no comfort in tiring every friend to death in such a manner and losing the town at last.”

This was an agitating month. In "Thraliana":

"20th May, 1780.--I got back to Bath again and staid there till the riots * drove us all away the first week in June: we made a dawdling journey, cross country, to Brighthelmstone, where all was likely to be at peace: the letters we found there, however, shewed us how near we were to ruin here in the Borough: where nothing but the astonishing presence of mind shewed. by Perkins in amusing the mob with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,-could have saved us from actual undoing. The villains had broke in, and our brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of £150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once flourishing possessors quite undone.

"Let me stop here to give God thanks for so very undeserved, so apparent, an interposition of Providence in our favour.

"I left Mr. Thrale at Brighthelmstone and came to town again to see what was left to be done: we have now got arms and mean to defend ourselves by force if further violence is intended. Sir Philip comes every day at some hour or another-good creature, how kind he is! and how much I ought to love him! God knows

* The Lord George Gordon Riots.

I am not in this case wanting to my duty. I have presented Perkins, with my Master's permission, with two hundred guineas, and a silver urn for his lady, with his own cypher on it and this motto-Mollis responsio, Iram avertit."

In the spring of 1781, "I found," says Boswell, "on visiting Mr. Thrale that he was now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the solicitation of Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square." She has written opposite: "Spiteful again! He went by direction of his physicians where they could easiest attend to him."

The removal to Grosvenor Square is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"Monday, January 29th, 1781. So now we are to spend this winter in Grosvenor Square; my master has taken a ready-furnished lodging-house there, and we go in to-morrow. He frighted me cruelly a while ago; he would have Lady Shelburne's house, one of the finest in London; he would buy, he would build, he would give twenty to thirty guineas a week for a house. Oh Lord, thought I, the people will sure enough throw stones at me now when they see a dying man go to such mad expenses, and all, as they will naturally think, to please a wife wild with the love of expense. This was the very thing I endeavoured to avoid by canvassing the borough for him, in hopes of being through that means tyed to the brewhouse where I always hated to live till now, that I conclude his constitution lost, and that the world will say I tempt him in his weak state of body and mind

to take a fine house for me at the flashy end of the town." "He however, dear creature, is as absolute, ay, and ten times more so, than ever, since he suspects his head to be suspected, and to Grosvenor Square we are going, and I cannot be sorry, for it will doubtless be comfortable enough to see one's friends commodiously, and I have long wished to quit Harrow Corner, to be sure; how could one help it? though I did

"Call round my casks each object of desire'

all last winter: but it was a heavy drag too, and what signifies resolving never to be pleased? I will make myself comfortable in my new habitation, and be thankful to God and my husband."

On February 7, 1781, she writes to Madame D'Arblay :

"Yesterday I had a conversazione. Mrs. Montagu was brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgment, critical in talk. Sophy smiled, Piozzi sung, Pepys panted with admiration, Johnson was good humoured, Lord John Clinton attentive, Dr. Bowdler lame, and my master not asleep. Mrs. Ord looked elegant, Lady Rothes dainty, Mrs. Davenant dapper, and Sir Philip's curls were all blown about by the wind. Mrs. Byron rejoices that her Admiral and I agree so well; the way to his heart is connoisseurship it seems, and for a background and contorno, who comes up to Mrs. Thrale, you know."

In "Thraliana":

"Sunday, March 18th, 1781.-Well! Now I have

experienced the delights of a London winter, spent in the bosom of flattery, gayety, and Grosvenor Square; 'tis a poor thing, however, and leaves a void in the mind, but I have had my compting-house duties to attend, my sick master to watch, my little children to look after, and how much good have I done in any way? Not a scrap as I can see; the pecuniary affairs have gone on perversely: how should they chuse [an omission here] when the sole proprietor is incapable of giving orders, yet not so far incapable as to be set aside! Distress, fraud, folly, meet me at every turn, and I am not able to fight against them all, though endued with an iron constitution, which shakes not by sleepless nights or days severely fretted,

“Mr. Thrale talks now of going to Spa and Italy again; how shall we drag him thither? A man who cannot keep awake four hours at a stroke &c. Well! this will indeed be a tryal of one's patience; and who must go with us on this expedition? Mr. Johnson!—he will indeed be the only happy person of the party; he values nothing under heaven but his own mind, which is a spark from heaven, and that will be invigorated by the addition of new ideas. If Mr. Thrale dies on the road, Johnson will console himself by learning how it is to travel with a corpse: and, after all, such reasoning is the true philosophy-one's heart is a mere incumbrance would I could leave mine behind. The children shall go to their sisters at Kensington, Mrs. Cumyns may take care of them all. God grant us a happy meeting some where and some time!

"Baretti should attend, I think; there is no man who has so much of every language, and can manage so well with Johnson, is so tidy on the road, so active too to obtain good accommodations. He is the man in the world, I think, whom I most abhor, and who hates and professes to hate me the most; but what does that signifie? He will be careful of Mr. Thrale and Hester whom he does love-and he won't strangle me, I suppose. Somebody we must have. Croza would court. our daughter, and Piozzi could not talk to Johnson, nor, I suppose, do one any good but sing to one, should we sing songs in a strange land? must be the man, and I will beg it of him as a favour. Oh, the triumph he will have! and the lyes he will tell!"

and how

Baretti

Thrale's death is thus described in "Thraliana":

On

"On the Sunday, the 1st of April, I went to hear the Bishop of Peterborough preach at May Fair Chapel, and though the sermon had nothing in it particularly pathetic, I could not keep my tears within my eyes. I spent the evening, however, at Lady Rothes', and was cheerful. Found Sir John Lade, Johnson, and Boswell, with Mr. Thrale, at my return to the Square. Monday morning Mr. Evans came to breakfast; Sir Philip and Dr. Johnson to dinner-so did Baretti. Thrale eat voraciously— so voraciously that, encouraged by Jebb and Pepys, who had charged me to do so, I checked him rather severely, and Mr. Johnson added these remarkable words: "Sir, after the denunciation of your physicians this morning, such eating is little better than suicide." He did not, however, desist, and

Mr.