"Did any one, that he was happy, cry —
Johnson would tell him plumply, 't was a lie.
A Lady told him she was really so;

On which he sternly answered, 'Madam, no!
Sickly you are, and ugly, — foolish, poor;

And therefore can't be happy, I am sure.

'T would make a fellow hang himself, whose ear
Were, from such creatures, forced such stuff to hear.'"

BOZZY.

"Lo, when we landed on the Isle of Mull, The megrims got into the Doctor's skull: With such bad humors he began to fill,

I thought he would not go to Icolmkill:

But lo! those megrims (wonderful to utter!)

Were banished all by tea and bread and butter!"

At last they get angry, and tell each a few home truths:

BOZZY.

"How could your folly tell, so void of truth,

That miserable story of the youth,

Who, in your book, of Doctor Johnson begs

Most seriously to know if cats laid eggs!"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"Who told of Mistress Montague the lie So palpable a falsehood? - Bozzy, fie!"

BOZZY.

"Who, madd'ning with an anecdotic itch,

Declared that Johnson called his mother b-tch? "

ས

MADAME PIOZZI.

"Who, from M Donald's rage to save his snout, Cut twenty lines of defamation out?"

BOZZY.

"Who would have said a word about Sam's wig, Or told the story of the peas and pig?

Who would have told a tale so very flat,

Of Frank the Black, and Hodge the mangy cat?"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"Good me! you 're grown at once confounded tender ;

Of Doctor Johnson's fame a fierce defender:

I'm sure you 've mentioned many a pretty story
Not much redounding to the Doctor's glory.
Now for a saint upon us you would palm him-
First murder the poor man, and then embalm him!'

BOZZY.

"Well, Ma'am! since all that Johnson said or wrote,

You hold so sacred, how have you forgot
To grant the wonder-hunting world a reading
Of Sam's Epistle, just before your wedding;
Beginning thus (in strains not formed to flatter),
'Madam,

If that most ignominious matter

Be not concluded'.

Farther shall I say?

No - we shall have it from yourself some day,
To justify your passion for the Youth,

With all the charms of eloquence and truth."

MADAME PIOZZI.

"What was my marriage, Sir, to you or him?
He tell me what to do!- a pretty whim!
He, to propriety (the beast) resort!

As well might elephants preside at court.
Lord! let the world to damn my match agree;
Good God! James Boswell, what's that world to me?
The folks who paid respects to Mistress Thrale,
Fed on her pork, poor souls! and swilled her ale,
May sicken at Piozzi, nine in ten
Turn up the nose of scorn-good God! what then?
For me, the Devil may fetch their souls so great;
They keep their homes, and I, thank God, my meat.
When they, poor owls! shall beat their cage, a jail,
I, unconfined, shall spread my peacock tail;
Free as the birds of air, enjoy my ease,

Choose my own food, and see what climes I please.

Walpole's opinion of the book itself had been expressed in a preceding letter, dated March 28th, 1786:

"Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed, in her, I mean: not in him. I had conceived a favorable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago.. The Signora talks of her doctor's expanded mind, and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor woman is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out, but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humor. Judge! The Piozzi relates that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied: In Ireland: it was a bog planted with palm-trees.''

Walpole's statement that the whole first impression was sold the first day is confirmed by one of her letters, and may be placed alongside of a statement of Johnson's reported in the book. Clarissa being mentioned as a perfect character, "on the contrary (said he) you may observe there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances; but that vile broken nose never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night."

In April, 1786, Hannah More writes:

"Mrs. Piozzi's book is much in fashion. It is indeed entertaining, but there are two or three passages exceedingly unkind to Garrick which filled me with indignation. If Johnson had been envious enough to utter them, she might have been prudent enough to suppress them."

In a preceding letter she had said :—

"Boswell tells me he is printing anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, not his life, but, as he has the vanity to call it, his pyramid. I besought his tenderness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend, and begged he would mitigate some of his asperities. He

said roughly, he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please anybody." The retort will serve for both Mrs. Piozzi and himself.

The copy of the "Anecdotes" in my possession has two inscriptions on the blank leaves before the title-page. The one is in Mrs. Piozzi's handwriting: "This little dirty book is kindly accepted by Sir James Fellowes from his obliged friend, H. L. Piozzi, 14th February, 1816;" the other: "This copy of the 'Anecdotes' was found at Bath, covered with dirt, the book having been long out of print,* and after being bound was presented to me by my excellent friend, H. L. P. (signed) J. F.”

It is enriched by marginal notes in her handwriting, which enable us to fill up a few puzzling blanks, besides supplying some information respecting men and books, which will be prized by all lovers of literature.

One of the anecdotes runs thus: "I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted. He talked to me at the Club one day (replies our Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy; so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb.'"

In the margin is written "Charles James Fox." Mr. Croker came to the conclusion that the gentleman was Mr. Vesey. Boswell says that Fox never talked with any freedom in the presence of Johnson, who accounted for his reserve by suggesting that a man who is used to the applause of the House of Commons has no wish for that of a private company. But the real cause was his sensitiveness to rudeness, his own temper being singularly sweet. By an odd coincidence he occupied the presidential chair at the Club on the evening when Johnson emphatically declared every Whig to be a scoundrel. Again: "On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse: 'I am not obliged, Sir,' said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, 'to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark: what are stars and other signs of superiority made for?' The next even

*The "Anecdotes " were reprinted by Messrs. Longman in 1856, and form part of their Traveller's Library."

ing, however, he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature, and use, and abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking, received an answer which I will not write down."

The marginal note is: "He said, 'Why, Sir, I did not know the man. If he will put on no other mark of distinction, let us make him wear his horns." Lord Bolingbroke had divorced his wife, afterwards Lady Diana Beauclerc, for infidelity.

A marginal note, naming the lady of quality mentioned in the following anecdote, verifies Mr. Croker's conjectural statement concerning her :

"For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales, with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation: 'That woman,' cries Johnson, 'is like sour beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled.' This was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady, that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive,' said he, she would sting.'"

From similar notes we learn that the "somebody" who declared Johnson a tremendous converser was George Garrick ; and that it was Dr. Delap, of Sussex, to whom, when lamenting the tender state of his inside, he cried out: "Dear Doctor, do not be like the spider, man, and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels."*

On the margin of the page in which Hawkins Browne is commended as the most delightful of conversers, she has written: "Who wrote the Imitation of all the Poets' in his own ludicrous verses, praising the pipe of tobacco. Of Hawkins Browne, the pretty Mrs. Cholmondeley said she was soon tired; because the first hour he was so dull, there was no bearing him; the sec

* Lord Melbourne complained of two ladies of quality, sisters, that they told him too much of their "natural history."