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Good God! What infamous proceeding was this! My husband never saw the fellow, so could not have provoked him."

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"May 19th. We had a fine assembly last night indeed in my best days I never had finer; there were near a hundred people in the rooms, which were besides much admired."

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1788, January 1st. - How little I thought this day four years that I should celebrate this 1st of January, 1788, here at Bath, surrounded with friends and admirers? The public partial to me, and almost every individual whose kindness is worth wishing for, sincerely attached to my husband."

"Mrs. Byron is converted by Piozzi's assiduity, she really likes him now; and sweet Mrs. Lambert told everybody at Bath she was in love with him."

"I have passed a delightful winter in spite of them, caressed by my friends, adored by my husband, amused with every entertainment that is going forward: what need I think about three sullen Misses? and yet!

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August 1st. Baretti has been grossly abusive in the 'European Magazine' to me: that hurts me but little; what shocks me is that those treacherous Burneys should abet and puff him. He is a most ungrateful because unprincipled wretch; but I am sorry that anything belonging to Dr. Burney should be so monstrously wicked."

"1789, January 17th. Mrs. Siddons dined in a coterie of my unprovoked enemies yesterday at Porteus's. She mentioned our concerts, and the Erskines lamented their absence from one we gave two days ago, at which Mrs. Garrick was present and gave a good report to the Blues. Charming Blues! blue with venom I think; I suppose they begin to be ashamed of their paltry behavior. Mrs. Garrick, more prudent than any of them, left a loophole for returning friendship to fasten through, and it shall fasten that woman has lived a very wise life, regular and steady in her conduct, attentive to every word she speaks and every step she treads, decorous in her manners and graceful in her person. My fancy forms the Queen just like Mrs. Garrick: they are country women, and have, as the phrase is, had a hard card to play; yet, never lurched by tricksters nor subdued by superior powers, they will rise from the table unhurt either by others or

themselves,. . . . . having played a saving game. I have run risques, to be sure, that I have; yet

"When after some distinguished leap

and better than

She drops her pole and seems to slip,
Straight gath'ring all her active strength,
She rises higher half her length;'

now I have never stood with the world in general, I believe. May the books just sent to press confirm the partiality of the Public!"

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"1789, January.—I have a great deal more prudence than people suspect me for: they think I act by chance, while I am doing nothing in the world unintentionally, and have never, I dare say, in these last fifteen years, uttered a word to husband, or child, or servant, or friend, without being very careful what it should be. Often have I spoken what I have repented after, but that was want of judgment, not of meaning. What I said I meant to say at the time, and thought it best to say. I do not err from haste or a spirit of rattling, as people think I do : when I err, 't is because I make a false conclusion, not because I make no conclusion at all; when I rattle, I rattle on purpose." "1789, May 1st. Mrs. Montague wants to make up with me again. I dare say she does; but I will not be taken and left even at the pleasure of those who are much nearer and dearer to me than Mrs. Montague. We want no flash, no flattery. I never had more of either in my life, nor ever lived half so happily Mrs. Montague wrote creeping letters when she wanted my help, or foolishly thought she did, and then turned her back upon me and sent her adherents to do the same. I despise such conduct, and Mr. Pepys, Mrs. Ord, &c., now sneak about and look ashamed of themselves, well they may!' "1790, March 18th.—I met Miss Burney at an assembly last night. - 't is six years since I had seen her: she appeared most fondly rejoiced, in good time! and Mrs. Locke, at whose house we stumbled on each other, pretended that she had such a regard for me, &c. I answered with ease and coldness, but in exceeding good-humor; and we talked of the King and Queen, his Majesty's illness and recovery, . and all ended, as it should do, with perfect indifference."

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"I saw Master Pepys too and Mrs. Ord; and only see how foolish and how mortified the people do but look."

"Barclay and Perkins live very genteely. I dined with them at our brewhouse one day last week. I felt so oddly in the old house where I had lived so long."

"The Pepyses find out that they have used me very ill. . . . I hope they find out too that I do not care. Seward, too, sues for reconcilement underhand; so they do all; and I sincerely

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forgive them, but, like the linnet in 'Metastasio,'

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"Cauto divien per prova

Nè più tradir si fà.'

"When lim'd, the poor bird thus with eagerness strains,
Nor regrets his torn wing while his freedom he gains:
The loss of his plumage small time will restore,
And once tried the false twig,

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it shall cheat him no more.'"

"1790, July 28th. We have kept our seventh wedding-day and celebrated our return to this house with prodigious splendor and gayety. Seventy people to dinner. Never was a

pleasanter day seen, and at night the trees and front of the house were illuminated with colored lamps, that called forth our neighbors from all the adjacent villages to admire and enjoy the diversion. Many friends swear that not less than a thousand men, women, and children might have been counted in the house and grounds, where, though all were admitted, nothing was stolen, lost, or broken, or even damaged, a circumstance most incredible; and which gave Mr. Piozzi a high opinion of English gratitude and respectful attachment."

"1790, December 1st.

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Dr. Parr and I are in correspondence, and his letters are very flattering: I am proud of his notice to be sure, and he seems pleased with my acknowledgments of esteem he is a prodigious scholar; but in the mean time I have lost Dr. Lort."

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The following are some of the names most frequently mentioned in her Diary as visiting or corresponding with her after her return from Italy: Lord Fife, Dr. Moore, the Kembles, Dr. Currie, Mrs. Lewis (widow of the Dean of Ossory), Dr. Lort, Sir Lucas Pepys, Mr. Selwin, Sammy Lysons (sic), Sir Philip

*Streatham.

Clerke, Hon. Mrs. Byron, Mrs. Siddons, Arthur Murphy, Mr. and Mrs. Whalley, the Greatheads, Mr. Parsons, Miss Seward, Miss Lee, Dr. Barnard (Bishop of Killaloe, better known as Dean of Derry), Hinchcliffe (Bishop of Peterborough), Mrs. Lambert, the Staffords, Lord Huntingdon, Lady Betty Cobb and her daughter Mrs. Gould, Lord Dudley, Lord Cowper, Lord Pembroke, Marquis Araciel, Count Marteningo, Count Meltze, Mrs. Drummond Smith, Mr. Chappelow, Mrs. Hobart, Miss Nicholson, Mrs. Locke, Lord Deerhurst.

Resentment for her imputed unkindness to Johnson might have been expected to last longest at his birthplace. But Miss Seward writes from Lichfield, October 6th, 1787:

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"Mrs. Piozzi completely answers your description: her conversation is indeed that bright wine of the intellects which has no lees. .. I shall always feel indebted to him (Mr. Perkins) for eight or nine hours of Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi's society. They passed one evening here, and I the next with them at their inn." Again, to Miss Helen Williams, Lichfield, December 25th, 1787:

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"Yes, it is very true, on the evening he (Colonel Barry) mentioned to you, when Mrs. Piozzi honored this roof, his conversation greatly contributed to its Attic spirit. Till that day I had never conversed with her. There has been no exaggeration, there could be none, in the description given you of Mrs. Piozzi's talents for conversation; at least in the powers of classic allusion and brilliant wit."

That she and her eldest daughter should ever be again on a perfect footing of confidence and affection, was a moral impossibility. Estrangements are commonly durable in proportion to the closeness of the tie that has been severed or loosened; and it is no more than natural that each party, yearning for a reconciliation and not knowing that the wish is reciprocated, should persevere in casting the blame of the prolonged coldness on the other. The occasional sarcasms which Mrs. Piozzi levels at Miss Thrale no more prove disregard or indifference, than Swift's "only a woman's hair" implies contempt for the sex.

Her marriage with Lord Keith in 1808 is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":—

“The T. (‘Thraliana') is coming to an end; so are the Thrales. The eldest is married now. Admiral Lord Keith the man; a good man for aught I hear; a rich man for aught I am told; a brave man we have always heard; and a wise man I trow by his choice. The name no new one, and excellent for a charade, e. g. "A Faery my first, who to fame makes pretence;

My second a Rock, dear Britannia's defence;

In my third when combined will too quickly be shown
The Faery and Rock in our brave Elphin-stone."

Mrs. Piozzi's next publication was "Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL. D., &c." In the Preface she speaks of the "Anecdotes" having been received with a degree of approbation she hardly dared to hope, and exclaims, "May these Letters in some measure pay my debt of gratitude! they will not surely be the first, the only thing written by Johnson, with which our nation has not been pleased." A strange mode of conciliating favor for a book; but she proceeds in a different strain: "The good taste by which our countrymen are distinguished, will lead them to prefer the native thoughts and unstudied phrases scattered over these pages to the more labored elegance of his other works; as bees have been observed to reject roses, and fix upon the wild fragrance of a neighboring heath." Whenever Johnson took pen in hand, the chances were, that what he produced would belong to the composite order; the unstudied phrases were reserved for his "talk," and he wished his Letters to be preserved.* The main value of these consists in the additional illustrations they afford of his conduct in private life, and of his opinions on the management of domestic affairs. The lack of literary and public interest is admitted and excused:

"None but domestic and familiar events can be expected from a private correspondence; no reflections but such as they excite can be found there; yet whoever turns away disgusted by the insipidity with which this, and I suppose every correspondence must naturally and almost necessarily begin, will here be likely to lose some genuine pleasure, and some useful knowledge of what our heroic Milton was himself contented to respect, as

"That which before thee lies in daily life.'

* Vol. I. p. 295.

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