["MRS. PIOZZI1 TO JOHNSON. "Bath, June 30. 1784. "MY DEAR SIR, The enclosed is a circular letter, which I have sent to all the guardians; but our friendship demands somewhat more: it requires that I should beg your pardon for concealing from you a connexion which you must have heard of by many, but I suppose never believed. Indeed, my dear Sir, it was concealed only to save us both needless pain. I could not have borne to reject that counsel it would have killed me to take, and I only tell it you now because all is irrevocably settled, and out of your power to prevent. I will say, however, that the dread of your disapprobation has given me some anxious moments, and though, perhaps, I am become by many privations the most independent woman in the world, I feel as if acting without a parent's consent till you write kindly to your faithful servant, H. L. P."] Letters. ["About the middle of 1784, he was, to appearance, so well, that both himself and his friends hoped that he had some years to live. He had recovered from the paralytic stroke of the last year to such a degree, that, saving a little difficulty in his articulation, he had no remains of it; he had also undergone a slight fit of the gout, and conquered an oppression on his lungs, so as to be able, as himself told me, to run up the whole staircase of the Royal Academy, on the day of the annual dinner there. In short, to such a degree of health was he restored, that he forgot all his complaints: he resumed sitting to Opie for his picture, which had been begun the year before, but, I believe, was “DEAR MADAM, —What you have done, how-house of a friend at Ashbourne in Derbyshire, pronever finished, and accepted an invitation to the ever I may lament it, I have no pretence to resent, as it has not been injurious to me; I therefore breathe out one sigh more of tenderness, perhaps He endeavoured to prevent it, but in vain. ["JOHNSON TO MRS. PIOZZI. useless, but at least sincere. "London, July 8. 1784. "I wish that God may grant you every blessing, your rank will be higher, and your fortune more "I am afraid, however, that my counsel is vain; yet I have eased my heart by giving it. "When Queen Mary took the resolution of sheltering herself in England, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, attempting to dissuade her, attended on her journey; and when they came to the irremeable stream that separated the two kingdoms, walked by her side into the water, in the middle of which he seized her bridle, and with earnestness proportioned to her danger and his own affection pressed her to return. The queen went forward. If the parallel reaches thus far, may it go no farther. The tears stand in my eyes. "I am going into Derbyshire, and hope to be followed by your good wishes, for I am, with great affection, your, &c., SAM. JOHNSON, posing to stay there till towards the end of the his daughter-in-law, and others of his friends, at summer, and, in his return, to visit Mrs. Porter, Lichfield. "A few weeks before his setting out, he was made uneasy by a report that the widow of his friend Mr. Thrale was about to dispose of herself in marriage to a foreigner, a singer by profession, and with him to quit the kingdom. Upon this occasion, he took the alarm, and to prevent a degradation of herself, and, what as executor of her husband was more his concern, the desertion of her children, wrote to her, she then being at Bath, "MADAM,-If you are already ignominiously married, you are lost beyond all redemption; - if you are not, permit me one hour's conversation, to convince you that such a marriage must not take place. If, after a whole hour's reasoning, you should not be convinced, you will still be at liberty to act as you think proper. I have been extremely ill, and am still ill; but if you grant me the audience I ask, I will instantly take a postchaise and attend you at Bath. Pray do not refuse this favour to a man who hath so many years loved and honoured you." "That this letter is spurious, as to the language, I have Johnson's own authority for saying; but, in respect of the sentiments, he avowed it, in a declaration to me, that not a sentence of it was his, but yet that it was an adumbration of one that he wrote upon the occasion. It may therefore be suspected, not how to account for this but by supposing that Mrs. Piozzi, to avoid Johnson's importunities, wished him to understand as done that which was only settled to be done. Any reader who is curious about this miserable mésalliance will find it most acrimoniously discussed in Baretti's Strictures in the European Magazine for 1788. CROKER. 2 Boswell had given but the last sentence of the following extract. I give the whole passage. — CROKER. that some one who had heard him repeat the contents of the letter had given it to the public in the form in which it appeared. "What answer was returned to his friendly monition I know not, but it seems that it was succeeded by a letter' of greater length, written, as it afterwards appeared, too late to do any good, in which he expressed an opinion, that the person to whom it was addressed had forfeited her fame. The answer to this I have seen: it is written from Bath, and contains an indignant vindication as well of her conduct as her fame, an inhibition of Johnson from following her to Bath, and a farewell, concluding Till you have changed your opinion of [Piozzi] let us converse no more.' "From the style of the letter, a conclusion was to be drawn that baffled all the powers of reasoning and persuasion : "One argument she summ'd up all in, The thing was done and past recalling; which being the case, he contented himself with reflecting on what he had done to prevent that which he thought one of the greatest evils that could befall the progeny of his friend, the alienation of the affections of their mother. He looked upon the desertion of children by their parents, and the withdrawing from them that protection, that mental nutriment, which, in their youth, they are capable of receiving, the exposing them to the snares and temptations of the world, and the solicitations and deceits of the artful and designing, as most unnatural; and in a letter on the subject to me, written from Ashbourne, thus delivered his sentiments:] "Poor Thrale! I thought that either her virtue or her vice,' (meaning, as I understood, by the former, the love of her children, and by the latter, her pride,) would have restrained her from such a marriage. She is now become a subject for her enemies to exult over, and for her friends, if she has any left, to forget or pity.'" It must be admitted that Johnson derived a considerable portion of happiness from the comforts and elegancies which he enjoyed in Mr. Thrale's family; but Mrs. Thrale assures us he was indebted for these to her husband alone, who certainly respected him sincerely. Her words are, "Veneration for his virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conversation, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband first put upon me, and of which he contentedly bore his share for sixteen or seventeen years, made me go on so long with Mr. Johnson; but the perpetual confinement 1 will own to have been terrifying in the first years of 1 It appears as if Hawkins (who had not had the advantage of seeing the correspondence published by Mrs. Piozzi) had made some confusion about these letters. It is clear that the first of the series must have been not Johnson's remonstrance, but her announcement, dated Bath, June 30., which we have just seen. To that Johnson may have replied by the letter, the contents of which are adumbrated in the Gentleman's Magazine. To this she probably rejoined by the letter which Hawkins says that he saw, to which Johnson's of the 8th of July, given above, may have been the reply. Hawkins thinks that there were three letters from Dr. Johnson, whereas it seems probable that there were but two, of which one only is preserved.. CROKER our friendship, and irksome in the last; nor could I pretend to support it without help, when my coadjutor was no more." Alas! how dif ferent is this from the declarations which I have heard Mrs. Thrale make in his lifetime, without a single murmur against any peculiarities, or against any one circumstance which attended their intimacy! As a sincere friend of the great man whose life I am writing, I think it necessary to guard my readers against the mistaken notion of Dr. Johnson's character, which this Lady's "Anecdotes" of him suggest; for, from the very nature and form of her book, " it lends deception lighter wings to fly." "Let it be remembered," says an eminent critic3, "that she has comprised in a small volume all that she could recollect of Dr. Johnson in twenty years, during which period, doubtless, some severe things were said by him: and they who read the book in two hours naturally enough suppose that his whole conversation was of this complexion. But the fact | is, I have been often in his company, and never once heard him say a severe thing to any one; and When he did many others can attest the same. say a severe thing, it was generally extorted by ignorance pretending to knowledge, or by extreme vanity or affectation. "Two instances of inaccuracy," adds he, "are peculiarly worthy of notice. "It is said, that natural roughness of his manner larity of his notions, burst through them all from time so often mentioned would, notwithstanding the regu to time; and he once bade a very celebrated lady Hannah More], who praised him with too much zed perhaps, or perhaps too strong an emphasis (which always offended him), consider what her flattery was worth before she choked him with it.' this. The person thus represented as being "Now let the genuine anecdote be contrasted with harshly treated, though a very celebrated lady, was then just come to London from an obscure situation in the country. At Sir Joshua Reynolds's one evening, she met Dr. Johnson. She very soon began to pay her court to him in the most fulsome strain. 'Spare me, I beseech you, dear Madam,' let us have no more of this,' he rejoined. Not was his reply. She still laid it on. Pray, Madam.' paying any attention to these warnings, she continued still her eulogy. At length, provoked by this indelicate and vain obtrusion of compliments, be exclaimed, Dearest Lady, consider with yourself, what your flattery is worth, before you bestow it so freely.' "How different does this story appear, when accompanied with all those circumstances which 2 Pope and Swift's Miscellanies, " Phyllis, or the Progress of Love."- BOSWELL. 3 Who has been pleased to furnish me with his remarks.- | BOSWELL. This "critic" is no doubt Mr. Malone, whose MS. notes on Mrs. Piozzi's" Anecdotes" contain the germs of these criticisms. Several of his similar animadversions have been already noticed, with my reasons for differing essentially from both Boswell and Malone in their estimate of Mrs. Piozzi's work. Mr. Malone's notes were communicated to me by Mr. Markland, who purchased the volume at the sale of the library of the late James Boswell, junior, in 1835. – CROKER. really belong to it, but which Mrs. Thrale either did not know, or has suppressed! "She says, in another place, 'One gentleman, however, who dined at a nobleman's house in his company, and that of Mr. Thrale, to whom I was obliged for the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William's character; and having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times, petulantly enough, the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable consequences; to avoid which he said, loud enough for the doctor to hear, 'Our friend has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day; this is all to do himself honour.' No, upon my word,' replied the other, I see no honour in it, whatever you may do.'-' Well, Sir,' returned Mr. Johnson sternly, if you do not see the honour, I am sure 1 feel the disgrace.' "This is all sophisticated. Mr. Thrale was not in the company, though he might have related the story to Mrs. Thrale. A friend, from whom I had "He was the most charitable of mortals, without being what we call an active friend. Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly: but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of those to whom he was willing enough to give advice. And again, on the same page, 'If you wanted a slight favour, you must apply to people of other dispositions; for not a step would Johnson move to obtain a man a vote in a society, to repay a compliment which might be useful or pleasing, to write a letter of request, &c., or to obtain a hund.ed pounds a year more for a friend who perhaps nad already two or three. No force could urge him to diligence, no importunity could conquer his resolution to stand still." It is amazing that one who had such opportunities of knowing Dr. Johnson should appear so little acquainted with his real character. I am sorry this lady does not advert, that she herself contradicts the assertion of his being obstinately defective in the petites morales, in the little endearing charities of social life in conferring smaller favours; for she says, the story, was present; and it was not at the house "Dr. Johnson was liberal enough in granting are the prefaces, sermons, lectures, and dediliterary assistance to others, I think; and innumecations which he used to make for people who begged of him." I am certain that a more active friend has I have had occasion several times, in the course of this work, to point out the incorrectness of Mrs. Thrale as to particulars which rarely been found in any age. This work, consisted with my own knowledge. But in which I fondly hope will rescue his memory from deed she has, in flippant terms enough, ex- obloquy, contains a thousand instances of his pressed her disapprobation of that anxious benevolent exertions in almost every way that desire of authenticity which prompts a person can be conceived; and particularly in employwho is to record conversations to write theming his pen with a generous readiness for those down at the moment. Unquestionably, if they are to be recorded at all, the sooner it is done the better. This lady herself says, “To recollect, however, and to repeat the sayings of Dr. Johnson, is almost all that can be done by the writers of his life; as his life, at least since my acquaintance with him, consisted in little else than talking, when he was not employed in some serious piece of work." She boasts of her having kept a commonplace book; and we find she noted, at one time or other, in a very lively manner, specimens of the conversation of Dr. Johnson, and of those who talked with him; but had she done it recently, they probably would have been less erroneous, and we should have been relieved from those disagreeable doubts of their authenticity with which we must now pursue them. She says of him, 1 Mrs. Piozzi may have been right or wrong as to the degree in which Dr. Johnson's indolence operated on those occasions; but at least she was sincere, for she did not conceal from Johnson himself that she thought him negligent in doing small favours: and Mr. Boswell's own work affords several instances in which Johnson exhibits and avows the contradictions in his character which are here imputed to Mrs. Piozzi as total misrepresentations. The truth seems to be that to all the little idle matters about which Mrs. Piozzi teased him, probably too often, he was very indifferent; and she describes him as she found him. -CROKER. to whom its aid could be useful. Indeed his obliging activity in doing little offices of kindness, both by letters and personal application, was one of the most remarkable features in his character; and for the truth of this I can appeal to a number of his respectable friends: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Burke, Mr. Windham, Mr. Malone, the Bishop of Dromore, Sir William Scott, Sir Robert Chambers. And can Mrs. Thrale forget the advertisements which he wrote for her husband at the time of his election contest; the epitaphs on him and her mother; the playful and even trifling verses for the amusement of her and her daughters, his corresponding with her children, and entering into their minute concerns, which shows him in the most amiable light? 1 2 She relates"That Mr. Cholmondeley unexpectedly rode up to Mr. Thrale's carriage, in which Mr. Thrale, George James Cholmondeley. Esq., grandson of George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, and one of the commissioners of excise; a gentleman respected for his abilities and elegance of manners. BOSWELL. He was the son of the Mrs. Cholmondeley [p. 349. n. 3.] so often mentioned. When I spoke to him a few years before his death upon this point, I found him very sore at being made the topic of such a debate, and very unwilling to remember any thing about either the offence or the apology. 1e died in Feb. 1831, ætat. 79. — CROKER, 1847. |