redde (for read, in the past tense), and Lord Dudley declined being helped to apple tart. When,