started into his eye, as he spoke this in a management of the business in the hands of faltering tone. Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua and I endeavoured to flatter his imagination with agreeable prospects of happiness in Italy. "Nay," said he, "I must not expect much of that; when a man goes to Italy merely to feel how he breathes the air, he can enjoy very little."

Our conversation turned upon living in the country, which Johnson, whose melancholy mind required the dissipation of quick successive variety, had habituated himself to consider as a kind of mental imprisonment. "Yet, sir,” said I," there are many people who are content to live in the country." JOHNSON. "Sir, it is in the intellectual world as in the physical world: we are told by natural philosophers that a body is at rest in the place that is fit for it; they who are content to live in the country are fit for the country."

Soon after this time Dr. Johnson had the mortification of being informed by Mrs. Thrale, that "what she supposed he never believed" was true; namely, that she was actually going to marry Signor Piozzi, an Italian musick-master.

["MRS. PIOZZI1 TO DR. JOHNSON.

"Bath, 30th June, [1784.]

"MY DEAR SIR,-The enclosed is Letters, a circular letter, which I have sent vol. to all the guardians; but our friend- p. 375. ship 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 pains. I could not have borne to reject that counTalking of various enjoyments, I argued sel it would have killed me to take, and I that a refinement of taste was a disadvan-only tell it you now because all is irrevocatage, as they who have attained to it must be seldomer pleased than those who have no nice discrimination, and are therefore satisfied with every thing that comes in their way. JOHNSON. "Nay, sir, that is a paltry notion. Endeavour to be as perfect as

you can in every respect."

We

bly settled, and out of your power to pre-
vent. 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 in-
dependent 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."]

ED.

He endeavoured to prevent it; but in vain. [The following is the only letter of Dr. Johnson on this subject which she has published:—

I accompanied him in Sir Joshua Reynolds's coach to the entry of Bolt-court. He asked me whether I would not go with him to his house; I declined it, from an apprehension that my spirits would sink. bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot-pavement, he called out, Fare you well!" and, without looking back, sprang away with a kind of pathetick briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal un-done, however I may lament it, I vol. ii. easiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.

I remained one day more in town, to have the chance of talking over my negotiation with the Lord Chancellor; but the multiplicity of his lordship's important engagements did not allow of it; so I left the of the celebrated Charles Townshend, as well as of Mr. Burke to whom he had bequeathed 10007. in his will; but recollecting that he might outlive his friend, or that the legacy might fall when Mr. Burke did not want it, he requested him to accept it from his living hand, "ut pignus amicitiæ." Doctor Brocklesby's name was the subject of one of Mr. Burke's playful puns. There was, cotemporary with him, in London, a low quack who called himself Doctor Rock. One day Mr. Burke called Brocklesby Doctor Rock, and on his taking some offence at this disreputable appellation, Burke undertook to prove algebraically that Rock was his proper name, thus, "Brock-b Rock," or "Brock less b, makes Rock." Q. E. D. ED.]

=

"DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. PIOZZI. "London, July 9th, 1784. "DEAR MADAM,-What you have Letters,

have no pretence to resent, as it has P. 376. not been injurious to me : I therefore breathe out one sigh more of tenderness, perhaps useless, but at least sincere.

"I wish that God may grant you every blessing, that you may be happy in this world for its short continuance, and eternally happy in a better state; and whatever

1 [In the lady's own publication of the correspondence, this letter is given as from Mrs. Piozzi, and is signed with the initial of her new name; Dr. Johnson's answer is also addressed to Mrs. Piozzi, and both the letters allude to the matter as done; yet it appears by the periodical publications of the day that the marriage did not take place until the 25th July. The Editor knows not how to account for this but by supposing that Mrs. Piozzi, to avoid Johnson's importunities, had stated that as done 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.-ED.]

I can contribute to your happiness I am very ready to repay, for that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.

"Do not think slightly of the advice which I now presume to offer. Prevail upon M. Piozzi to settle in England: you may live here with more dignity than in Italy, and with more security: your rank will be higher and your fortune more under your own eye. I desire not to detail all my reasons, but every argument of prudence and interest is for England, and only some phantoms of imagination seduce you to Italy

"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 o be followed by your good wishes, for I am, with great affection, your, &c.

"SAM. JOHNSON.

Any letters that come for me hither will be sent me."]

p. 567.

gun the year before, but, I believe, was never finished, and accepted an invitation to the house of a friend at Ashbourne in Derbyshire, proposing to stay there till towards the end of the summer, and, in his return, to visit Mrs. Porter, his daughterin-law, and others of his friends, at 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, a letter, of which the following spurious copy was inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine for December, 1784:

"MADAM,-If you are already ignominiously married, you are lost beyond 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 post-chaise and attend you at Bath. Pray do not refuse this favour to a man who hath so many years loved and honoured you."

What answer was returned to his friendly monition I know not, but it seems that it was succeeded by a letter 2 of greater length,

That this letter is spurious, as to the language, I have Johnson's own authority for saying; but, in respect of the sentiments, If she would publish the whole of the cor- he avowed it, in a declaration to me, that respondence that passed between Dr. John- not a sentence of it was his, but yet that it son and her on the subject, we should have was an adumbration of one that he wrote a full view of his real sentiments. As it is, upon the occasion. It may therefore be our judgment must be biassed by that char- suspected, that some one who had heard acteristick specimen which Sir John Haw-him repeat the contents of the letter had kins has given us [in the following pas- given it to the public in the form in which sage 1.] it appeared. [About the middle of 1784, he Hawk. 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 be

[Here Mr. Boswell had inserted a few lines of the passage, which the Editor thinks right to give in full.-ED.]

2 [It appears as if Sir J. Hawkins, who had not had the advantage of seeing the correspondence published by Mrs. Piozzi, had made some confusion about these letters. It seems clear that the first of the series must have been, not Johnson's remonstrance, but hers, (ante, p. 406, dated Bath, 30th June. To that Johnson probably replied by the letter, the contents of which are adumbrated in that of the Gentleman's Magazine." To this she probably rejoined by the letter which Sir J. Hawkins says that he saw, to which Johnson's of the 8th July, given above, may have been the reply. Sir J. 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.-ED.]

66

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 1; 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 befal 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:

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 critick 2," 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 many others can attest the same. When he did say a severe thing, if 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:

p. 183.

"It is said, that natural rough- Piozzi, ness of his manner so often mention- Anec. ed would, notwithstanding the regu larity of his notions, burst through them all from time to time; and he once bade a very celebrated lady, who praised him with too "Poor Thrale! I thought that either her much zeal perhaps, or perhaps too strong an virtue or her vice," (meaning, as I under-emphasis (which always offended him), constood, by the former, the love of her chil- sider what her flattery was worth before dren, and by the latter her pride) "would she choked him with it.' 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 I will own to have been terrifying in the first years of our friendship, and irksome in the last; nor could I pretend to support it without help; when my coadjutor was no more." Alas! how different is this from the declarations which I have heard Mrs. Thrale make in his lifetime, without a single murmur against

1 Pope and Swift's Miscellanies, " Phyllis, or the Progress of Love."-BosWELL.

.

"Now let the genuine anecdote be con trasted with this.-The person thus represented as being 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,' was his reply. She still laid it on. Pray, madam, let us have no more of this,' he rejoined. Not paying any attention to these warnings, she continued still her eulogy. At length, provoked by this indelicate and vain obtrusion of

2 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" contains the germs of these criticisms. Several of his similar animadversions

have been already quoted, with the editor's reasons for differing essentially from Mr. Boswell and work. See ante, pp. 142, 258, 260, 261, n. Mr. Malone in their estimate of Mrs. Piozzi's 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 1825.-ED.]

took occasion, when he afterwards met him, to make a very courteous and kind apology. There is another little circumstance which I cannot but remark. Her book was published in 1785; she had then in her possession a letter from Dr. Johnson, dated in 1777, which begins thus: "Chol- Letters, mondeley's story shocks me, if it be vol. ii. true, which I can hardly think, for I p. 12. am utterly unconscious of it: I am very sorry, and very much ashamed." Why then publish the anecdote? Or if she did, why not add the circumstances, with which she was well acquainted 2 ?

the prefaces, sermons, lectures, and dedica- | tions which he used to make for people who begged of him." I am certain that a more active friend has rarely been found in any age. This work, which I fondly hope will rescue his memory from obloquy, contains a thousand instances of his benevolent exertions in almost every way that can be conceived; and particularly in employing his pen with a generous readiness for those 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 moth-rary question was started; and it was on er; 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?

She relates, that Mr. Cholmondeley 1 unexpectedly rode up to Mr. Thrale's carriage, in which Mr. Thrale, and she, and Dr. Johnson were travelling; that he paid them all his proper compliments, but observing that Dr. Johnson, who was reading, did not see him, "tapped him gently on the shoulder. "Tis Mr. Cholmondeley,' says my husband. 'Well, sir—and what if it is Mr. Cholmondeley?' says the other, sternly, just lifting his eyes a moment from his book, and returning to it again with renewed avidity." This surely conveys a notion of Johnson, as if he had been grossly rude to Mr. Cholmondeley, a gentleman whom he always loved and esteemed. If, therefore, there was an absolute necessity for mentioning the story at all, it might have been thought that her tenderness for Dr. Johnson's character would have disposed her to state any thing that could soften it. Why then is there a total silence as to what Mr. Cholmondeley told her?that Johnson, who had known him from his earliest years, having been made sensible of what had doubtless a strange appearance,

1 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 died in Feb. 1831, æt. 79, as this sheet was passing through the press. It is odd that the Editor should have had the same remark to make as to Mr. Chamberlain Clark and Mr. Joddrel so nearly at the same time: ante, p. 366 and 376.-ED.]

In his social intercourse she thus Piozzi describes him: "Ever musing till Anec. he was called out to converse, and p. 23. conversing till the fatigue of his friends, or the promptitude of his own temper to take offence, consigned him back again to silent meditation." Yet in the same book she tells us, " He was, however, seldom inclined to be silent when any moral or lite

such occasions that, like the sage in Rasselas,' he spoke, and attention watched his lips; he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods." His conversation, indeed, was so far from ever fatiguing his friends3, that they regretted when it was interrupted or ceased, and could exclaim in Milton's language,

"With thee conversing, I forget all time."

I certainly, then, do not claim too much in behalf of my illustrious friend in saying, that however smart and entertaining Mrs. Thrale's "Anecdotes " are, they must not be held as good evidence against him; for wherever an instance of harshness and severity is told, I beg leave to doubt its perfect authenticity; for though there may have been some foundation for it, yet,

2 [See ante, p. 187. Let it be observed that here is no charge of falsehood or inaccuracy; the story is admitted to be true, but Mr. Boswell asks, "why did she not relate the apology which Johnson made to Mr. Cholmondeley?" It does not appear that she knew it: and finally Mr. Boswell inquires, "why publish so unfavourable an anecdote?" Why, it may be asked in return, has Mr. Boswell published fifty as unfavourable?— ED.]

3 [Mr. Boswell himself tells us that Johnson kept such late hours that he would frequently outsit all his company. Surely Mrs. Piozzi was justified in saying, in a colloquial style, that such a conversation had ended from "the fatigue of his friends." Ante, p. 133. There can be no doubt that after her deplorable marriage she lost much of her reverence and regard for Dr. Johnson, and many of her observations and expressions are tinged with vexation and anger; but they do not, in the Editor's opinion, ever amount to any thing like a falsification of facts.-ED.]