How does your book of fashionable dresses go on? it must, I think, receive some curious additions by what one hears and sees; for a caricature print of a famous fine lady who leads the Mode has already reached poor little Denbigh.

To the Rev. Daniel Lysons.

Brynbella, Tuesday Evening, 1797. COULD you, as you walk about and examine books upon stalls, find me a second or third, or thirteenth-hand History of Poetry, by Warton, or of Music, by Hawkins ; I should be much obliged to you; but it must be under a guinea price. I have the good editions myself at Streatham Park. Your book of "Ladies' Dresses" must have received curious addition, by what I see and hear of the present fashions; but cutting off hair is the foolishest among the foolish. When they are tired of going without clothes, 'tis easy putting them on again; but what they will do for the poor cropt and shorn heads, now there are no convents, I cannot guess.

Do people rejoice now wheat falls in price? they made heavy lament when it was high,- or do we only sigh for peace that we may be at leisure to meditate mischief?

And so I see that both Ministry and Opposition have at last agreed in one point; they join against the Lapdogs:

"So when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of these two dogs meets;
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog had done."

These verses are somewhat too soft and mellifluous for the occasion, being Fielding's, but I half long to address a doggrell epistle to Mr. Dent*; he would be as angry as Mr. Parsons, no doubt, and I understand his wrath is very great. What becomes of Ireland, I wonder, now his solemn mockery is ended. It was a forged bill, you see, and the public did well to protest it.†

If Mrs. Siddons was to work at Drury Lane all winter and run about all summer, she would have had no enjoyment of Putney; and the young ones, for whose sake she is to work and run, would never have delighted in an out of town residence. Cecilia is coming to the scene of action, London, where I think there were enough just such half-hatched chickens without her and Mr. Mostyn adding to the number; but then they do not care what I think, so 'tis all one. The Bishop of Bangor likes Wales no better than she does, I suppose, but he ought not to have said so; because an old bishop should be wiser than a pretty wench, and much will be endured from her, very little from him, especially in these days; he is got into a cruel embarrassment.

* Who gained the nickname of Dog Dent by the piece of legislation in question.

"Vortigern" was acted and damned on April 2, 1796. The last audible line was

"And when this solemn mockery is o'er,"

which Kemble was accused of uttering in a manner to precipitate the catastrophe.

Tell something about our Princess of Wales and her domestiques, and of our infant queen-expectant, pretty creature! I should somehow like to see that baby excessively. My hope is that every English heart will devote itself to the service of so much innocence and sweetness.

66

I depend upon an excellent account of " Almeyda;"* the epilogue is charming. Only one fault; 'tis an epilogue would do for any play. I call such things verses to be let. Prologues and epilogues should, to be perfect, be appropriate, referring to what has been presented, of is to present itself before the audience. This, however, is playful and pretty, and so far as I know or can remember, quite original.

Adieu, dear Sir, and bid your brother not quite forget me. The arm of an old vestal virgin kept under ground since Agricola's time, is cold compared with the hand of his and your faithful servant,

To Samuel Lysons, Esq.

H. L. PIOZZI.

Wednesday, 10th Feb. 1808.

DEAR MR. LYSONS,-I have not written to you a long time, and now I cannot help writing. I loved your brother so much, and wished him happy so sincerely, his change of life affects me, and my feelings will not permit me to tell him so. Tell him yourself, my good friend, and assure yourself that the account of his wife's

* Miss Lee's play.

death in the papers gave me a sensation beyond what my acquaintance with her called for. But she was pretty when we last met, and she was young, and it seems so odd and melancholy to look in the grave for those one used to see at the tea-table! Well! you who live among the records of past life will bear these things better; my spirits are much depressed by Mr. Piozzi's miserable state of health, nor can the gaieties I hear of draw my attention from the sorrows that I see. Mrs. Mostyn has politely taken a week's share of them just now while her sons are absent, and the London winter not begun. Our winter commenced in November, and when it will end I know not. The mountains are still covered with snow, and such tempestuous weather did I never witness.

The political wonders have increased since the suspension of our correspondence so much, that we are all tired of wondering at them; but this new discovery of a nest of Christians in Travancore must be considered as curious by everybody who reads of it. Tell me the price of Buchanan's book and its character; I see nothing but extracts, and those imperfect ones; and tell me some literary chat, remembering our distance from all possibility of adding a new idea to our stock, except by the voluntary subscriptions and contributions (to use an hospital phrase) of the nobility, gentry, and others. Hospital phrases, indeed, best suit the dwellers at Brynbella: but Doctor Johnson-never wrong—was right, pre-eminently right in this: That chronic diseases are never cured and acute ones, if recovered from, cure

themselves. The maxim has been confirmed by my experience every day since to me first pronounced, and I dare say the late unfortunate event in your own family affords it no contradiction.

Has your brother many children left him by his lady, and is he living at Hempstead Court? He had better get to London, and lose his cares in the crowd.

Dear Mr. Lysons, do write to me, and in the meantime pity me and my poor husband, whose sufferings one should believe, on a cursory view of them, wholly insupportable; but God gives the courage, with the necessity of exerting it.

I hear all good of Mrs. Siddons.

To Samuel Lysons, Esq.

Brynbella, 22nd Aug. 1813.

MRS. PIOZZI presents her most respectful compliments to her old friend Mr. Lysons, as Governor of the British Institution, with an earnest request that he will protect her portraits from being copied, as she was strictly promised before she could consent to lend them. It would break her heart, and ruin the value of the pictures to posterity, and now some artist living at No. 50, Rathbone Place, who spells his name so that she cannot read it, unless 'tis Joseph, writes to her, begging he may copy the portrait of Dr. Johnson, when she was hoping all the four were by this time restored to their places at old Streatham Park. Mrs. Piozzi wishes Mr. Lysons joy of his brother's marriage, but hopes he