April, 1818, about the time when Talleyrand said of Lady F. Elle commence trop tard et finit trop tôt,” she S.'s robe: writes: 66 "A genteel young clergyman, in our Upper Crescent, told his mamma, about ten days ago, that he had lost his heart to pretty Miss Prideaux, and that he must absolutely marry her or die. La chère mêre of course replied gravely: 'My dear, you have not been acquainted with the lady above a fortnight; let me recommend you to see more of her.' 'More of her!' exclaimed the lad, 'why, I have seen down to the fifth rib on each side already.' This story will serve to convince Captain T. Fellowes and yourself, that as you have always acknowledged the British Belles to exceed those of every other nation, you may now say with truth, that they outstrip them." "The heat has certainly exhausted my faculties, and I have but just life enough left to laugh at the fourteen tailors who, united under a flag with 'Liberty and Independence' on it, went to vote for some of these gay fellows, I forget which, but the motto is ill-chosen, said I, they should have written up, Measures, not Men." Her piety was genuine; and old-fashioned politicians, whose watchword is Church and King, will be delighted with her politics. Literary men, considering how many curious inquiries depend upon her accuracy, will be more anxious about her truthfulness, and I have had ample opportunities of testing it; having not only been led to compare her statements with those of others, but to collate her own statements of the same transactions or circumstances at distant intervals or to different persons. It is difficult to keep up a large correspondence without frequent repetition. Sir Walter Scott used to write precisely the same things to three or four fine-lady friends, and Mrs. Piozzi could no more be expected to find a fresh budget of news or gossip for each epistle than the author of "Waverley." Thus, in 1815, she writes to a Welsh baronet from Bath: "We have had a fine Dr. Holland here.* He has seen and * Sir Henry Holland, Bart., who, with many other titles to distinction, is one of the most active and enterprising of modern travellers. written about the Ionian Islands; and means now to practise as a physician, exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and wags, for the Sick Ladies. We made quite a lion of the man. I was invited to every house he visited at for the last three days; so I got the Queue du lion despairing of le Cœur." Two other letters, written about the same time, contain the same piece of intelligence and the same joke. She was very fond of writing marginal notes; and after annotating one copy of a book, would take up another and do the same.* I have rarely detected a substantial variation in her narratives, even in those which were more or less dictated by pique; and as she constantly drew upon the "Thraliana" for her materials, this, having been carefully and calmly compiled, affords an additional guaranty for her accuracy. She sometimes gives anecdotes about authors. Thus, in the letter just quoted, she says: "Lord Byron protests his wife was a fortune without money, a belle without beauty, and a bluestocking without either wit or learning." But her literary information grew scanty as she grew old; and her opinions of the rising authors are principally valuable as indications of the obstacles which nascent reputations must overcome. "Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music on different characters holds equally true of genius: so many as are not delighted by it, are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre." The octogenarian critic of the Johnsonian school recoils from "Frankenstein as from an incarnation of the Evil Spirit: she does not know what to make of the "Tales of My Landlord;" and she inquires of an Irish acquaintance whether she retained recollection enough of her own country to be entertained with “that strange caricature, Castle Rack Rent." Contemporary judgments such as these (not more extravagant than Horace Walpole's) are to the historian of literature what fossil remains are to the geologist. * A copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson, annotated by her like Dr. Wellesley's, is in the possession of Mr. Bohn, the eminent publisher. † Coleridge, "Aids to Reflections." Although perhaps no biographical sketch was ever executed, as a labor of love, without an occasional attack of what Lord Macaulay calls the Lues Boswelliana, or fever of admiration, I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I am not setting up Mrs. Piozzi as a model letter-writer, or an eminent author, or a pattern of the domestic virtues, or a fitting object of hero or heroine worship in any capacity. All I venture to maintain is, that her life and character, if only for the sake of the "associate forms," deserve to be vindicated against unjust reproach, and that she has written many things which are worth snatching from oblivion or preserving from decay. |