then the Burneys are your enemies, that so fostered and fondled; more than that, Baretti has been making up a libel and every magazine has refused it entrance except a new work carried on by the female Burney." "Never mind," replied I, "nobody will read their work; I feel as I ought towards your lordship's friendship, which you cannot prove better than by not naming the subject; it will die away, so will the authors; good morrow, and a thousand thanks." My own books came out one by one: they pleased, and I suffered not these tormentors much to vex me. We went on spending our money at and upon Streatham Park, till old Mr. Jones and the wise Marquis Trotti advised Piozzi to make the tour of North Wales, and see my country, my estate, &c. We had been all over Scotland, except the Highlands, where we were afraid of carrying Cecy because of her unsteady health. I staid with dear Mrs. Siddons, at Rose Hill, while our friends made their ramble, and came back as much delighted with Denbighshire and Flintshire as Mr. Thrale had been disgusted with them. This was charming. Piozzi had fixed upon a spot, and resolved to build an Italian villa on the banks of the Clwydd. Even Mr. Murphy applauded the project, and we drew in our expenses, preparing to engage in brick and mortar. Gout now fastened on Mr. Piozzi, who built his pretty villa in North Wales, and conforming to our religious opinions, kindly set our little church at Dymerchion in a state it never before enjoyed, spending sums of money on its decoration, and making a vault for my ancestors and for ourselves to repose in. I wrote verses for the opening of our tiny temple, and dear Piozzi set them most enchantingly to music; our clerk, he said, was a very good genius; and I trust a more virtuous or pious pleasure could not be felt than ours when teaching those poor people to sing the lines you will read over leaf. With homely verse and artless lays, Full oft these humble roofs shall ring; And blessings all around Him spread, And sure before He comes again In awful state to judge the world; To unambitious efforts kind, Pleas'd He permits our rustic lays; Our simple voices, unrefin'd, Have leave to sing their Saviour's praise. The house, our dwelling-house I mean, was built from a design of its elegant master's own hand, and he set poor old Bachygraig up too; repaired and beautified it, and to please his silly wife, gilt the Llewenny lion on its top. The scroll once held in his paw was broke and gone. Lombardy, where his (Mr. Piozzi's) relations lived, was torn by faction, and his father, a feeble old · man of eighty-one years old, equal to one hundred in our island, was actually terrified into apoplexy, lethargy, and death. His son, who half entertained a tender thought that they might meet once more, grieved for his loss severely, the more so, as he himself said, because "Sarà quel che sarà, ma alla fin, il sangue non e acqua.” His brother, I am afraid, joined the Republicans, leaving a very deserving lady, born at Venice, whose friends were wholly ruined, though her uncle, the Abbate Zendrini, was afterwards in high favour, and even appointed confessor to Buonaparte. They had baptized one of their babies by name of John Salusbury in compliment to me, and Mr. Piozzi sent to bring him out of the confusion. He came an infant between three and four years old. We educated him first at Mr. Davis's school at Streatham, where my own son had been placed so many years before, and then with Mr. Shephard, of Enborne, Berkshire, whence he commonly came to us at Streatham Park, or Bath, or Brynbella. You know the rest. You know that dear Mr. Piozzi died of the gout at his pretty villa in North Wales. You know that he left me that, and everything else, never naming his nephew in the will, only leaving among his father's children 6000l. in the three per cents., being the whole of his savings during the twenty-five years he had shared and enjoyed my fortune. Unexampled gene 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 by H. L. PIOZZI. MR. SEWARD. SIR R. CHAMBERS. 75 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. |