Chapter IX: Part 9

On February 3rd, 1785, Horace Walpole writes from London to Sir Horace Mann at Florence:--"I have lately been lent a volume of poems composed and printed at Florence, in which another of our exheroines, Mrs. Piozzi, has a considerable share; her associates three of the English bards who assisted in the little garland which Ramsay the painter sent me. The present is a plump octavo; and if you have not sent me a copy by our nephew, I should be glad if you could get one for me: not for the merit of the verses, which are moderate enough and faint imitations of our good poets; but for a short and sensible and genteel preface by La Piozzi, from whom I have just seen a very clever letter to Mrs. Montagu, to disavow a jackanapes who has lately made a noise here, one Boswell, by Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. In a day or two we expect another collection by the same Signora."

Her associates were Greathead, Merry, and Parsons. The volume in question was "The Florence Miscellany." "A copy," says Mr. Lowndes, "having fallen into the hands of W. Grifford, gave rise to his admirable satire of the 'Baviad and Moeviad.'"

In his Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, Boswell makes Johnson say of Mrs. Montagu's "Essay on Shakespeare": "Reynolds is fond of her book, and I wonder at it; for neither I, nor Beauclerc, nor Mrs. Thrale could get through it." This is what Mrs. Piozzi wrote to disavow, so far as she was personally concerned. In a subsequent letter from Vienna, she says: "Mrs. Montagu has written to me very sweetly." The other collection expected from her was her "Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life. Printed for T. Cadell in the Strand, 1786."

She opened the matter to Mr. Cadell in the following terms:

"Florence, 7th June, 1785.

"_Sir_.,--As you were at once the bookseller and friend of Dr. Johnson, who always spoke of your character in the kindest terms, I could wish you likewise to be the publisher of some Anecdotes concerning the last twenty years of his life, collected by me during the many days I had opportunity to spend in his instructive company, and digested into method since I heard of his death. As I have a large collection of his letters in England, besides some verses, known only to myself, I wish to delay printing till we can make two or three little volumes, not unacceptable, perhaps, to the public; but I desire my intention to be notified, for divers reasons, and, if you approve of the scheme, should wish it to be immediately advertized. My return cannot be in less than twelve months, and we may be detained still longer, as our intention is to complete the tour of Italy; but the book is in forwardness, and it has been seen by many English and Italian friends."

On July 27th, 1785, she writes from Florence:

"We celebrated our wedding anniversary two days ago with a magnificent dinner and concert, at which the Prince Corsini and his brother the Cardinal did us the honour of assisting, and wished us joy in the tenderest and politest terms. Lord and Lady Cowper, Lord Pembroke, and _all_ the English indeed, doat on my husband, and show us every possible attention."

On the 18th July, 1785, she writes again to Mr. Cadell:--"I am favoured with your answer and pleased with the advertisement, but it will be impossible to print the verses till my return to England, as they are all locked up with other papers in the Bank, nor should I choose to put the key (which is now at Milan) in any one's hand except my own."

She therefore proposes that the "Anecdotes" shall be printed first, and published separately. On the 20th October, 1785, she writes from Sienna:

"I finished my 'Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson' at Florence, and taking them with me to Leghorn, got a clear transcript made there, such as I hope will do for you to print from; though there may be some errors, perhaps many, which have escaped me, as I am wholly unused to the business of sending manuscripts to the press, and must rely on you to get everything done properly when, it comes into your hands."

Such was the surviving ascendency of Johnson, or such the placability of her disposition, that, but for Piozzi's remonstrances, she would have softened down her "Anecdotes" to an extent which would have destroyed much of their sterling value.

Mr. Lysons made the final bargain with Cadell, and had full power to act for her. She writes thus to Cadell:

"Rome, 28th March, 1786.

"SIR,--I hasten to tell you that I am perfectly pleased and contented with the alterations made by my worthy and amiable friends in the 'Anecdotes of Johnson's Life.' Whatever is done by Sir Lucas Pepys is certainly well done, and I am happy in the thoughts of his having interested himself about it. Mr. Lysons was very judicious and very kind in going to the Bishop of Peterboro', and him and Dr. Lort for advice. There is no better to be had in the world, I believe; and it is my desire that they should be always consulted about any future transactions of the same sort relating to, Sir, your most obedient servant,

"H. L. PIOZZI."[1]

[Footnote 1: The letters to Mr. Cadell were published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for March and April, 1852.]

The early portions of "Thraliana" were evidently amongst the papers locked up in the Bank, and she consequently wrote most of the Anecdotes from memory, which may account for some minor discrepancies, like that relating to the year in which she made the acquaintance with Johnson.

The book attracted great attention; and whilst some affected to discover in it the latent signs of wounded vanity and pique, others vehemently impugned its accuracy. Foremost amongst her assailants stood Boswell, who had an obvious motive for depreciating her, and he attempts to destroy her authority, first, by quoting Johnson's supposed imputations on her veracity; and secondly, by individual instances of her alleged departure from truth.

Thus, Johnson is reported to have said:--"It is amazing, Sir, what deviations there are from precise truth, in the account which is given of almost everything. I told Mrs. Thrale, You have so little anxiety about truth that you never tax your memory with the exact thing."

Her proneness to exaggerated praise especially excited his indignation, and he endeavours to make her responsible for his rudeness on the strength of it.

"Mrs. Thrale gave high praise to Mr. Dudley Long (now North). _Johnson_. 'Nay, my dear lady, don't talk so. Mr. Long's character is very _short_. It is nothing. He fills a chair. He is a man of genteel appearance, and that is all. I know nobody who blasts by praise as you do: for whenever there is exaggerated praise, every body is set against a character. They are provoked to attack it. Now there is Pepys; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves. _His blood is upon your head_. By the same principle, your malice defeats itself; for your censure is too violent. And yet (looking to her with a leering smile) she is the first woman in the world, could she but restrain that wicked tongue of hers;--she would be the only woman, could she but command that little whirligig.'"

Opposite the words I have printed in italics she has written: "An expression he would not have used; no, not for worlds."

In Boswell's note of a visit to Streatham in 1778, we find:--

"Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth even in the most minute particulars. 'Accustom your children,' said he, 'constantly to this: if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them: you do not know where deviation from truth will end.' _Boswell_. 'It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be totally different from what really happened.' Our lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say 'Nay, this is too much. If Dr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day: but little variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching.' _Johnson_. 'Well, Madam, and you _ought_ to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth, than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.'"

Now for the illustrative incident, which occurred during the same visit:--

"I had before dinner repeated a ridiculous story told me by an old man, who had been a passenger with me in the stage-coach to-day. Mrs. Thrale, having taken occasion to allude to it in talking to me, called it, 'The story told you by the old _woman_.' 'Now, Madam,' said I, 'give me leave to catch you in the fact: it was not an old _woman_, but an old _man_, whom I mentioned as having told me this.' I presumed to take an opportunity, in the presence of Johnson, of showing this lively lady how ready she was, unintentionally, to deviate from exact authenticity of narration."

In the margin: "Mrs. Thrale knew there was no such thing as an Old Man: when a man gets superannuated, they call him an Old Woman."

The remarks on the value of truth attributed to Johnson are just and sound in the main, but when they are pointed against character, they must be weighed in reference to the very high standard he habitually insisted upon. He would not allow his servant to say he was not at home when he was. "A servant's strict regard for truth," he continued, "must be weakened by such a practice. A philosopher may know that it is merely a form of denial; but few servants are such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason to apprehend that he will tell many lies for himself?"

One of his townspeople, Mr. Wickens, of Lichfield, was walking with him in a small meandering shrubbery formed so as to hide the termination, and observed that it might be taken for an extensive labyrinth, but that it would prove a deception, though it was, indeed, not an unpardonable one. "Sir," exclaimed Johnson, "don't tell me of deception; a lie, Sir, is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear." Whilst he was in one of these paradoxical humours, there was no pleasing him; and he has been known to insult persons of respectability for repeating current accounts of events, sounding new and strange, which turned out to be literally true; such as the red-hot shot at Gibraltar, or the effects of the earthquake at Lisbon. Yet he could be lax when it suited him, as speaking of epitaphs: "The writer of an epitaph should not be considered as saying nothing but what is strictly true. Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise. In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath." Is he upon oath in narrating an anecdote? or could he do more than swear to the best of his recollection and belief, if he was. Boswell's notes of conversations are wonderful results of a peculiar faculty, or combination of faculties, but the utmost they can be supposed to convey is the substance of what took place, in an exceedingly condensed shape, lighted up at intervals by the _ipsissima verba_, of the speaker.

"Whilst he went on talking triumphantly," says Boswell, "I was fixed in admiration, and said to Mrs. Thrale, 'O for short-hand to take this down!' 'You'll carry it all in your head,' said she; 'a long head is as good as short-hand.'" On his boasting of the efficiency of his own system of short-hand to Johnson, he was put to the test and failed.

Mrs. Piozzi at once admits and accounts for the inferiority of her own collection of anecdotes, when she denounces "a trick which I have seen played on common occasions, of sitting steadily down at the other end of the room, to write at the moment what should be said in company, either _by_ Dr. Johnson or _to_ him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that were it commonly adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society, and a conversation assembly room would become tremendous as a court of justice." This is a hit at Boswell, who (as regards Johnson himself) had full licence to take notes the best way he could. Madame D'Arblay's are much fuller, and bear a suspicious resemblance to the dialogues in her novels.

In a reply to Boswell, dated December 14th, 1793, Miss Seward pointedly remarks:

"Dr. Johnson's frequently-expressed contempt for Mrs. Thrale on account of that want of veracity which he imputes to her, at least as Mr. Boswell has recorded, either convicts him of narrating what Johnson never said, or Johnson himself of that insincerity of which there are too many instances, amidst all the recorded proofs of his unprovoked personal rudeness, to those with whom he conversed; for, this repeated contempt was coeval with his published letters, which express such high and perfect esteem for that lady, which declare that 'to hear her, was to hear Wisdom, that to see her, was to see Virtue.'"

Lord Macaulay and his advocate in the "Edinburgh Review," who speak of Mrs. Piozzi's "white lies," have not convicted her of one; and Mr. Croker bears strong testimony to her accuracy.

Mrs. Piozzi prefaces some instances of Johnson's rudeness and harshness by the remark, that "he did not hate the persons he treated with roughness, or despise them whom he drove from him by apparent scorn. He really loved and respected many whom he would not suffer to love him." Boswell echoes the remark, multiplies the instances, and then accuses her of misrepresenting their friend. After mentioning a discourteous reply to Robertson the historian, which was subsequently confirmed by Boswell, she proceeds to show that Johnson was no gentler to herself or those for whom he had the greatest regard. "When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin, killed in America, 'Prithee, my dear (said he), have done with canting: how would the world be worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's supper?'--Presto was the dog that lay under the table." To this Boswell opposes the version given by Baretti:

"Mrs. Thrale, while supping very heartily upon larks, laid down her knife and fork, and abruptly exclaimed, 'O, my dear Johnson! do you know what has happened? The last letters from abroad have brought us an account that our poor cousin's head was taken off by a cannon-ball.' Johnson, who was shocked both at the fact and her light unfeeling manner of mentioning it, replied, 'Madam, it would give _you_ very little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and dressed for Presto's supper."

This version, assuming its truth, aggravates the personal rudeness of the speech. But her marginal notes on the passage are: "Boswell appealing to Baretti for a testimony of the truth is comical enough! I never addressed him (Johnson) so familiarly in my life. I never did eat any supper, and there were no larks to eat."

"Upon mentioning this story to my friend Mr. Wilkes," adds Boswell, "he pleasantly matched it with the following sentimental anecdote. He was invited by a young man of fashion at Paris to sup with him and a lady who had been for some time his mistress, but with whom he was going to part. He said to Mr. Wilkes that he really felt very much for her, she was in such distress, and that he meant to make her a present of 200 louis d'ors. Mr. Wilkes observed the behaviour of Mademoiselle, who sighed indeed very piteously, and assumed every pathetic air of grief, but ate no less than three French pigeons, which are as large as English partridges, besides other things. Mr. Wilkes whispered the gentleman, 'We often say in England, "Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry," but I never heard "Excessive sorrow is exceeding hungry." Perhaps one hundred will do. The gentleman took the hint." Mrs. Piozzi's marginal ebullition is: "Very like my hearty supper of larks, who never eat supper at all, nor was ever a hot dish seen on the table after dinner at Streatham Park."

Two instances of inaccuracy, announced as particularly worthy of notice, are supplied by "an eminent critic," understood to be Malone, who begins by stating, "I have often been in his (Johnson's) company, and never _once_ heard him say a severe thing to any one; and many others can attest the same." Malone had lived very little with Johnson, and to appreciate his evidence, we should know what he and Boswell would agree to call a severe thing. Once, on Johnson's observing that they had "good talk" on the "preceding evening," "Yes, Sir," replied Boswell, "you tossed and gored several persons." Do tossing and goring come within the definition of severity? In another place he says, "I have seen even Mrs. Thrale stunned;" and Miss Reynolds relates that "One day at her own table he spoke so very roughly to her, that every one present was surprised that she could bear it so placidly; and on the ladies withdrawing, I expressed great astonishment that Dr. Johnson should speak so harshly to her, but to this she said no more than 'Oh, dear, good man.'"

One of the two instances of Mrs. Piozzi's inaccuracy is as follows:--"He once bade a very celebrated lady (Hannah More) who praised him with too much zeal perhaps, or perhaps too strong an emphasis (which always offended him) consider what her flattery was worth before she choaked _him_ with it."

Now, exclaims Mr. Malone, let the genuine anecdote be contrasted 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 compliments, he 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 really belong to it, but which Mrs. Thrale either did not know, or has suppressed!"

How do we know that these circumstances really belong to it? what essential difference do they make? and how do they prove Mrs. Thrale's inaccuracy, who expressly states the nature of the probable, though certainly most inadequate, provocation.

The other instance is a story which she tells on Mr. Thrale's authority, of an argument between Johnson and a gentleman, which the master of the house, a nobleman, tried to cut short by saying loud enough for the doctor to hear, "Our friend has no meaning in all this, except just to relate at the 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 I feel the disgrace." Malone, on the authority of a nameless friend, asserts that it was not at the house of a nobleman, that the gentleman's remark was uttered in a low tone, and that Johnson made no retort at all. As Mrs. Piozzi could hardly have invented the story, the sole question is, whether Mr. Thrale or Malone's friend was right. She has written in the margin: "It was the house of Thomas Fitzmaurice, son to Lord Shelburne, and Pottinger the hero."[1]

"Mrs. Piozzi," says Boswell, "has given a similar misrepresentation of Johnson's treatment of Garrick in this particular (as to the Club), as if he had used these contemptuous expressions: 'If Garrick does apply, I'll blackball him. Surely one ought to sit in a society like ours--

"'Unelbow'd by a gamester, pimp, or player.'"

The lady retorts, "He did say so, and Mr. Thrale stood astonished." Johnson was constantly depreciating the profession of the stage.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Being in company with Count Z----, at Lord ----'s table, the Count thinking the Doctor too dogmatical, observed, he did not at all think himself honoured by the conversation.' And what is to become of me, my lord, who feel myself actually disgraced?"--_Johnsoniana_, p. 143, first edition.]

[Footnote 2: "_Boswell_. There, Sir, you are always heretical, you never will allow merit to a player. _Johnson_. Merit, Sir, what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?"--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_, p. 556.]

Whilst finding fault with Mrs. Piozzi for inaccuracy in another place, Boswell supplies an additional example of Johnson's habitual disregard of the ordinary rules of good breeding in society:--

"A learned gentleman [Dr. Vansittart], who, in the course of conversation, wished to inform us of this simple fact, that the council upon the circuit of Shrewsbury were much bitten by fleas, took, I suppose, seven or eight minutes in relating it circumstantially. He in a plenitude of phrase told us, that large bales of woollen cloth were lodged in the town-hall; that by reason of this, fleas nestled there in prodigious numbers; that the lodgings of the council were near the town-hall; and that those little animals moved from place to place with wonderful agility. Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however), 'It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must have served you a twelve-month.'"

He complains in a note that Mrs. Piozzi, to whom he told the anecdote, has related it "as if the gentleman had given the natural history of the mouse." But, in a letter to Johnson she tells _him_ "I have seen the man that saw the mouse," and he replies "Poor V----, he is a good man, &c.;" so that her version of the story is the best authenticated. Opposite Boswell's aggressive paragraph she has written: "I saw old Mitchell of Brighthelmstone affront him (Johnson) terribly once about fleas. Johnson, being tired of the subject, expressed his impatience of it with coarseness. 'Why, Sir,' said the old man, 'why should not Flea bite o'me be treated as Phlebotomy? It empties the capillary vessels.'"

Boswell's Life of Johnson was not published till 1791; but the controversy kindled by the Tour to the Hebrides and the Anecdotes, raged fiercely enough to fix general attention and afford ample scope for ridicule: "The Bozzi &c. subjects," writes Hannah More in April 1786, "are not exhausted, though everybody seems heartily sick of them. Everybody, however, conspires not to let them drop. _That_, the Cagliostro, and the Cardinal's necklace, spoil all conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepys' last night." In one of Walpole's letters about the same time we find:

"All conversation turns on a trio of culprits--Hastings, Fitzgerald, and the Cardinal de Rohan.... So much for tragedy. Our comic performers are Boswell and Dame Piozzi. The cock biographer has fixed a direct lie on the hen, by an advertisement in which he affirms that he communicated his manuscript to Madame Thrale, and that she made no objection to what he says of her low opinion of Mrs. Montagu's book. It is very possible that it might not be her real opinion, but was uttered in compliment to Johnson, or for fear he should spit in her face if she disagreed with him; but how will she get over her not objecting to the passage remaining? She must have known, by knowing Boswell, and by having a similar intention herself, that his 'Anecdotes' would certainly be published: in short, the ridiculous woman will be strangely disappointed. As she must have heard that _the whole first impression of her book was sold the first day_, no doubt she expected on her landing, to be received like the governor of Gibraltar, and to find the road strewed with branches of palm. She, and Boswell, and their Hero, are the joke of the public. A Dr. Walcot, _soi-disant_ Peter Pindar, has published a burlesque eclogue, in which Boswell and the Signora are the interlocutors, and all the absurdest passages in the works of both are ridiculed. The print-shops teem with satiric prints in them: one in which Boswell, as a monkey, is riding on Johnson, the bear, has this witty inscription, 'My Friend _delineavit_.' But enough of these mountebanks."

What Walpole calls the absurdest passages are precisely those which possess most interest for posterity; namely, the minute personal details, which bring Johnson home to the mind's eye. Peter Pindar, however, was simply labouring in his vocation when he made the best of them, as in the following lines. His satire is in the form of a Town Eclogue, in which Bozzy and Madame Piozzi contend in anecdotes, with Hawkins for umpire:

BOZZY.

"One Thursday morn did Doctor Johnson wake,
And call out 'Lanky, Lanky,' by mistake--
But recollecting--'Bozzy, Bozzy,' cry'd--
For in _contractions_ Johnson took a pride!"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"I ask'd him if he knock'd Tom Osborn down;
As such a tale was current through the town,--
Says I, 'Do tell me, Doctor, what befell.'--
'Why, dearest lady, there is nought to _tell_;
'I ponder'd on the _proper'st_ mode to _treat_ him--
'The dog was impudent, and so I beat him!
'Tom, like a fool, proclaim'd his fancied wrongs;
'_Others_, that I belabour'd, held their tongues.'"

"Did any one, that he was _happy_, cry--
Johnson would tell him plumply, 'twas a lie.
A Lady told him she was really so;
On which he sternly answer'd, 'Madam, no!
'Sickly you are, and ugly--foolish, poor;
'And therefore can't he happy, I am sure.
''Twould make a fellow hang himself, whose ear
'Were, from such creatures, forc'd 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 humours he began to fill,
I thought he would not go to Icolmkill:
But lo! those megrims (wonderful to utter!)
Were banish'd all by tea and bread and butter!"

At last they get angry, and tell each other 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 Montagu the lie--
So palpable a falsehood?--Bozzy, fie!"

BOZZY.

"_Who_, madd'ning with an anecdotic itch,
Declar'd that Johnson call'd his mother _b-tch?_"

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 mention'd 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 form'd to flatter)
'Madam,
'_If that most ignominious matter
'Be not concluded_'--[1]
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 swill'd her ale,
May _sicken_ at Piozzi, nine in ten--
Turn up the nose of scorn--good God! what then?
For _me_, the Dev'l 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, unconfin'd, shall spread my peacock tail;
Free as the birds of air, enjoy my ease,
Choose my own food, and see what climes I please.
_I_ suffer only--if I'm in the wrong:
So, now, you prating puppy, hold your tongue."

[Footnote 1: This evidently referred to the "adumbration" of Johnson's letter (No. 4), _ante_, p. 239.]

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 favourable 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[1], but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humour. 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.'"

[Footnote 1: See _ante_, p. 202 and 270.]

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 that 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."

When the king sent for a copy of the "Anecdotes" on the evening of the publication, there was none to be had.

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.

Mrs. Piozzi writes from Venice, May 20th, 1786: "Cadell says he never yet published a work the sale of which was so rapid, and that rapidity of so long continuance. I suppose the fifth edition will meet me at my return."

"Milan, July 6th, 1786.

"If Cadell would send me some copies, I should be very much obliged to him. _'Tis like living without a looking-glass never to see one's own book so_."

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[1], and after being bound was presented to me by my excellent friend, H.L.P. (signed) J.F."

[Footnote 1: The "Anecdotes" were reprinted by Messrs. Longman in 1856, and form part of their "Traveller's Library."]

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 patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Again: "On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms of 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 evening, 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 (Lady Catherine Wynne) 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 small 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.' It 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 Grarrick; 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 second he was so witty, there was no bearing him; the third he was so drunk, there was no bearing him." [1]

[Footnote 1: Query, whether this is the gentleman immortalised by Peter Plymley: "In the third year of his present Majesty (George III.) and in the thirtieth of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evening at the court of Naples. His dress was a volcano silk, with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under Saint Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the Neapolitan throne."]

In the "Anecdotes" she relates that one day in Wales she meant to please Johnson with a dish of young peas. "Are they not charming?" said I, while he was eating them. "Perhaps," said he, "they would be so--to a pig;" meaning (according to the marginal note), because they were too little boiled. Pennant, the historian, used to tell this as having happened at Mrs. Cotton's, who, according to him, called out, "Then do help yourself, Mr. Johnson." But the well-known high breeding of the lady justifies a belief that this is one of the many repartees which, if conceived, were never uttered at the time.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have heard on good authority that Pennant afterwards owned it as his own invention.]

When a Lincolnshire lady, shewing Johnson a grotto, asked him: "Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer?" he replied: "I think it would, Madam, _for a toad_." Talking of Gray's Odes, he said, "They are forced plants, raised in a hotbed; and they are poor plants: they are but cucumbers after all." A gentleman present, who had been running down ode-writing in general, as a bad species of poetry, unluckily said, "Had they been literally cucumbers, they had been better things than odes." "Yes, Sir," said Johnson, "_for a hog_."

To return to the Anecdotes:

"Of the various states and conditions of humanity, he despised none more, I think, than the man who marries for maintenance: and of a friend who made his alliance on no higher principles, he said once, 'Now has that fellow,' it was a nobleman of whom we were speaking, 'at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar.'" The nobleman was Lord Sandys.

"He recommended, on something like the same principle, that when one person meant to serve another, he should not go about it slily, or, as we say, underhand, out of a false idea of delicacy, to surprise one's friend with an unexpected favour; 'which, ten to one,' says he, 'fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. Oh! never be seduced by such silly pretences,' continued he; 'if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron.'" This lady was Mrs. Montagu.

"I mentioned two friends who were particularly fond of looking at themselves in a glass--'They do not surprise me at all by so doing,' said Johnson: 'they see reflected in that glass, men who have risen from almost the lowest situations in life; one to enormous riches, the other to everything this world can give--rank, fame, and fortune. They see, likewise, men who have merited their advancement by the exertion and improvement of those talents which God had given them; and I see not why they should avoid the mirror.'" The one, she writes, was Mr. Cator, the other, Wedderburne. Another great lawyer and very ugly man, Dunning, Lord Ashburton, was remarkable for the same peculiarity, and had his walls covered with looking-glasses. His personal vanity was excessive; and his boast that a celebrated courtesan had died with one of his letters in her hand, provoked one of Wilkes's happiest repartees.

Opposite a passage descriptive of Johnson's conversation she has written: "We used to say to one another familiarly at Streatham Park, 'Come, let us go into the library, and make Johnson speak Ramblers.'"

Dr. Lort writes to Bishop Percy:

"December 16th, 1786.

"I had a letter lately from Mrs. Piozzi, dated Vienna, November 4, in which she says that, after visiting Prague and Dresden, she shall return home by Brussels, whither I have written to her; and I imagine she will be in London early in the new year. Miss Thrale is at her own house at Brighthelmstone, accompanied by a very respectable companion, an officer's widow, recommended to her as such.[1] There is a new life of Johnson published by a Dr. Towers, a Dissenting minister and Dr. Kippis's associate in the Biographia Britannica, for which work I take it for granted this life is to be hashed up again when the letter 'J' takes its turn. There is nothing new in it; and the author gives Johnson and his biographers all fair play, except when he treats of his political opinions and pamphlets. I was glad to hear that Johnson confessed to Dr. Fordyce, a little before his death, that he had offended both God and man by his pride of understanding.[2] Sir John Hawkins' Life of him is also finished, and will be published with the works in February next. From all these I suppose Boswell will borrow largely to make up his quarto life;--and so our modern authors proceed, preying on one another, and complaining sorely of each other."

[Footnote 1: The Hon. Mrs. Murray, afterwards Mrs. Aust!]

[Footnote 2: He used very different language to Langton.]

"March 8th, 1787.

"I had a letter lately from Mrs. Piozzi from Brussels, intimating that she should soon be in England, and I expect every day to hear of her arrival. I do not believe that she purchased a marquisate abroad; but it is said, with some probability, that she will here get the King's license, or an act of Parliament, to change her name to Salusbury, her maiden name. Sir John Hawkins, I am told, bears hard upon her in his 'Life of Johnson.'"

"March 21st, 1787.

"Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi are arrived at an hotel in Pall Mall, and are about to take a house in Hanover Square; they were with me last Saturday evening, when I asked some of her friends to meet her; she looks very well, and seems in good spirits; told me she had been that morning at the bank to get 'Johnson's Correspondence' amongst other papers, which she means forthwith to commit to the press. There is a bookseller has printed two supplementary volumes to Hawkins' eleven, consisting almost wholly of the 'Lilliputian Speeches.' Hawkins has printed a Review of the 'Sublime and Beautiful' as Johnson's, which Murphy says was his."

"March 13th, 1787.

"Mrs. Piozzi and her _caro sposo_ seem very happy here at a good house in Hanover Square, where I am invited to a rout next week, the first I believe she has attempted, and then will be seen who of her old acquaintance continue such. She is now printing Johnson's Letters in 2 vols. octavo, with some of her own; but if they are not ready before the recess they will not be published till next winter. Poor Sir John Hawkins, I am told, is pulled all to pieces in the Review." Sir John was treated according to his deserts, and did not escape whipping. One of the severest castigations was inflicted by Porson.

Before mentioning her next publication, I will show from "Thraliana" her state of mind when about to start for England, and her impressions of things and people on her return:

"1786.--It has always been my maxim never to influence the inclination of another: Mr. Thrale, in consequence, lived with me seventeen and a half years, during which time I tried but twice to persuade him to _do_ anything, and but once, and that in vain, to let anything alone. Even my daughters, as soon as they could reason, were always allowed, and even encouraged, by me to reason their own way, and not suffer their respect or affection for me to mislead their judgment. Let us keep the mind clear if we can from prejudices, or truth will never be found at all.[1] The worst part of this disinterested scheme is, that other people are not of my mind, and if I resolve not to use my lawful influence to make my children love me, the lookers-on will soon use their unlawful influence to make them hate me: if I scrupulously avoid persuading my husband to become a Lutheran or be of the English church, the Romanists will be diligent to teach him all the narrowness and bitterness of their own unfeeling sect, and soon persuade him that it is not delicacy but weakness makes me desist from the combat. Well! let me do right, and leave the consequences in His hand who alone sees every action's motive and the true cause of every effect: let me endeavour to please God, and to have only my own faults and follies, not those of another, to answer for."

[Footnote 1: "Clear your mind of _cant_."--JOHNSON.]

"1787, _May_ 1_st_.--It was not wrong to come home after all, but very right. The Italians would have said we were afraid to face England, and the English would have said we were confined abroad in prisons or convents or some stuff. I find Mr. Smith (one of our daughter's guardians) told that poor baby Cecilia a fine staring tale how my husband locked me up at Milan and fed me on bread and water, to make the child hate Mr. Piozzi. Good God! What infamous proceeding was this! My husband never saw the fellow, so could not have provoked him."

"_May_ 19_th_.--We bad 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."

"1788, _January_ 1_st_.--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!"----

"_August_ 1_st_--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_ 17_th_.--Mrs. Siddons dined in a coterie of my unprovoked enemies yesterday at Porteous'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 behaviour. Mrs. Grarrick, 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. Grarrick: they are countrywomen 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
She drops her pole and seems to slip,
Straight gath'ring all her active strength,
She rises higher half her length;'

and better than _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!"

"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, 'tis because I make a false conclusion, not because I make no conclusion at all; when I rattle, I rattle on purpose."

"1789, _May_ 1_st_.--Mrs. Montagu 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. Montagu. We want no flash, no flattery. I never had more of either in my life, nor ever lived half so happily: Mrs. Montagu wrote creeping letters when she wanted my help, or foolishly _thought_ she did, and then turned her back upon me and set 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_ 18_th_.--I met Miss Burney at an assembly last night--'tis six years since I had seen her: she appeared most fondly rejoyced, 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 humour: and we talked of the King and Queen, his Majesty's illness and recovery ... and all ended, as it should do, with perfect indifference."

"I saw _Master Pepys_[1] too and Mrs. Ord; and only see how foolish and how mortified the people do but look."

[Footnote 1: This is Sir W. Pepys mentioned _ante_, p. 252.]

"Barclay and Perkins live very genteelly. 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 forgive them--but, like the linnet in 'Metastasio'--

"'Cauto divien per prova
Ne piu tradir si fa.'

"'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--it shall cheat him no more.'"

"1790, _July_ 28_th_.--We have kept our seventh wedding day and celebrated our return to _this house_[1] with prodigious splendour and gaiety. Seventy people to dinner.... Never was a pleasanter day seen, and at night the trees and front of the house were illuminated with coloured lamps that called forth our neighbours 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 almost incredible; and which gave Mr. Piozzi a high opinion of English gratitude and respectful attachment."

[Footnote 1: Streatham.]