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Title: Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.)
       Edited with notes and Introductory Account of her life and writings

Author: Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

Release Date: February 14, 2005 [EBook #15045]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

LETTERS AND LITERARY REMAINS

OF

MRS. PIOZZI (THRALE)


EDITED WITH NOTES

AND

AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF HER LIFE AND WRITINGS

BY
A. HAYWARD, ESQ. Q.C.

       *       *       *       *       *

Welcome, Associate Forms, where'er we turn
Fill, Streatham's Hebe, the Johnsonian urn--St. Stephen's

       *       *       *       *       *

In Two Volumes
VOL. I.

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS
1861

       *       *       *       *       *




PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE first edition of a work of this kind is almost necessarily
imperfect; since the editor is commonly dependent for a great deal of
the required information upon sources the very existence of which is
unknown to him till reminiscences are revived, and communications
invited, by the announcement or publication of the book. Some
valuable contributions reached me too late to be properly placed or
effectively worked up; some, too late to be included at all. The
arrangement in this edition will therefore, I trust, be found less
faulty than in the first, whilst the additions are large and
valuable. They principally consist of fresh extracts from Mrs.
Piozzi's private diary ("Thraliana"), amounting to more than fifty
pages; of additional marginal notes on books, and of copious extracts
from letters hitherto unpublished.

Amongst the effects of her friend Conway, the actor, after his
untimely death by drowning in North America, were a copy of Mrs.
Piozzi's "Travel Book" and a copy of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets,"
each enriched by marginal notes in her handwriting. Such of those in
the "Travel Book" as were thought worth printing appeared in "The
Atlantic Monthly" for June last, from which I have taken the liberty
of copying the best. The "Lives of the Poets" is now the property of
Mr. William Alexander Smith, of New York, who was so kind as to open
a communication with me on the subject, and to have the whole of the
marginal notes transcribed for my use at his expense.

Animated by the same liberal wish to promote a literary undertaking,
Mr. J.E. Gray, son of the Rev. Dr. Robert Gray, late Bishop of
Bristol, has placed at my disposal a series of letters from Mrs.
Piozzi to his father, extending over nearly twenty-five years (from
1797 to the year of her death) and exceeding a hundred in number.
These have been of the greatest service in enabling me to complete
and verify the summary of that period of her life.

So much light is thrown by the new matter, especially by the extracts
from "Thraliana," on the alleged rupture between Johnson and Mrs.
Piozzi, that I have re-cast or re-written the part of the
Introduction relating to it, thinking that no pains should be spared
to get at the merits of a controversy which now involves, not only
the moral and social qualities of the great lexicographer, but the
degree of confidence to be placed in the most brilliant and popular
of modern critics, biographers and historians. It is no impeachment
of his integrity, no detraction from the durable elements of his
fame, to offer proof that his splendid imagination ran away with him,
or that reliance on his wonderful memory made him careless of
verifying his original impressions before recording them in the most
gorgeous and memorable language.

No one likes to have foolish or erroneous notions imputed to him, and
I have pointed out some of the misapprehensions into which an able
writer in the "Edinburgh Review" (No. 231) has been hurried by his
eagerness to vindicate Lord Macaulay. Moreover, this struck me to be
as good a form as any for re-examining the subject in all its
bearings; and now that it has become common to reprint articles in a
collected shape, the comments of a first-rate review can no longer be
regarded as transitory.

I gladly seize the present opportunity to offer my best
acknowledgments for kind and valuable aid in various shapes, to the
Marquis of Lansdowne, His Excellency M. Sylvain Van de Weyer (the
Belgian Minister), the Viscountess Combermere, Mr. and the Hon. Mrs.
Monckton Milnes, the Hon. Mrs. Rowley, Miss Angharad Lloyd, and the
Rev. W.H. Owen, Vicar of St. Asaph and Dymerchion.

  8, St. James's Street:
    Oct. 18th, 1861.

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME


Origin and Materials of the Work
Object of the Introduction
Origin, Education, and Character of Thrale
Introduction of Johnson to the Thrales
Johnson's Habits at the Period
His Household
His Social Position
Society at Streatham
Blue Stocking Parties
Johnson's Fondness for Female Society
Nature of his Intimacy with Mrs. Thrale
His Verses to her
Her Age
Her Personal Appearance and Handwriting
Portraits of her
Boswell at Streatham
Her Behaviour to Johnson
Her Acquirements
Johnson's Estimate of her
Popular Estimate of her
Manners of her Time
Madame D'Arblay at Streatham
Her Account of Conversations there
Johnson's Politeness
Mrs. Thrale's Domestic Trials
Electioneering with Johnson
Thrale's Embarrassments, and Johnson's Advice
Johnson on Housekeeping and Dress
His Opinions on Marriage
Johnson in the Country
Johnson fond of riding in a Carriage, but a bad Traveller
His Want of Taste for Music or Painting
Tour in Wales
Tour in France
Baretti
Campbell's Diary
Mrs. Thrale's Account of her Quarrel with Baretti
His Account
Alleged Slight to Johnson
Miss Streatfield
Thrale's Infidelity
Madame D'Arblay as an Inmate
Dr. Burney
Mrs. Thrale canvassing Southwark
Attack by Rioters on the Brewhouse
Thrale's Illness and Winter in Grosvenor Square
Proposed Tour
Thrale's Death
His Will
Johnson as Executor
Her Management of the Brewery
Italian Translation
A strange Incident
Mrs. Montagu--Mr. Crutchley
Sale of the Brewery
Mrs. Thrale's Introduction to Piozzi
Scene with him at Dr. Burney's
Her early Impressions of him
Melancholy Reflections
Johnson's Regard for Thrale
Mrs. Thrale's and Johnson's Feelings towards each other
Johnson at Streatham after Thrale's Death
Piozzi--Verses to him
Johnson's Health
Self-Communings
Town Gossip
Verses on Pacchierotti
Fears for Johnson
Reports of her marrying again
Reasons for quitting Streatham
Resolution to quit approved by Johnson
Complaints of Johnson's Indifference
Piozzi--to marry or not to marry
Was Johnson driven out of Streatham
His Farewell to Streatham
His last Year there
Johnson and Mrs. Thrale at Brighton
Conflicting Feelings
Gives up Piozzi
Meditated Journey to Italy
Parting with Piozzi
Unkindness of Daughters
Position as regards Johnson
Objections to him as an Inmate
Parting with Piozzi
Verses to him on his Departure
Her undiminished Regard for Johnson proved by
their Correspondence
Character of Daughters
Madame D'Arblay, Scene with Johnson
Lord Brougham's Commentary
Correspondence with Johnson
Recall of Piozzi
Trip to London
Verses to Piozzi on his Return
Journey with Daughters
Feelings on Piozzi's Return, and Marriage
Objections to her Second Marriage discussed
Correspondence with Madame D'Arblay on the Marriage
Objections of Daughters--Lady Keith
Correspondence with Johnson as to the Marriage
Baretti's Story of her alleged Deceit
Her uniform Kindness to Johnson
Johnson's Feelings and Conduct
Miss Wynn's Commonplace Book
Johnson's unfounded Objections to the Marriage and erroneous
      Impressions of Piozzi
Miss Seward's Account of his Loves
Misrepresentation and erroneous Theory of a Critic
Last Days and Death of Johnson
Lord Macaulay's Summary of Mrs. Piozzi's Treatment of Johnson
Life in Italy
Projected Work on Johnson
The Florence Miscellany
Correspondence with Cadell and Publication of the "Anecdotes"
Her alleged Inaccuracy, with Instances
H. Walpole
Peter Pindar
H. Walpole again
Hannah More
Marginal Notes on the "Anecdotes"
Extracts from Dr. Lort's Letters
Her Thoughts on her Return from Italy
Her Reception
Miss Seward's Impressions of her and Piozzi
Publication of the "Letters"
Opinions on them--Madame D'Arblay, Queen Charlotte, Hannah More, and
      Miss Seward
Baretti's libellous Attacks
Her Character of him on his Death
"The Sentimental Mother"
"Johnson's Ghost"
The Travel Book
Offer to Cadell
Publication of the Book and Criticisms--Walpole and Miss Seward
Mrs. Piozzi's Theory of Style
Attacked by Walpole and Gifford
The Preface
Extracts
Anecdote of Goldsmith
Publication of her "Synonyms"--Gifford's Attack
Extract
Remarks on the Appearance of Boswell's Life of Johnson
"Retrospection"
Moore's Anecdotes of her and Piozzi
Lord Lansdowne's Visit and Impressions
Adoption and Education of Piozzi's Nephew, afterwards Sir John Salusbury
Life in Wales
Character and Habits of Piozzi
Brynbella
Illness and Death of Piozzi
Miss Thrale's Marriage
The Conway Episode
Anecdotes
Celebration of her Eightieth Birthday
Her Death and Will
Madame D'Arblay's Parallel between Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael
Character of Mrs. Piozzi, Moral and Intellectual

       *       *       *       *       *

AUTOBIOGRAPHY &c. OF MRS. PIOZZI

VOL. I

       *       *       *       *       *




INTRODUCTION:

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MRS. PIOZZI.


Dr. Johnson was hailed the colossus of Literature by a generation who
measured him against men of no common mould--against Hume, Robertson,
Gibbon, Warburton, the Wartons, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Gray,
Goldsmith, and Burke. Any one of these may have surpassed the great
lexicographer in some branch of learning or domain of genius; but as
a man of letters, in the highest sense of the term, he towered
pre-eminent, and his superiority to each of them (except Burke) in
general acquirements, intellectual power, and force of expression,
was hardly contested by his contemporaries. To be associated with his
name has become a title of distinction in itself; and some members of
his circle enjoy, and have fairly earned, a peculiar advantage in
this respect. In their capacity of satellites revolving round the sun
of their idolatry, they attracted and reflected his light and heat.
As humble companions of their _Magnolia grandiflora_, they did more
than live with it[1]; they gathered and preserved the choicest of its
flowers. Thanks to them, his reputation is kept alive more by what
has been saved of his conversation than by his books; and his
colloquial exploits necessarily revive the memory of the friends (or
victims) who elicited and recorded them.

[Footnote 1: "Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j'ai vecu pres
d'elle."--_Constant_.]

If the two most conspicuous among these have hitherto gained
notoriety rather than what is commonly understood by fame, a
discriminating posterity is already beginning to make reparation for
the wrong. Boswell's "Letters to Temple," edited by Mr. Francis, with
"Boswelliana," printed for the Philobiblion Society by Mr. Milnes,
led, in 1857, to a revisal of the harsh sentence passed on one whom
the most formidable of his censors, Lord Macaulay, has declared to be
not less decidedly the first of biographers, than Homer is the first
of heroic poets, Shakspeare the first of dramatists, or Demosthenes
the first of orators. The result was favourable to Boswell, although
the vulnerable points of his character were still more glaringly
displayed. The appeal about to be hazarded on behalf of Mrs. Piozzi,
will involve little or no risk of this kind. Her ill-wishers made the
most of the event which so injuriously affected her reputation at the
time of its occurrence; and the marked tendency of every additional
disclosure of the circumstances has been to elevate her. No candid
person will read her Autobiography, or her Letters, without arriving
at the conclusion that her long life was morally, if not
conventionally, irreproachable; and that her talents were sufficient
to confer on her writings a value and attraction of their own, apart
from what they possess as illustrations of a period or a school. When
the papers which form the basis of this work were laid before Lord
Macaulay, he gave it as his opinion that they afforded materials for
a "most interesting and durably popular volume."[1]

[Footnote 1: His letter, dated August 22, 1859, was addressed to Mr.
T. Longman. The editorship of the papers was not proposed to me till
after his death, and I had never any personal communication with him
on the subject; although in the Edinburgh Review for July 1857, I
ventured, with the same freedom which I have used in vindicating Mrs.
Piozzi, to dispute the paradoxical judgment he had passed on Boswell.
The materials which reached me after I had undertaken the work, and
of which he was not aware, would nearly fill a volume.]

They comprise:--

1. Autobiographical Memoirs.

2. Letters, mostly addressed to the late Sir James Fellowes.

3. Fugitive pieces of her composition, most of which have never
appeared in print.

4. Manuscript notes by her on Wraxall's Memoirs, and on her own
published works, namely: "Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson,
LL.D., during the last twenty years of his life," one volume, 1786:
"Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., &c.," in two
volumes, 1788: "Observations and Reflections made in the course of a
journey through France, Italy, and Germany," in two volumes, 1789:
"Retrospection; or, Review of the most striking and important Events,
Characters, Situations, and their Consequences which the last
Eighteen Hundred Years have presented to the View of Mankind," in two
volumes, quarto, 1801.

The "Autobiographical Memoirs," and the annotated books, were given
by her to the late Sir James Fellowes, of Adbury House, Hants, M.D.,
F.R.S., to whom the letters were addressed. He and the late Sir John
Piozzi Salusbury were her executors, and the present publication
takes place in pursuance of an agreement with their personal
representatives, the Rev. G.A. Salusbury, Rector of Westbury, Salop,
and Captain J. Butler Fellowes.

Large and valuable additions to the original stock of materials have
reached me since the announcement of the work.

The Rev. Dr. Wellesley, Principal of New Inn Hall, has kindly placed
at my disposal his copy of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (edition of
1816), plentifully sprinkled with marginal notes by Mrs. Piozzi.

The Rev. Samuel Lysons, of Hempsted Court, Gloucester, has liberally
allowed me the free use of his valuable collection of books and
manuscripts, including numerous letters from Mrs. Piozzi to his
father and uncle, the Rev. Daniel Lysons and Mr. Samuel Lysons.

From 1776 to 1809 Mrs. Piozzi kept a copious diary and note-book,
called "Thraliana." Johnson thus alludes to it in a letter of
September 6th, 1777: "As you have little to do, I suppose you are
pretty diligent at the 'Thraliana;' and a very curious collection
posterity will find it. Do not remit the practice of writing down
occurrences as they arise, of whatever kind, and be very punctual in
annexing the dates. Chronology, you know, is the eye of history. Do
not omit painful casualties or unpleasing passages; they make the
variegation of existence; and there are many passages of which I will
not promise, with AEneas, _et haec olim meminisse juvabit_."
"Thraliana," which at one time she thought of burning, is now in the
possession of Mr. Salusbury, who deems it of too private and delicate
a character to be submitted to strangers, but has kindly supplied me
with some curious passages and much valuable information extracted
from it.

I shall have many minor obligations to acknowledge as I proceed.

Unless Mrs. Piozzi's character and social position are freshly
remembered, her reminiscences and literary remains will lose much of
their interest and utility. It has therefore been thought advisable
to recapitulate, by way of introduction, what has been ascertained
from other sources concerning her; especially during her intimacy
with Johnson, which lasted nearly twenty years, and exercised a
marked influence on his tone of mind.

"This year (1765)," says Boswell, "was distinguished by his (Johnson)
being introduced into the family of Mr. Thrale, one of the most
eminent brewers in England, and member of Parliament for the borough
of Southwark.... Johnson used to give this account of the rise of Mr.
Thrale's father: 'He worked at six shillings a week for twenty years
in the great brewery, which afterwards was his own. The proprietor of
it had an only daughter, who was married to a nobleman. It was not
fit that a peer should continue the business. On the old man's death,
therefore, the brewery was to be sold. To find a purchaser for so
large a property was a difficult matter; and after some time, it was
suggested that it would be advisable to treat with Thrale, a
sensible, active, honest man, who had been employed in the house, and
to transfer the whole to him for thirty thousand pounds, security
being taken upon the property. This was accordingly settled. In
eleven years Thrale paid the purchase money. He acquired a large
fortune, and lived to be a member of Parliament for Southwark. But
what was most remarkable was the liberality with which he used his
riches. He gave his son and daughters the best education. The esteem
which his good conduct procured him from the nobleman who had married
his master's daughter made him be treated with much attention; and
his son, both at school and at the University of Oxford, associated
with young men of the first rank. His allowance from his father,
after he left college, was splendid; not less than a thousand a year.
This, in a man who had risen as old Thrale did, was a very
extraordinary instance of generosity. He used to say, 'If this young
dog does not find so much after I am gone as he expects, let him
remember that he has had a great deal in my own time.'"

What is here stated regarding Thrale's origin, on the alleged
authority of Johnson, is incorrect. The elder Thrale was the nephew
of Halsey, the proprietor of the brewery whose daughter was married
to a nobleman (Lord Cobham), and he naturally nourished hopes of
being his uncle's successor. In the Abbey Church of St. Albans, there
is a monument to some members of the Thrale family who died between
1676 and 1704, adorned with a shield of arms and a crest on a ducal
coronet. Mrs. Thrale's marginal note on Boswell's account of her
husband's family is curious and characteristic:

"Edmund Halsey was son to a miller at St. Albans, with whom he
quarrelled, like Ralph in the 'Maid of the Mill,' and ran away to
London with a very few shillings in his pocket.[1] He was eminently
handsome, and old Child of the Anchor Brewhouse, Southwark, took him
in as what we call a broomstick clerk, to sweep the yard, &c. Edmund
Halsey behaved so well he was soon preferred to be a house-clerk, and
then, having free access to his master's table, married his only
daughter, and succeeded to the business upon Child's demise. Being
now rich and prosperous, he turned his eyes homewards, where he
learned that sister Sukey had married a hardworking man at Offley in
Hertfordshire, and had many children. He sent for one of them to
London (my Mr. Thrale's father); said he would make a man of him, and
did so: but made him work very hard, and treated him very roughly,
Halsey being more proud than tender, and his only child, a daughter,
married to Lord Cobham.

"Old Thrale, however, as these fine writers call him,--then a young
fellow, and, like his uncle, eminent for personal beauty,--made
himself so useful to Mr. Halsey that the weight of the business fell
entirely on him; and while Edmund was canvassing the borough and
visiting the viscountess, Ralph Thrale was getting money both for
himself and his principal: who, envious of his success with a wench
they both liked but who preferred the young man to the old one, died,
leaving him never a guinea, and he bought the brewhouse of Lord and
Lady Cobham, making an excellent bargain, with the money he had
saved."

[Footnote 1: In "Thraliana" she says: "strolled to London with only
4_s._ 6_d._ in his pocket."]

When, in the next page but one, Boswell describes Thrale as
presenting the character of a plain independent English squire, she
writes: "No, no! Mr. Thrale's manners presented the character of a
gay man of the town: like Millamant, in Congreve's comedy, he
abhorred the country and everything in it."

In "Thraliana" after a corresponding statement, she adds: "He (the
elder Thrale) educated his son and three daughters quite in a high
style. His son he wisely connected with the Cobhams and their
relations, Grenvilles, Lyttletons, and Pitts, to whom he lent money,
and they lent assistance of every other kind, so that my Mr. Thrale
was bred up at Stowe, and Stoke and Oxford, and every genteel place;
had been abroad with Lord Westcote, whose expenses old Thrale
cheerfully paid, I suppose, who was thus a kind of tutor to the young
man, who had not failed to profit by these advantages, and who was,
when he came down to Offley to see his father's birthplace, a very
handsome and well accomplished gentleman."

After expatiating on the advantages of birth, and the presumption of
new men in attempting to found a new system of gentility, Boswell
proceeds: "Mr. Thrale had married Miss Hester Lynch Salusbury, of
good Welsh extraction, a lady of lively talents, improved by
education. That Johnson's introduction into Mr. Thrale's family,
which contributed so much to the happiness of his life, was owing to
her desire for his conversation, is a very probable and the general
supposition; but it is not the truth. Mr. Murphy, who was intimate
with Mr. Thrale, having spoken very highly of Dr. Johnson, he was
requested to make them acquainted. This being mentioned to Johnson,
he accepted of an invitation to dinner at Thrale's, and was so much
pleased with his reception both by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, and they so
much pleased with him, that his invitations to their house were more
and more frequent, till at last he became one of the family, and an
apartment was appropriated to him, both in their house at Southwark
and in their villa at Streatham."

Long before this was written, Boswell had quarrelled with Mrs. Thrale
(as it is most convenient to call her till her second marriage), and
he takes every opportunity of depreciating her. He might at least,
however, have stated that, instead of sanctioning the "general
supposition" as to the introduction, she herself supplied the account
of it which he adopts. In her "Anecdotes" she says:

"The first time I ever saw this extraordinary man was in the year
1764, when Mr. Murphy, who had long been the friend and confidential
intimate of Mr. Thrale, persuaded him to wish for Johnson's
conversation, extolling it in terms which that of no other person
could have deserved, till we were only in doubt how to obtain his
company, and find an excuse for the invitation. The celebrity of Mr.
Woodhouse, a shoemaker, whose verses were at that time the subject of
common discourse, soon afforded a pretence[1], and Mr. Murphy brought
Johnson to meet him, giving me general caution not to be surprised at
his figure, dress, or behaviour[1].... Mr. Johnson liked his new
acquaintance so much, however, that from that time he dined with us
every Thursday through the winter, and in the autumn of the next year
he followed us to Brighthelmstone, whence we were gone before his
arrival; so he was disappointed and enraged, and wrote us a letter
expressive of anger, which we were very desirous to pacify, and to
obtain his company again if possible. Mr. Murphy brought him back to
us again very kindly, and from that time his visits grew more
frequent, till in the year 1766 his health, which he had always
complained of, grew so exceedingly bad, that he could not stir out of
his room in the court he inhabited for many weeks together, I think
months."

[Footnote 1: "He (Johnson) spoke with much contempt of the notice
taken of Woodhouse, the poetical shoemaker. He said that it was all
vanity and childishness, and that such objects were to those who
patronised them, mere mirrors of their own superiority. They had
better, said he, furnish the man with good implements for his trade,
than raise subscriptions for his poems. He may make an excellent
shoemaker, but can never make a good poet. A schoolboy's exercise may
be a pretty thing for a schoolboy, but it is no treat to a
man."--_Maxwell's Collectanea_.]

The "Anecdotes" were written in Italy, where she had no means of
reference. The account given in "Thraliana" has a greater air of
freshness, and proves Boswell right as to the year.

"It was on the second Thursday of the month of January, 1765, that I
first saw Mr. Johnson in a room. Murphy, whose intimacy with Mr.
Thrale had been of many years' standing, was one day dining with us
at our house in Southwark, and was zealous that we should be
acquainted with Johnson, of whose moral and literary character he
spoke in the most exalted terms; and so whetted our desire of seeing
him soon that we were only disputing _how_ he should be invited,
_when_ he should be invited, and what should be the pretence. At last
it was resolved that one Woodhouse, a shoemaker, who had written some
verses, and been asked to some tables, should likewise be asked to
ours, and made a temptation to Mr. Johnson to meet him: accordingly
he came, and Mr. Murphy at four o'clock brought Mr. Johnson to
dinner. We liked each other so well that the next Thursday was
appointed for the same company to meet, exclusive of the shoemaker,
and since then Johnson has remained till this day our constant
acquaintance, visitor, companion, and friend."

In the "Anecdotes" she goes on to say that when she and her husband
called on Johnson one morning in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, he
gave way to such an uncontrolled burst of despair regarding the world
to come, that Mr. Thrale tried to stop his mouth by placing one hand
before it, and desired her to prevail on him to quit his close
habitation for a period and come with them to Streatham. He complied,
and took up his abode with them from before Midsummer till after
Michaelmas in that year. During the next sixteen years a room in each
of their houses was set apart for him.

The principal difficulty at first was to induce him to live peaceably
with her mother, who took a strong dislike to him, and constantly led
the conversation to topics which he detested, such as foreign news
and politics. He revenged himself by writing to the newspapers
accounts of events which never happened, for the sole purpose of
mystifying her; and probably not a few of his mischievous fictions
have passed current for history. They made up their differences
before her death, and a Latin epitaph of the most eulogistic order
from his pen is inscribed upon her tomb.

It had been well for Mrs. Thrale and her guests if there had existed
no more serious objection to Johnson as an inmate. At the
commencement of the acquaintance, he was fifty-six; an age when
habits are ordinarily fixed: and many of his were of a kind which it
required no common temper and tact to tolerate or control. They had
been formed at a period when he was frequently subjected to the worst
extremities of humiliating poverty and want. He describes Savage,
without money to pay for a night's lodging in a cellar, walking about
the streets till he was weary, and sleeping in summer upon a bulk or
in winter amongst the ashes of a glass-house. He was Savage's
associate on several occasions of the sort. He told Sir Joshua
Reynolds that, one night in particular, when Savage and he walked
round St. James's Square for want of a lodging, they were not at all
depressed; but in high spirits, and brimful of patriotism, traversed
the square for several hours, inveighed against the minister, and
"resolved they would stand by their country." Whilst at college he
threw away the shoes left at his door to replace the worn-out pair in
which he appeared daily. His clothes were in so tattered a state
whilst he was writing for the "Gentleman's Magazine" that, instead of
taking his seat at Cave's table, he sate behind a screen and had his
victuals sent to him.

Talking of the symptoms of Christopher Smart's madness, he said,
"Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no
passion for it."

His deficiency in this respect seems to have made a lasting
impression on his hostess. Referring to a couplet in "The Vanity of
Human Wishes":--

  "Through all his veins the fever of renown
  _Spreads_ from the strong contagion of the gown,"

"he had desired me (says Boswell) to change _spreads_ into _burns._ I
thought this alteration not only cured the fault, but was more
poetical, as it might carry an allusion to the shirt by which
Hercules was inflamed." She has written in the margin: "Every fever
burns I believe; but Bozzy could think only on Nessus' dirty shirt,
or Dr. Johnson's." In another marginal note she disclaims that
attention to the Doctor's costume for which Boswell gives her credit,
when, after relating how he had been called into a shop by Johnson to
assist in the choice of a pair of silver buckles, he adds: "Probably
this alteration in dress had been suggested by Mrs. Thrale, by
associating with whom his external appearance was much improved." She
writes: "it was suggested by Mr. Thrale, not by his wife."

In general his wigs were very shabby, and their foreparts were burned
away by the near approach of the candle, which his short-sightedness
rendered necessary in reading. At Streatham, Mr. Thrale's valet had
always a better wig ready, with which he met Johnson at the parlour
door when dinner was announced, and as he went up stairs to bed, the
same man followed him with another.

One of his applications to Cave for a trifling advance of money is
signed _Impransus_ (Dinnerless); and he told Boswell that he could
fast two days without inconvenience, and had never been hungry but
once. What he meant by hungry is not easy to explain, for his every
day manner of eating was that of a half-famished man. When at table,
he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks were
riveted to his plate, till he had satisfied his appetite; which was
indulged with such in-* tenseness, that the veins of his forehead
swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. Until he
left off drinking fermented liquors altogether, he acted on the maxim
"claret for boys, port for men, brandy for heroes." He preferred the
strongest because he said it did its work (_i.e._ intoxicate) the
soonest. He used to pour capillaire into his port wine, and melted
butter into his chocolate. His favourite dishes are accurately
enumerated by Peter Pindar:

MADAME PIOZZI _(loquitur)._

  "Dear Doctor Johnson loved a leg of pork,
  And hearty on it would his grinders work:
  He lik'd to eat it so much over done,
  That _one_ might shake the flesh from off the bone.
  A veal pye too, with sugar crammed and plums,
  Was wondrous grateful to the Doctor's gums.
  Though us'd from morn to night on fruit to stuff,
  He vow'd his belly never had enough."

Mr. Thackeray relates in his "Irish Sketches" that on his asking for
currant jelly for his venison at a public dinner, the waiter replied,
"It's all gone, your honour, but there's some capital lobster sauce
left." This would have suited Johnson equally well, or better: he was
so fond of lobster sauce that he would call for the sauce-boat and
pour the whole of its remaining contents over his plum pudding. A
clergyman who once travelled with him relates, "The coach halted as
usual for dinner, which seemed to be a deeply interesting business to
Johnson, who vehemently attacked a dish of stewed carp, using his
fingers only in feeding himself." At the dinner when he passed his
celebrated sentence on the leg of mutton--"That it was as bad as bad
could be: ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed"--the
ladies, his fellow-passengers, observed his loss or equanimity with
wonder.

Two of Mrs. Thrale's marginal notes on Boswell refer to her
illustrious friend's mode of eating. On his reported remark, that "a
dog will take a small bit of meat as readily as a large, when both
are before him," she adds, "which Johnson would never have done."
When Boswell, describing the dinner with Wilkes at Davies', says, "No
man eat more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and
delicate," she strikes in with--"What was gustful rather: what was
strong that he could taste it, what was tender that he could chew
it."

When Boswell describes him as occupied for a considerable time in
reading the "Memoirs of Fontenelle," leaning and swinging upon the
low gate into the court (at Streatham) without his hat, her note is:
"I wonder how he liked the story of the asparagus,"--an obvious hint
at his selfish habits of indulgence at table.

With all this he affected great nicety of palate, and did not like
being asked to a plain dinner. "It was a good dinner enough," he
would remark, "but it was not a dinner to ask a man to." He was so
displeased with the performances of a nobleman's French cook, that he
exclaimed with vehemence, "I'd throw such a rascal into the river;"
and in reference to one of his Edinburgh hosts he said, "As for
Maclaurin's imitation of a made dish, it was a wretched attempt."

His voice was loud, and his gesticulations, voluntary or involuntary,
singularly uncouth. He had superstitious fancies about crossing
thresholds or squares in the carpet with the right or left leg
foremost, and when he did not appear at dinner might be found vainly
endeavouring to pass a particular spot in the anteroom. He loved late
hours, or more properly (say Mrs. Thrale) hated early ones. Nothing
was more terrifying to him than the idea of going to bed, which he
never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call it so. "I
lie down that my acquaintance may sleep; but I lie down to endure
oppressive misery, and soon rise again to pass the night in anxiety
and pain." When people could be induced to sit up with him, they were
often amply compensated by his rich flow of mind; but the resulting
sacrifice of health and comfort in an establishment where this
sitting up became habitual, was inevitably great.[1] Instead of being
grateful, he always maintained that no one forbore his own
gratification for the purpose of pleasing another, and "if one did
sit up, it was probably to amuse oneself." Boswell excuses his wife
for not coinciding in his enthusiasm, by admitting that his
illustrious friend's irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as
turning the candles with their ends downwards when they did not burn
bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could not
but be displeasing to a lady. He was generally last at breakfast, but
one morning happened to be first and waited some time alone; when
afterwards twitted by Mrs. Thrale with irregularity, he replied,
"Madam, I do not like to come down to vacuity."

[Footnote 1: Dr. Burney states that in 1765 "he very frequently met
Johnson at Streatham, where they had many long conversations, after
sitting up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer
than the patience of the servants subsisted."]

He was subject to dreadful fits of depression, caused or accompanied
by compunction for venial or fancied sins, by the fear of death or
madness--(the only things he did fear), and by ingrained ineradicable
disease. When Boswell speaks of his "striving against evil," "Ay,"
she writes in the margin, "and against the King's evil."

If his early familiarity with all the miseries of destitution,
aggravated by disease, had increased his natural roughness and
irritability, on the other hand it had helped largely to bring out
his sterling virtues,--his discriminating charity, his genuine
benevolence, his well-timed generosity, his large-hearted sympathy
with real suffering. But he required it to be material and positive,
and scoffed at mere mental or sentimental woes. "The sight of people
who want food and raiment is so common in great cities, that a surly
fellow like me has no compassion to spare for wounds given only to
vanity or softness." He said it was enough to make a plain man sick
to hear pity lavished on a family reduced by losses to exchange a
fine house for a snug cottage; and when condolence was demanded for a
lady of rank in mourning for a baby, he contrasted her with a
washerwoman with half-a-dozen children dependent on her daily labour
for their daily bread.[1]

[Footnote 1: "It's weel wi' you gentles that can sit in the house wi'
handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us
maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as any
hammer."--_The Antiquary_. For this very reason the "gentles"
commonly suffer most.]

Lord Macaulay thus portrays the objects of Johnson's hospitality as
soon as he had got a house to cover them. "It was the home of the
most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought
together. At the head of the establishment he had placed an old lady
named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and
her poverty. But in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an
asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins,
whose family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room
was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another
destitute damsel, who was generally addressed as Mrs. Carmichael, but
whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack doctor called
Levet, who bled and dosed coalheavers and hackney coachmen, and
received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and
sometimes a little copper, completed this menagerie."[1]

[Footnote 1: Miscellaneous Writings, vol. i. p. 293.]

Mrs. Williams was the daughter of a physician, and of a good Welsh
family, who did not leave her dependent on Johnson. She is termed by
Madame D'Arblay a very pretty poet, and was treated with uniform
respect by him.[1] All the authorities for the account of Levet were
collected by Hawkins[2]: from these it appears that his patients were
"chiefly of the lowest class of tradesmen," and that, although he
took all that was offered him by way of fee, including meat and
drink, he demanded nothing from the poor, nor was known in any
instance to have enforced the payment of even what was justly his
due. Hawkins adds that he (Levet) had acted for many years in the
capacity of surgeon and apothecary to Johnson under the direction of
Dr. Lawrence.

[Footnote 1: Miss Cornelia Knight, in her "Autobiography," warmly
vindicates her respectability, and refers to a memoir, by Lady
Knight, in the "European Magazine" for Oct. 1799.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Johnson, p. 396-400.]

  "When fainting Nature called for aid,
  And hovering death prepared the blow,
  His vigorous remedy display'd
  The power of Art without the show;

  No summons mocked by chill delay,
  _No petty gains disdained by pride,_
  The modest wants of every day
  The toil of every day supplied."

Johnson's verses, compared with Lord Macaulay's prose, strikingly
shew how the same subject can be degraded or elevated by the mode of
treatment; and how easily the historian or biographer, who expands
his authorities by picturesque details, may brighten or darken
characters at will.

To complete the picture of Johnson's interior, it should be added
that the inmates of his house were quarrelling from, morning to night
with one another, with his negro servant, or with himself. In one of
his letters to Mrs. Thrale, he says, "Williams hates everybody: Levet
hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams: Desmoulins hates them
both: Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them." In a conversation
at Streatham, reported by Madame D'Arblay, the _menagerie_ was thus
humorously described:--

"_Mrs. Thrale_.--Mr. Levet, I suppose, Sir, has the office of keeping
the hospital in health? for he is an apothecary.

"_Dr. J_.--Levet, Madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard
for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not his mind.

"_Mr. Thrale_.--But how do you get your dinners drest?

"_Dr. J_.--Why De Mullin has the chief management of the kitchen; but
our roasting is not magnificent, for we have no jack.

"_Mr. T_.--No jack? Why how do they manage without?

"_Dr. J_.--Small joints, I believe, they manage with a string, and
larger are done at the tavern. I have some thoughts (with a profound
gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a
house.

"_Mr. T_.--Well, but you will have a spit, too?

"_Dr. J_.--No, Sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never
use it; and if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed!

"_Mrs. T_.--But pray, Sir, who is the Poll you talk of? She that you
used to abet in her quarrels with Mrs. Williams, and call out,' At
her again, Poll! Never flinch, Poll!'

"_Dr. J_.--Why I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do
upon a nearer examination.

"_Mrs. T_.--How came she among you, Sir?

"_Dr. J_.--Why I don't rightly remember, but we could spare her very
well from us. Poll is a stupid slut; I had some hopes of her at
first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make
nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her
to be categorical."

The effect of an unbroken residence with such inmates, on a man of
irritable temper subject to morbid melancholy, may be guessed; and
the merit of the Thrales in rescuing him from it, and in soothing
down his asperities, can hardly be over-estimated. Lord Macaulay
says, they were flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated
preferred their house to every other in London; and suggests that
even the peculiarities which seem to unfit him for civilised society,
including his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his
mutterings, and the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his
food, increased the interest which his new associates took in him.
His hostess does not appear to have viewed them in that light, and
she was able to command the best company of the intellectual order
without the aid of a "lion," or a bear. If his conversation attracted
many, it drove away many, and silenced more. He accounted for the
little attention paid him by the great, by saying that "great lords
and great ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped," as if
this was peculiar to them as a class. "My leddie," remarks Cuddie in
"Old Mortality," "canna weel bide to be contradicted, as I ken
neabody likes, if they could help themselves."

Johnson was in the zenith of his fame when literature, politics, and
fashion began to blend together again by hardly perceptible shades,
like the colours in shot-silk, as they had partially done in the
Augustan age of Queen Anne. One marked sign was the formation of the
Literary Club (The Club, as it still claims to be called), which
brought together Fox, Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick,
Reynolds, and Beauclerc, besides blackballing a bishop (the Bishop of
Chester), and a lord-chancellor (Camden).[1] Yet it is curious to
observe within how narrow a circle of good houses the Doctor's
engagements were restricted. Reynolds, Paoli, Beauclerc, Allan
Ramsay, Hoole, Dilly, Strahan, Lord Lucan, Langton, Garrick, and the
Club formed his main reliance as regards dinners; and we find Boswell
recording with manifest symptoms of exultation in 1781: "I dined with
him at a bishop's where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and
some more company. He had dined the day before at another bishop's."
His reverence for the episcopal bench well merited some return on
their part. Mr. Seward saw him presented to the Archbishop of York,
and described his bow to an Archbishop as such a studied elaboration
of homage, such an extension of limb, such a flexion of body, as have
seldom or ever been equalled. The lay nobility were not equally
grateful, although his deference for the peerage was extreme. Except
in Scotland or on his travels, he is seldom found dining with a
nobleman.

[Footnote 1: Canning was blackballed the first time he was proposed.
He was elected in 1798, Mr. Windham being his proposer, and Dr.
Burney his seconder.]

It is therefore hardly an exaggeration to say that he owed more
social enjoyment to the Thrales than to all the rest of his
acquaintance put together. Holland House alone, and in its best days,
would convey to persons living in our time an adequate conception of
the Streatham circle, when it comprised Burke, Reynolds, Garrick,
Goldsmith, Boswell, Murphy, Dr. Burney and his daughter, Mrs.
Montagu, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Crewe, Lord Loughborough, Dunning
(afterwards Lord Ashburton), Lord Mulgrave, Lord Westcote, Sir Lucas
and Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Pepys, Major Holroyd afterwards Lord
Sheffield, the Bishop of London and Mrs. Porteous, the Bishop of
Peterborough and Mrs. Hinchcliffe, Miss Gregory, Miss Streatfield,
&c. As at Holland House, the chief scene of warm colloquial contest
or quiet interchange of mind was the library, a large and handsome
room, which the pencil of Reynolds gradually enriched with portraits
of all the principal persons who had conversed or studied in it. To
supply any deficiencies on the shelves, a hundred pounds, Madame
D'Arblay states, was placed at Johnson's disposal to expend in books;
and we may take it for granted that any new publication suggested by
him was ordered at once. But a bookish couple, surrounded by a
literary set, were surely not exclusively dependent on him for this
description of help, nor laid under any extraordinary obligation by
reason of it. Whilst the "Lives of the Poets" was in progress, Dr.
Johnson "would frequently produce one of the proof sheets to
embellish the breakfast table, which was always in the library, and
was certainly the most sprightly and agreeable meeting of the day."
... "These proof sheets Mrs. Thrale was permitted to read aloud, and
the discussions to which they led were in the highest degree
entertaining."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Memoirs of Dr. Burney," &c., by his daughter, Madame
D'Arblay. In three volumes, 1832. Vol. ii. p. 173-178.]

It was mainly owing to his domestication with the Thrales that he
began to frequent drawing-rooms at an age when the arm-chair at home
or at the club has an irresistible charm for most men of sedentary
pursuits. It must be admitted that the evening parties in which he
was seen, afforded a chance of something better than the "unidead
chatter of girls," with an undue fondness for which he reproached
Langton; for the _Blue Stocking_ clubs had just come into
fashion,--so called from a casual allusion to the blue stockings of
an _habitue_, Mr. Stillingfleet.[1] Their founders were Mrs. Vesey
and Mrs. Montagu; but according to Madame D'Arblay, "more bland and
more gleeful than that of either of them, was the personal celebrity
of Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Vesey, indeed, gentle and diffident, dreamed not
of any competition, but Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Thrale had long been
set up as rival candidates for colloquial eminence, and each of them
thought the other alone worthy to be her peer. Openly therefore when
they met, they combated for precedence of admiration, with placid
though high-strained intellectual exertion on the one side, and an
exuberant pleasantry or classical allusion or quotation on the other;
without the smallest malice in either."

[Footnote 1: The first of these was then (about 1768) in the meridian
of its lustre, but had been instituted many years previously at Bath,
It owed its name to an apology made by Mr. Stillingfleet in declining
to accept an invitation to a literary meeting at Mrs. Vesey's, from
not being, he said, in the habit of displaying a proper equipment for
an evening assembly. "Pho, pho," said she, "don't mind dress. Come in
your blue stockings." With which words, humorously repeating them as
he entered the apartment of the chosen coterie, Mr. Stillingfleet
claimed permission for entering according to order. And these words,
ever after, were fixed, in playful stigma, upon Mrs. Vesey's
associations. _(Madame D'Arblay.)_ Boswell also traces the term to
Stillingfleet's blue stockings; and Hannah More's "Bas-Bleu" gave it
a permanent place in literature.]

A different account of the origin of Bluestocking parties was given
by Lady Crewe to a lady who has allowed me to copy her note of the
conversation, made at the time (1816):

"Lady Crewe told me that her mother (Mrs. Greville), the Duchess of
Portland, and Mrs. Montagu were the first who began the conversation
parties in imitation of the noted ones, _temp._ Madame de Sevigne',
at Rue St. Honore. Madame de Polignac, one of the first guests, came
in blue silk stockings, then the newest fashion in Paris. Mrs.
Greville and all the lady members of Mrs. Montagu's _club_, adopted
the _mode_. A foreign gentleman, after spending an evening at Mrs.
Montagu's _soiree_, wrote to tell a friend of the charming
intellectual party, who had one rule; 'they wear blue stockings as a
distinction.'"

Wraxall, who makes the same comparison, remarks: "Mrs. Thrale always
appeared to me to possess at least as much information, a mind as
cultivated, and more brilliancy of intellect than Mrs. Montagu, but
she did not descend among men from such an eminence, and she talked
much more, as well as more unguardedly, on every subject. She was the
provider and conductress of Johnson, who lived almost constantly
under her roof, or more properly under that of Mr. Thrale, both in
Town and at Streatham. He did not, however, spare her more than other
women in his attacks if she courted and provoked his animadversions."

Although he seldom appeared to greater advantage than when under the
combined spell of feminine influence and rank, his demeanour varied
with his mood. On Miss Monkton's (afterwards Countess of Cork)
insisting, one evening, that Sterne's writings were very pathetic,
Johnson bluntly denied it. "I am sure," she rejoined, "they have
affected me." "Why," said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about,
"that is because, dearest, you're a dunce." When she some time
afterwards mentioned this to him, he said, with equal truth and
politeness, "Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have
said it."

He did not come off so well on another occasion, when the presence of
women he respected might be expected to operate as a cheek. Talking,
at Mrs. Garrick's, of a very respectable author, he told us, says
Boswell, "a curious circumstance in his life, which was that he had
married a printer's devil. _Reynolds_. 'A printer's devil, Sir! why,
I thought a printer's devil was a creature with a black face and in
rags.' _Johnson_. 'Yes, Sir. But I suppose he had her face washed,
and put clean clothes on her.' Then, looking very serious, and very
earnest. 'And she did not disgrace him;--the woman had a bottom of
good sense.' The word _bottom_ thus introduced was so ludicrous when
contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear
tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of
Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss
Hannah More slily hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the
same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of
his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it: he therefore
resolved to assume and exercise despotic power, glanced sternly
around, and called out in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?'
Then collecting himself, and looking awful, to make us feel how he
could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still
more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the _woman_ was
_fundamentally_ sensible;' as if he had said, Hear this now, and
laugh if you dare. We all sat composed as at a funeral."

This resembles the influence exercised by the "great commoner" over
the House of Commons. An instance being mentioned of his throwing an
adversary into irretrievable confusion by an arrogant expression of
contempt, the late Mr. Charles Butler asked the relator, an
eye-witness, whether the House did not laugh at the ridiculous figure
of the poor member. "No, Sir," was the reply, "we were too much awed
to laugh."

It was a marked feature in Johnson's character that he was fond of
female society; so fond, indeed, that on coming to London he was
obliged to be on his guard against the temptations to which it
exposed him. He left off attending the Green Room, telling Grarrick,
"I'll come no more behind your scenes, Davy; for the silk stockings
and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities."

The proneness of his imagination to wander in this forbidden field is
unwittingly betrayed by his remarking at Sky, in support of the
doctrine that animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable: "I
have _often_ thought that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should
all wear linen gowns, or cotton, I mean stuffs made of vegetable
substances. I would have no silks: you cannot tell when it is clean:
it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so; linen detects
its own dirtiness." His virtue thawed instead of becoming more rigid
in the North. "This evening," records Boswell of their visit to an
Hebridean chief, "one of our married ladies, a lively pretty little
woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr. Johnson's knee, and being
encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and
kissed him. 'Do it again,' said he, 'and let us see who will tire
first.' He kept her on his knee some time whilst he and she drank
tea."

The Rev. Dr. Maxwell relates in his "Collectanea," that "Two young
women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult
him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. 'Come,'
said he, 'you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre,
and we will talk over that subject:' which they did, and after dinner
he took one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an hour
together." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Amongst his singularities, his love of conversing with
the prostitutes he met in the streets, was not the least. He has been
known to carry some of these unfortunate creatures into a tavern, for
the sake of striving to awaken in them a proper sense of their
condition. I remember, he said, once asking one of them for what
purpose she supposed her Maker had bestowed on her so much beauty.
Her answer was, 'To please the gentlemen, to be sure; for what other
purpose could it be given me?" _(Johnsoniana.)_ He once carried one,
fainting from exhaustion, home on his back.]

Women almost always like men who like women; or as the phenomenon is
explained by Pope--

  "Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, Is gentle love,
  and charms all womankind."

Johnson, despite of his unwieldy figure, scarred features and uncouth
gestures, was a favourite with the fair, and talked of affairs of the
heart as things of which he was entitled to speak from personal
experience as confidently as of any other moral or social topics. He
told Mrs. Thrale, without the smallest consciousness of presumption
or what Mr. Square would term the unfitness of things, of his and
Lord Lyttleton's having contended for Miss Boothby's preference with
an emulation that occasioned hearty disgust and ended in lasting
animosity. "You may see," he added, when the Lives of the Poets were
printed, "that dear Boothby is at my heart still. She would delight
in that fellow Lyttleton's company though, all that I could do, and I
cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like
hers." [1]

[Footnote 1: In point of personal advantages the man of rank and
fashion and the scholar were nearly on a par.

  "But who is this astride the pony,
  So long, so lean, so lank, so bony?
  Dat be de great orator, Littletony."]

Mr. Croker surmises that "Molly Aston," not "dear Boothby," must have
been the object of this rivalry[1]; and the surmise is strengthened
by Johnson's calling Molly the loveliest creature he ever saw; adding
(to Mrs. Thrale), "My wife was a little jealous, and happening one
day when walking in the country to meet a fortune-hunting gipsy, Mrs.
Johnson made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented of her
curiosity,'for,' says the gipsy, 'your heart is divided between a
Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in
Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was
crying. Pretty charmer, she had no reason." This pretty charmer was
in her forty-eighth year when he married her, he being then
twenty-seven. He told Beauclerc that it was a love match on both
sides; and Garrick used to draw ludicrous pictures of their mutual
fondness, which he heightened by representing her as short, fat,
tawdrily dressed, and highly rouged.

[Footnote 1: See "Croker's Boswell," p. 672, and Malone's note in the
prior edition.]

On the question whether "Molly Aston" or "dear Boothby" was the cause
of his dislike of Lyttleton, one of Mrs. Piozzi's marginal notes is
decisive. "Mrs. Thrale (says Boswell) suggests that he was offended
by Molly Aston's preference of his lordship to him." She retorts: "I
never said so. I believe Lord Lyttleton and Molly Aston were not
acquainted. No, no: it was Miss Boothby whose preference he professed
to have been jealous of, and so I said in the 'Anecdotes.'"

One of Rochefoucauld's maxims is: "Young women who do not wish to
appear _coquette_, and men of advanced years who do not wish to
appear ridiculous, should never speak of love as of a thing in which
they might take part." Mrs. Thrale relates an amusing instance of
Johnson's adroitness in escaping from the dilemma: "As we had been
saying one day that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the
manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said, she
would make him talk about love; and took her measures accordingly,
deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love. 'It
is not,' replied our philosopher, 'because they treat, as you call
it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are
despicable: we must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt,
never was happy, and he who laughs at, never deserves to feel--a
passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of
worlds--a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.' He
thought he had already said too much. 'A passion, in short,' added
he, with an altered tone, 'that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny
here, and she 'is very cruel,' speaking of another lady (Miss Burney)
in the room."

As the high-flown language which he occasionally employed in
addressing or discussing women, has originated a theory that the
basis or essence of his character was romance, it may be as well to
contrast what he said in soberer moods on love. He remarked to Dr.
Maxwell, that "its violence and ill-effects were much exaggerated;
for who knows any real sufferings on that head, more than from the
exorbitancy of any other passion?" On Boswell asking him whether he
did not suppose that there are fifty women in the world with any of
whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular, he
replied, "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand. I believe marriages would in
general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the
lord-chancellor upon a due consideration of the characters and
circumstances without the parties having any choice in the matter."
On another occasion he observed that sensible men rarely married for
love.

These peculiarities throw light on more questions than one relating
to Johnson's prolonged intimacy and alleged quarrel with Mrs. Thrale.
His gallantry, and the flattering air of deferential tenderness which
he threw into his commerce with his female favourites, may have had
little less to do with his domestication at Streatham than his
celebrity, his learning, or his wit. The most submissive wife will
manage to dislodge an inmate who is displeasing to her, "Aye, a
marriage, man," said Bucklaw to his led captain, "but wherefore
droops thy mighty spirit? The board will have a corner, and the
corner will have a trencher, and the trencher will have a glass
beside it; and the board end shall be filled, and the trencher and
the glass shall be replenished for thee, if all the petticoats in
Lothian had sworn the contrary." "So says many an honest fellow,"
said Craigenfelt, "and some of my special friends; but curse me if I
know the reason, the women could never bear me, and always contrived
to trundle me out before the honey-moon was over."[1]

[Footnote 1: Bride of Lammermoor.]

It was all very well for Johnson to tell Boswell, "I know no man who
is more master of his wife and family than Thrale. If he holds up a
finger, he is obeyed." The sage never acted on the theory, and
instead of treating the wife as a cipher, lost no opportunity of
paying court to her, though in a manner quite compatible with his own
lofty spirit of independence and self-respect. Thus, attention having
been called to some Italian verses by Baretti, he converted them into
an elegant compliment to her by an improvised paraphrase:

  "Viva! viva la padrona!
  Tutta bella, e tutta buona,
  La padrona e un angiolella
  Tutta buona e tutta bella;
  Tutta bella e tutta buona;
  Viva! viva la padrona!"

  "Long may live my lovely Hetty!
  Always young and always pretty;
  Always pretty, always young,
  Live my lovely Hetty long!
  Always young and always pretty;
  Long may live my lovely Hetty!"

Her marginal note in the copy of the "Anecdotes" presented by her to
Sir James Fellowes in 1816 is:--"I heard these verses sung at Mr.
Thomas's by three voices not three weeks ago."

It was in the eighth year of their acquaintance that Johnson solaced
his fatigue in the Hebrides by writing a Latin ode to her. "About
fourteen years since," wrote Sir Walter Scott, in 1829, "I landed in
Sky with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was
the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered
separately that it was this ode." Thinking Miss Cornelia Knight's
version too diffuse, I asked Mr. Milnes for a translation or
paraphrase, and he kindly complied by producing these spirited
stanzas:

  "Where constant mist enshrouds the rocks,
  Shattered in earth's primeval shocks,
  And niggard Nature ever mocks
              The labourer's toil,

  I roam through clans of savage men,
  Untamed by arts, untaught by pen;
  Or cower within some squalid den
              O'er reeking soil.

  Through paths that halt from stone to stone,
  Amid the din of tongues unknown,
  One image haunts my soul alone,
              Thine, gentle Thrale!

  Soothes she, I ask, her spouse's care?
  Does mother-love its charge prepare?
  Stores she her mind with knowledge rare,
              Or lively tale?

  Forget me not! thy faith I claim,
  Holding a faith that cannot die,
  That fills with thy benignant name
              These shores of Sky."

"On another occasion," says Mrs. Thrale, in the "Anecdotes," "I can
boast verses from Dr. Johnson. As I went into his room the morning of
my birthday once and said to him, 'Nobody sends me any verses now,
because I am five-and-thirty years old; and Stella was fed with them
till forty-six, I remember.' My being just recovered from illness and
confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out
suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation
whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention
towards it half a minute before:

  "Oft in danger, yet alive,
  We are come to thirty-five;
  Long may better years arrive,
  Better years than thirty-five.
  Could philosophers contrive
  Life to stop at thirty-five,
  Time his hours should never drive
  O'er the bounds of thirty-five.
  High to soar, and deep to dive,
  Nature gives at thirty-five.
  Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For howe'er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive
  Must begin by thirty-five;
  And all who wisely wish to wive
  Must look on Thrale at thirty-five."

"'And now,' said he, as I was writing them down, 'you may see what it
is to come for poetry to a dictionary-maker; you may observe that the
rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly.' And so they do."

Byron's estimate of life at the same age, is somewhat different:

  "Too old for youth--too young, at thirty-five
    To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,
  I wonder people should he left alive.
    But since they are, that epoch is a bore."

Lady Aldborough, whose best witticisms unluckily lie under the same
merited ban as Rochester's best verses, resolved not to pass
twenty-five, and had her passport made out accordingly till her death
at eighty-five. She used to boast that, whenever a foreign official
objected, she never failed to silence him by the remark, that he was
the first gentleman of his country who ever told a lady she was older
than she said she was. Actuated probably by a similar feeling, and in
the hope of securing to herself the benefit of the doubt, Mrs. Thrale
omitted in the "Anecdotes" the year when these verses were addressed
to her, and a sharp controversy has been raised as to the respective
ages of herself and Dr. Johnson at the time. It is thus summed up by
one of the combatants:

"In one place Mr. Croker says that at the commencement of the
intimacy between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was
twenty-five years old. In other places he says that Mrs. Thrale's
thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth. Johnson was
born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year
coincided with Johnson's seventieth, she could have been only
twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another
place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines
which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth birthday. If this
date be correct Mrs. Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could
have been only twenty-three when her acquaintance commenced. Mr.
Croker, therefore, gives us three different statements as to her age.
Two of the three must be incorrect. We will not decide between
them."[1]

[Footnote 1: Macaulay's Essays.]

Mr. Salusbury, referring to a china bowl in his possession, says:
"The slip of paper now in it is in my father's handwriting, and
copied, I have heard him say, from the original slip, which was worn
out by age and fingering. The exact words are, 'In this bason was
baptised Hester Lynch Salusbury, 16th Jan. 1740-41 old style, at
Bodville in Carnarvonshire.'"

The incident of the verses is thus narrated in "Thraliana": "And this
year, 1777[1], when I told him that it was my birthday, and that I
was then thirty-five years old, he repeated me these verses, which I
wrote down from his mouth as he made them." If she was born in
1740-41, she must have been thirty-six in 1777; and there is no
perfectly satisfactory settlement of the controversy, which many will
think derives its sole importance from the two chief
controversialists.

[Footnote 1: In one of her Memorandum books, 1776.]

The highest authorities differ equally about her looks. "My readers,"
says Boswell, "will naturally wish for some representation of the
figures of this couple. Mr. Thrale was tall, well-proportioned, and
stately. As for _Madam_, or _My Mistress_, by which epithets Johnson
used to mention Mrs. Thrale, she was short, plump, and brisk." "He
should have added," observes Mr. Croker, "that she was very pretty."
This was not her own opinion, nor that of her cotemporaries, although
her face was attractive from animation and expression, and her
personal appearance pleasing on the whole. Sometimes, when visiting
the author of "Piozziana,"[1] she used to look at her little self, as
she called it, and spoke drolly of what she once was, as if speaking
of some one else; and one day, turning to him, she exclaimed: "No, I
never was handsome: I had always too many strong points in my face
for beauty." On his expressing a doubt of this, and hinting that Dr.
Johnson was certainly an admirer of her personal charms, she replied
that his devotion was at least as warm towards the table and the
table-cloth at Streatham.

[Footnote 1: "Piozziana; or Recollections of the late Mrs. Piozzi,
with Remarks. By a Friend." (The Rev. E. Mangin.) Moxon, 1833. These
reminiscences, unluckily limited to the last eight or ten years of
her life at Bath, contain much curious information, and leave a
highly favourable impression of Mrs. Piozzi.]

One day when he was ill, exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded that
death was not far distant, she appeared before him in a dark-coloured
gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake
for an iron-grey. "'Why do you delight,' said he, 'thus to thicken
the gloom of misery that surrounds me? is not here sufficient
accumulation of horror without anticipated mourning?'--'This is not
mourning, Sir!' said I, drawing the curtain, that the light might
fall upon the silk, and show it was a purple mixed with
green.--'Well, well!' replied he, changing his voice; 'you little
creatures should never wear those sort of clothes, however; they are
unsuitable in every way. What! have not all insects gay colours?'"

According to the author of "Piozziana," who became acquainted with
her late in life, "She was short, and though well-proportioned,
broad, and deep-chested. Her hands were muscular and almost coarse,
but her writing was, even in her eightieth year, exquisitely
beautiful; and one day, while conversing with her on the subject of
education, she observed that 'all Misses now-a-days, wrote so like
each other, that it was provoking;' adding, 'I love to see
individuality of character, and abhor sameness, especially in what is
feeble and flimsy.' Then, spreading her hand, she said, 'I believe I
owe what you are pleased to call my good writing, to the shape of
this hand, for my uncle, Sir Robert Cotton, thought it was too manly
to be employed in writing like a boarding-school girl; and so I came
by my vigorous, black manuscript.'"

It was fortunate that the hand-writing compensated for the hands; and
as she attached great importance to blood and race, that she did not
live to read Byron's "thoroughbred and tapering fingers," or to be
shocked by his theory that "the hand is almost the only sign of blood
which aristocracy can generate." Her Bath friend appeals to a
miniature (engraved for this work) by Roche, of Bath, taken when she
was in her seventy-seventh year. Like Cromwell, who told the painter
that if he softened a harsh line or so much as omitted a wart, he
should never be paid a sixpence,--she desired the artist to paint her
face deeply rouged, which it always was[1], and to introduce a
trivial deformity of the jaw, produced by a horse treading on her as
she lay on the ground after a fall. In this respect she proved
superior to Johnson; who, with all his love of truth, could not bear
to be painted with his defects. He was displeased at being drawn
holding a pen close to his eye; and on its being suggested that
Reynolds had painted himself holding his ear in his hand to catch the
sound, he replied: "He may paint himself as deaf as he pleases, but I
will not be Blinking Sam."

[Footnote 1: "One day I called early at her house, and as I entered
her drawing-room, she passed me, saying, 'Dear Sir, I will be with
you in a few minutes; but, while I think of it, I must go to my
dressing-closet and paint my face, which I forgot to do this
morning.' Accordingly she soon returned, wearing the requisite
quantity of bloom; which, it must be noticed, was not in the least
like that of youth and beauty. I then said that I was surprised she
should so far sacrifice to fashion, as to take that trouble. Her
answer was that, as I might conclude, her practice of painting did
not proceed from any silly compliance with Bath fashion, or any
fashion; still less, if possible, from the desire of appearing
younger than she was, but from this circumstance, that in early life
she had worn rouge, as other young persons did in her day, as a part
of dress; and after continuing the habit for some years, discovered
that it had introduced a dull yellow colour into her complexion,
quite unlike that of her natural skin, and that she wished to conceal
the deformity."--_Piozziana_.]

Reynolds' portrait of Mrs. Thrale conveys a highly agreeable
impression of her; and so does Hogarth's, when she sat to him for the
principal figure in "The Lady's Last Stake." She was then only
fourteen; and he probably idealised his model; but that he also
produced a striking likeness, is obvious on comparing his picture
with the professed portraits. The history of this picture (which has
been engraved, at Lord Macaulay's suggestion, for this work) will be
found in the Autobiography and the Letters.

Boswell's account of his first visit to Streatham gives a tolerably
fair notion of the footing on which Johnson stood there, and the
manner in which the interchange of mind was carried on between him
and the hostess. This visit took place in October, 1769, four years
after Johnson's introduction to her; and Boswell's absence from
London, in which he had no fixed residence during Johnson's life,
will hardly account for the neglect of his illustrious friend in not
procuring him a privilege which he must have highly coveted and would
doubtless have turned to good account.

"On the 6th of October I complied with this obliging invitation; and
found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance
that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was
yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be
equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so
happy."

"Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him
powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it;
his love verses were college verses: and he repeated the song,
'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains,' &c. in so ludicrous a manner, as
to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such
fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her guns with great courage,
in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at
last silenced her by saving, 'My dear lady, talk no more of this.
Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense.'

"Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry;
and, as a specimen, repeated his song in 'Florizel and Perdita,' and
dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:--

  "'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'

"_Johnson._--'Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David!
Smile with the simple!--what folly is that? And who would feed with
the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and
feed with the rich.'" Boswell adds, that he repeated this sally to
Glarrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a
little irritated by it; on which Mrs. Thrale remarks, "How odd to go
and tell the man!"

The independent tone she took when she deemed the Doctor
unreasonable, is also proved by Boswell in his report of what took
place at Streatham in reference to Lord Marchmont's offer to supply
information for the Life of Pope:

"Elated with the success of my spontaneous exertion to procure
material and respectable aid to Johnson for his very favourite work,
'the Lives of the Poets,' I hastened down to Mr. Thrale's, at
Streatham, where he now was, that I might insure his being at home
next day; and after dinner, when I thought he would receive the good
news in the best humour, I announced it eagerly: 'I have been at work
for you to-day, Sir. I have been with Lord Marchmont. He bade me tell
you he has a great respect for you, and will call on you to-morrow at
one o'clock, and communicate all he knows about Pope.' _Johnson._ 'I
shall not be in town to-morrow. I don't care to know about Pope.'
_Mrs. Thrale_ (surprised, as I was, and a little angry). 'I suppose,
Sir, Mr. Boswell thought that as you are to write Pope's Life, you
would wish to know about him.' _Johnson._ 'Wish! why yes. If it
rained knowledge, I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself
the trouble to go in quest of it.' There was no arguing with him at
the moment. Sometime afterwards he said, 'Lord Marchmont will call
upon me, and then I shall call on Lord Marchmont.' Mrs. Thrale was
uneasy at this unaccountable caprice: and told me, that if I did not
take care to bring about a meeting between Lord Marchmont and him, it
would never take place, which would be a great pity."

The ensuing conversation is a good sample of the freedom and variety
of "talk" in which Johnson luxuriated, and shows how important a part
Mrs. Thrale played in it:

"Mrs. Thrale told us, that a curious clergyman of our acquaintance
(Dr. Lort is named in the margin) had discovered a licentious stanza,
which Pope had originally in his 'Universal Prayer,' before the
stanza,--

  "'What conscience dictates to be done,
    Or warns us not to do,' &c.

It was this:--

  "'Can sins of moment claim the rod
    Of everlasting fires?
  And that offend great Nature's God
    Which Nature's self inspires."

and that Dr. Johnson observed, it had been borrowed from _Guarini_.
There are, indeed, in _Pastor Fido_, many such flimsy superficial
reasonings as that in the last two lines of this stanza.

"_Boswell_. 'In that stanza of Pope's, "_rod of fires_" is certainly
a bad metaphor.' _Mrs. Thrale_. 'And "sins of _moment_" is a faulty
expression; for its true import is _momentous_, which cannot be
intended.' _Johnson_. 'It must have been written "of _moments_." Of
_moment_, is _momentous_; of _moments, momentary_. I warrant you,
however, Pope wrote this stanza, and some friend struck it out.'

"Talking of divorces, I asked if Othello's doctrine was not
plausible:--

  "'He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen,
  Let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all.'

Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale joined against this. _Johnson_. 'Ask any
man if he'd wish not to know of such an injury.' _Boswell_. 'Would
you tell your friend to make him unhappy?' _Johnson_. 'Perhaps, Sir,
I should not: but that would be from prudence on my own account. A
man would tell his father.' _Boswell_. 'Yes; because he would not
have spurious children to get any share of the family inheritance.'
_Mrs. Thrale_. 'Or he would tell his brother.' _Boswell_. 'Certainly
his _elder_ brother.... Would you tell Mr. ----?' (naming a gentleman
who assuredly was not in the least danger of so miserable a disgrace,
though married to a fine woman). _Johnson_. 'No, Sir: because it
would do no good; he is so sluggish, he'd never go to Parliament and
get through a divorce.'" _Marginal Note_: "Langton."

There is every reason to believe that her behaviour to Johnson was
uniformly marked by good-breeding and delicacy. She treated him with
a degree of consideration and respect which he did not always receive
from other friends and admirers. A foolish rumour having got into the
newspapers that he had been learning to dance of Vestris, it was
agreed that Lord Charlemont should ask him if it was true, and his
lordship with (it is shrewdly observed) the characteristic spirit of
a general of Irish volunteers, actually put the question, which
provoked a passing feeling of irritation. Opposite Boswell's account
of this incident she has written, "Was he not right in hating to be
so treated? and would he not have been right to have loved me better
than any of them, because I never did make a Lyon of him?"

One great charm of her companionship to cultivated men was her
familiarity with the learned languages, as well as with French,
Italian, and Spanish. The author of "Piozziana" says: "She not only
read and wrote Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but had for sixty years
constantly and ardently studied the Scriptures and the works of
commentators in the original languages." She did not know Greek, and
he probably over-estimated her other acquirements, which Boswell
certainly underestimates when he speaks slightingly of them on the
strength of Johnson's having said: "It is a great mistake to suppose
that she is above him (Thrale) in literary attainments. She is more
flippant, but he has ten times her learning: he is a regular scholar;
but her learning is that of a school-boy in one of the lower forms."
If this were so, it is strange that Thrale should cut so poor a
figure, should seem little better than a nonentity, whilst every
imaginable topic was under animated discussion at his table; for
Boswell was more ready to report the husband's sayings than the
wife's. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters she says:
"Mr. Thrale was a very merry talking man in 1760; but the distress of
1772, which affected his health, his hopes, and his whole soul,
affected his temper too. Perkins called it being planet struck, and I
am not sure he was ever completely the same man again." The notes of
his conversation during the antecedent period are equally meagre.[1]
He is described by Madame D'Arblay as taking a singular amusement in
hearing, instigating, and provoking a war of words, alternating
triumph and overthrow, between clever and ambitious colloquial
combatants.

[Footnote 1: "Pray, Doctor, said a gentleman to Johnson, is Mr.
Thrale a man of conversation, or is he only wise and silent?' 'Why,
Sir, his conversation does not show the _minute_ hand; but he
generally strikes the hour very correctly.'"--_Johnsoniana_.]

No one would have expected to find her as much at home in Greek and
Latin authors as a man of fair ability who had received and profited
by an University education, but she could appreciate a classical
allusion or quotation, and translate off-hand a Latin epigram.

"Mary Aston," said Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit
and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made
this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!

  "'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria,
  Ut maneam liber, pulchra Maria, vale!'

"Will it do this way in English, Sir? (said Mrs. Thrale)--

  "'Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you,
  If freedom we seek, fair Maria, adieu."

Mr. Croker's version is:--

  "'You wish me, fair Maria, to be free,
  Then, fair Maria, I must fly from thee.'

Boswell also has tried his hand at it; and a correspondent of the
"Gentleman's Magazine" suggests that Johnson had in his mind an
epigram on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade in Paris,
habited as a Jesuit, during the height of the contention between the
Jansenists and Molinists concerning free will:--

  "On s'etonne ici que Calviniste
  Eut pris l'habit de Moliniste,
  Puisque que cette jeune beaute
  Ote a chacun sa liberte,
  N'est ce pas une Janseniste."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 376. Edition of 1716. Equally
happy were Lord Chesterfield's lines to a young lady who appeared at
a Dublin ball, with an orange breastknot:--

Mrs. Thrale took the lead even when her husband might be expected to
strike in, as when Johnson was declaiming paradoxically against
action in oratory: "Action can have no effect on reasonable minds. It
may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument." _Mrs. Thrale_.
"What then, Sir, becomes of Demosthenes' saying, Action, action,
action?" _Johnson_. "Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of
brutes, to a barbarous people." "The polished Athenians!" is her
marginal protest, and a conclusive one.

In English literature she was rarely at fault. In

  "Pretty Tory, where's the jest
  To wear that riband on thy breast,
  When that same breast betraying shows
  The whiteness of the rebel rose?"

White was adopted by the malcontent Irish as the French emblem.
Johnson's epigram may have been suggested by Propertius:

  "Nullus liber erit si quis amare volet."]

reference to the flattery lavished on Garrick by Lord Mansfield and
Lord Chatham, Johnson had said, "When he whom everybody else
flatters, flatters me, then I am truly happy." _Mrs. Thrale_. "The
sentiment is in Congreve, I think." _Johnson_. "Yes, Madam, in 'The
Way of the World.'

  "'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
  The heart that others bleed for, bleed for me.'"

When Johnson is reported saying, "Those who have a style of
distinguished excellence can always be distinguished," she objects:
"It seems not. The lines always quoted as Dryden's, beginning,

  'To die is landing on some silent shore,'

are Garth's after all." Johnson would have been still less pleased at
her discovery that a line in his epitaph on Phillips,

  "Till angels wake thee with a note like thine,"

was imitated from Pope's

  "And saints embrace thee with a love like mine."

In one of her letters to him (June, 1782) she writes: "Meantime let
us be as _merry_ as reading Burton upon _Melancholy_ will make us.
You bid me study that book in your absence, and now, what have I
found? Why, I have found, or fancied, that he has been cruelly
plundered: that Milton's first idea of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso'
were suggested by the verses at the beginning; that Savage's speech
of Suicide in the 'Wanderer' grew up out of a passage you probably
remember towards the 216th page; that Swift's tale of the woman that
holds water in her mouth, to regain her husband's love by silence,
had its source in the same farrago; and that there is an odd
similitude between my Lord's trick upon Sly the Tinker, in
Shakspeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' and some stuff I have been
reading in Burton."

It would be easy to heap proof upon proof of the value and variety of
Mrs. Thrale's contributions to the colloquial treasures accumulated
by Boswell and other members of the set; and Johnson's deliberate
testimony to her good qualities of head and heart will far more than
counterbalance any passing expressions of disapproval or reproof with
her mistimed vivacity, or alleged disregard of scrupulous accuracy in
narrative, may have called forth. No two people ever lived much
together for a series of years without many fretful, complaining,
dissatisfied, uncongenial moments,--without letting drop captious or
unkind expressions, utterly at variance with their habitual feelings
and their matured judgments of each other. The hasty word, the
passing sarcasm, the sly hit at an acknowledged foible, should count
for nothing in the estimate, when contrasted with earnest and
deliberate assurances, proceeding from one who was commonly too proud
to flatter, and in no mood for idle compliment when he wrote.

"Never (he writes in 1773) imagine that your letters are long; they
are always too short for my curiosity. I do not know that I was ever
content with a single perusal.... My nights are grown again very
uneasy and troublesome. I know not that the country will mend them;
but I hope your company will mend my days. Though I cannot now expect
much attention, and would not wish for more than can be spared from
the poor dear lady (her mother), yet I shall see you and hear you
every now and then; and to see and hear you, is always to hear wit,
and to see virtue."

He would not suffer her to be lightly spoken of in his presence, nor
permit his name to be coupled jocularly with hers. "I yesterday told
him," says Boswell, when they were traversing the Highlands, "I was
thinking of writing a poetical letter to him, on his return from
Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character
of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his
return to England from the country of the Houyhnhnms:--

  "'At early morn I to the market haste,
  Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste.
  A curious _fowl_ and _sparagrass_ I chose;
  (For I remember you were fond of those:)
  Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats;
  Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'

He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs.
Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or
delicacy, you won't do that.' _Boswell_. 'Then let it be in Cole's,
the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat
together.' _Johnson_. 'Ay, that may do.'"

Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he
might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs.
Thrale as their toast, he would not have _her_ drunk in whiskey.
Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:--

  "We supped most royally, were vastly frisky,
  When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey.
  Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,'
  'Drink her in _whiskey_ not,' said he, 'but _ale_.'"

So far from making light of her scholarship, he frequently accepted
her as a partner in translations from the Latin. The translations
from Boethius, printed in the second volume of the Letters, are their
joint composition.

After recapitulating Johnson's other contributions to literature in
1766, Boswell says, "'The Fountains,' a beautiful little fairy tale
in prose, written with exquisite simplicity, is one of Johnson's
productions; and I cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of
being the author of that admirable poem 'The Three Warnings.'"
_Marginal note_: "How sorry he is!" Both the tale and the poem were
written for a collection of "Miscellanies," published by Mrs.
Williams in that year. The character of Floretta in "The Fountains"
was intended for Mrs. Thrale, and she thus gracefully alludes to it
in a letter to Johnson in Feb. 1782:

"The newspapers would spoil my few comforts that are left if they
could; but you tell me that's only because I have the reputation,
whether true or false, of being a _wit_ forsooth; and you remember
_poor Floretta_, who was teased into wishing away her spirit, her
beauty, her fortune, and at last even her life, never could bear the
bitter water which was to have washed away her wit; which she
resolved to keep with all its consequences."

Her fugitive pieces, mostly in verse, thrown off from time to time at
all periods of her life, are numerous; and the best of them that have
been recovered will be included in these volumes. In a letter to the
author of "Piozziana," she says:--"When Wilkes and Liberty were at
their highest tide, I was bringing or losing children every year; and
my studies were confined to my nursery; so, it came into my head one
day to send an infant alphabet to the 'St. James Chronicle':--

  "'A was an Alderman, factious and proud;
  B was a Bellas that blustered aloud, &c.'

"In a week's time Dr. Johnson asked me if I knew who wrote it? 'Why,
who did write it, Sir?' said I. 'Steevens,' was the reply. Some time
after that, years for aught I know, he mentioned to me Steevens's
veracity! 'No, no;' answered H.L.P., anything but that;' and told my
story; showing him by incontestable proofs that it was mine. Johnson
did not utter a word, and we never talked about it any more. I durst
not introduce the subject; but it served to hinder S. from visiting
at the house: I suppose Johnson kept him away."

It does not appear that Steevens claimed the Alphabet; which may have
suggested the celebrated squib that appeared in the "New Whig Guide,"
and was popularly attributed to Mr. Croker. It was headed "The
Political Alphabet; or, the Young Member's A B C," and begins:

  "A was an Althorpe, as dull as a hog:
  B was black Brougham, a surly cur dog:
  C was a Cochrane, all stripped of his lace."

What widely different associations are now awakened by these names!
The sting is in the tail:

  "W was a Warre, 'twixt a wasp and a worm,
  But X Y and Z are not found in this form,
  Unless Moore, Martin, and Creevey be said
  (As the last of mankind) to be X Y and Z."

Amongst Miss Reynolds' "Recollections" will be found:--"On the
praises of Mrs. Thrale, he (Johnson) used to dwell with a peculiar
delight, a paternal fondness, expressive of conscious exultation in
being so intimately acquainted with her. One day, in speaking of her
to Mr. Harris, author of 'Hermes,' and expatiating on her various
perfections,--the solidity of her virtues, the brilliancy of her wit,
and the strength of her understanding, &c.--he quoted some lines (a
stanza, I believe, but from what author I know not[1]), with which he
concluded his most eloquent eulogium, and of these I retained but the
two last lines:--

  'Virtues--of such a generous kind,
  Pure in the last recesses of the mind.'"

[Footnote 1: Dryden's Translation of Persius.]

The place assigned to Mrs. Thrale by the popular voice amongst the
most cultivated and accomplished women of the day, is fixed by some
verses printed in the "Morning Herald" of March 12th, 1782, which
attracted much attention. They were commonly attributed to Mr.
(afterwards Sir W.W.) Pepys, and Madame d'Arblay, who alludes to them
complacently, thought them his; but he subsequently repudiated the
authorship, and the editor of her Memoirs believes that they were
written by Dr. Burney. They were provoked by the proneness of the
Herald to indulge in complimentary allusions to ladies of the demirep
genus:

  "Herald, wherefore thus proclaim
  Nought of women but the _shame_?
  Quit, oh, quit, at least awhile,
  Perdita's too luscious smile;
  Wanton Worsley, stilted Daly,
  Heroines of each blackguard alley;
  Better sure record in story
  Such as shine their sex's glory!
  Herald! haste, with me proclaim
  Those of literary fame.
  Hannah More's pathetic pen,
  Painting high th' impassion'd scene;
  Carter's piety and learning,
  Little Burney's quick discerning;
  Cowley's neatly pointed wit,
  Healing those her satires hit;
  Smiling Streatfield's iv'ry neck,
  Nose, and notions--_a la Grecque!_
  Let Chapone retain a place,
  And the mother of her Grace[1],
  Each art of conversation knowing,
  High-bred, elegant Boscawen;
  Thrale, in whose expressive eyes
  Sits a soul above disguise,
  Skill'd with-wit and sense t'impart
  Feelings of a generous heart.
  Lucan, Leveson, Greville, Crewe;
  Fertile-minded Montagu,
  Who makes each rising art her care,
  'And brings her knowledge from afar!'
  Whilst her tuneful tongue defends
  Authors dead, and absent friends;
  Bright in genius, pure in fame:--
  Herald, haste, and these proclaim!"

[Footnote 1: Mrs. Boscawen was the mother of the Duchess of Beaufort
and Mrs. Leveson Gower:

  "All Leveson's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace."]

These lines merit attention for the sake of the comparison they
invite. An outcry has recently been raised against the laxity of
modern fashion, in permitting venal beauty to receive open homage in
our parks and theatres, and to be made the subject of prurient gossip
by maids and matrons who should ignore its existence. But we need not
look far beneath the surface of social history to discover that the
irregularity in question is only a partial revival of the practice of
our grandfathers and grandmothers, much as a crinoline may be
regarded as a modified reproduction of the hoop. Junius thus
denounces the Duke of Grafton's indecorous devotion to Nancy Parsons:
"It is not the private indulgence, but the public insult, of which I
complain. The name of Miss Parsons would hardly have been known, if
the First Lord of the Treasury had not led her in triumph through the
Opera House, even in the presence of the Queen." Lord March
(afterwards Duke of Queensberry) was a lord of the bedchamber in the
decorous court of George the Third, when he wrote thus to Selwyn: "I
was prevented from writing to you last Friday, by being at Newmarket
with my little girl (Signora Zamperini, a noted dancer and singer). I
had the whole family and Cocchi. The beauty went with me in my
chaise, and the rest in the old landau."

We have had Boswell's impression of his first visit to Streatham; and
Madame D'Arblay's account of hers confirms the notion that My
Mistress, not My Master, was the presiding genius of the place.

"_London, August_ (1778).--I have now to write an account of the most
consequential day I have spent since my birth: namely, my Streatham
visit.

"Our journey to Streatham was the least pleasant part of the day, for
the roads were dreadfully dusty, and I was really in the fidgets from
thinking what my reception might be, and from fearing they would
expect a less awkward and backward kind of person than I was sure
they would find.

"Mr. Thrale's house is white, and very pleasantly situated, in a fine
paddock. Mrs. Thrale was strolling about, and came to us as we got
out of the chaise.

"She then received me, taking both my hands, and with mixed
politeness and cordiality welcomed me to Streatham. She led me into
the house, and addressed herself almost wholly for a few minutes to
my father, as if to give me an assurance she did not mean to regard
me as a show, or to distress or frighten me by drawing me out.
Afterwards she took me up stairs, and showed me the house, and said
she had very much wished to see me at Streatham, and should always
think herself much obliged to Dr. Burney for his goodness in bringing
me, which she looked upon as a very great favour.

"But though we were some time together, and though she was so very
civil, she did not _hint_ at my book, and I love her much more than
ever for her delicacy in avoiding a subject which she could not but
see would have greatly embarrassed me.

"When we returned to the music-room, we found Miss Thrale was with my
father. Miss Thrale is a very fine girl, about fourteen years of age,
but cold and reserved, though full of knowledge and intelligence.

"Soon after, Mrs. Thrale took me to the library; she talked a little
while upon common topics, and then, at last, she mentioned 'Evelina.'

"I now prevailed upon Mrs. Thrale to let me amuse myself, and she
went to dress. I then prowled about to choose some book, and I saw,
upon the reading-table, 'Evelina.' I had just fixed upon a new
translation of Cicero's 'Laelius,' when the library door was opened,
and Mr. Seward entered. I instantly put away my book, because I
dreaded being thought studious and affected. He offered his service
to find anything for me, and then, in the same breath, ran on to
speak of the book with which I had myself 'favoured the world!'

"The exact words he began with I cannot recollect, for I was actually
confounded by the attack; and his abrupt manner of letting me know he
was _au fait_ equally astonished and provoked me. How different from
the delicacy of Mr. and Mrs. Thrale!"

A high French authority has laid down that good breeding consists in
rendering to all what is socially their due. This definition is
imperfect. Good breeding is best displayed by putting people at their
ease; and Mrs. Thrale's manner of putting the young authoress at her
ease was the perfection of delicacy and tact.

If Johnson's entrance on the stage had been premeditated, it could
hardly have been more dramatically ordered.

"When we were summoned to dinner, Mrs. Thrale made my father and me
sit on each side of her. I said that I hoped I did not take Dr.
Johnson's place;--for he had not yet appeared.

"'No,' answered Mrs. Thrale, 'he will sit by you, which I am sure
will give him great pleasure.'

"Soon after we were seated, this great man entered. I have so true a
veneration for him, that the very sight of him inspires me with
delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which
he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements,
either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all
together.

"Mrs. Thrale introduced me to him, and he took his place. We had a
noble dinner, and a most elegant dessert. Dr. Johnson, in the middle
of dinner, asked Mrs. Thrale what was in some little pies that were
near him.

"'Mutton,' answered she, 'so I don't ask you to eat any, because I
know you despise it.'

"'No, Madam, no,' cried he: 'I despise nothing that is good of its
sort; but I am too proud now to eat of it. Sitting by Miss Burney
makes me very proud to-day!'

"'Miss Burney,' said Mrs. Thrale, laughing, 'you must take great care
of your heart if Dr. Johnson attacks it; for I assure you he is not
often successless.'

"'What's that you say, Madam?' cried he; 'are you making mischief
between the young lady and me already?'

"A little while after he drank Miss Thrale's health and mine, and
then added:

"'Tis a terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well, without
wishing them to become old women.'"

Madame D'Arblay's memoirs are sadly defaced by egotism, and gratified
vanity may have had a good deal to do with her unqualified admiration
of Mrs. Thrale; for "Evelina" (recently published) was the unceasing
topic of exaggerated eulogy during the entire visit. Still so acute
an observer could not be essentially wrong in an account of her
reception, which is in the highest degree favourable to her newly
acquired friend. Of her second visit she says:

"Our journey was charming. The kind Mrs. Thrale would give courage to
the most timid. She did not ask me questions, or catechise me upon
what I knew, or use any means to draw me out, but made it her
business to draw herself out--that is, to start subjects, to support
them herself, and take all the weight of the conversation, as if it
behoved her to find me entertainment. But I am so much in love with
her, that I shall be obliged to run away from the subject, or shall
write of nothing else.

"When we arrived here, Mrs. Thrale showed me my room, which is an
exceeding pleasant one, and then conducted me to the library, there
to divert myself while she dressed.

"Miss Thrale soon joined me: and I begin to like her. Mr. Thrale was
neither well nor in spirits all day. Indeed, he seems not to be a
happy man, though he has every means of happiness in his power. But I
think I have rarely seen a very rich man with a light heart and light
spirits."

The concluding remark, coming from such a source, may supply an
improving subject of meditation or inquiry; if found true, it may
help to suppress envy and promote contentment. Thrale's state of
health, however, accounts for his depression independently of his
wealth, which rested on too precarious a foundation to allow of
unbroken confidence and gaiety.

"At tea (continues the diarist) we all met again, and Dr. Johnson was
gaily sociable. He gave a very droll account of the children of Mr.
Langton--

"'Who,' he said, 'might be very good children if they were let alone;
but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something
which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the
Hebrew alphabet; and they might as well count twenty, for what they
know of the matter: however, the father says half, for he prompts
every other word. But he could not have chosen a man who would have
been less entertained by such means.'

"'I believe not!' cried Mrs. Thrale: 'nothing is more ridiculous than
parents cramming their children's nonsense down other people's
throats. I keep mine as much out of the way as I can.'

"'Yours, Madam,' answered he, 'are in nobody's way; no children can
be better managed or less troublesome; but your fault is, a too great
perverseness in not allowing anybody to give them anything. Why
should they not have a cherry, or a gooseberry, as well as bigger
children?'

"Indeed, the freedom with which Dr. Johnson condemns whatever he
disapproves, is astonishing; and the strength of words he uses would,
to most people, be intolerable; but Mrs. Thrale seems to have a
sweetness of disposition that equals all her other excellences, and
far from making a point of vindicating herself, she generally
receives his admonitions with the most respectful silence."

But it must not be supposed that this was done without an effort.
When Boswell speaks of Johnson's "accelerating her pulsation," she
adds, "he checked it often enough, to be sure."

Another of the conversations which occurred during this visit is
characteristic of all parties:

"We had been talking of colours, and of the fantastic names given to
them, and why the palest lilac should be called a _soupir etouffe_.

"'Why, Madam,' said he, with wonderful readiness, 'it is called a
stifled sigh because it is checked in its progress, and only half a
colour.'

"I could not help expressing my amazement at his universal readiness
upon all subjects, and Mrs. Thrale said to him,

"'Sir, Miss Burney wonders at your patience with such stuff; but I
tell her you are used to me, for I believe I torment you with more
foolish questions than anybody else dares do.'

"'No, Madam,' said he, 'you don't torment me;--you teaze me, indeed,
sometimes.'

"'Ay, so I do, Dr. Johnson, and I wonder you bear with my nonsense.'

"'No, Madam, you never talk nonsense; you have as much sense, and
more wit, than any woman I know!'

"'Oh,' cried Mrs. Thrale, blushing, 'it is my turn to go under the
table this morning, Miss Burney!'

"'And yet,' continued the Doctor, with the most comical look, 'I have
known all the wits, from Mrs. Montagu down to Bet Flint!'

"'Bet Flint,' cried Mrs. Thrale; 'pray who is she?'

"'Oh, a fine character, Madam! She was habitually a slut and a
drunkard, and occasionally a thief and a harlot.'

"'And, for heaven's sake, how came you to know her?'

"'Why, Madam, she figured in the literary world, too! Bet Flint wrote
her own life, and called herself Cassandra, and it was in verse. So
Bet brought me her verses to correct; but I gave her a half-a-crown,
and she liked it as well.'

"'And pray what became of her, Sir?'

"'Why, Madam, she stole a quilt from the man of the house, and he had
her taken up: but Bet Flint had a spirit not to be subdued; so when
she found herself obliged to go to jail, she ordered a sedan chair,
and bid her footboy walk before her. However, the boy proved
refractory, for he was ashamed, though his mistress was not.'

"'And did she ever get out of jail again, Sir?'

"'Yes, Madam; when she came to her trial, the judge acquitted her.
"So now," she said to me, "the quilt is my own, and now I'll make a
petticoat of it."[1] Oh, I loved Bet Flint!'

"Bless me, Sir!' cried Mrs. Thrale, 'how can all these vagabonds
contrive to get at _you_, of all people?'

"'Oh the dear creatures!' cried he, laughing heartily, 'I can't but
be glad to see them!'"

[Footnote 1: This story is told by Boswell, roy. 8vo, edit. p. 688.]

Madame D'Arblay's notes (in her Diary) of the conversation and mode
of life at Streatham are full and spirited, and exhibit Johnson in
moods and situations in which he was seldom seen by Boswell. The
adroitness with which he divided his attentions amongst the ladies,
blending approval with instruction, and softening contradiction or
reproof by gallantry, gives plausibility to his otherwise paradoxical
claim to be considered a polite man.[1] He obviously knew how to set
about it, and (theoretically at least) was no mean proficient in that
art of pleasing which attracts

  "Rather by deference than compliment,
  And wins e'en by a delicate dissent."

[Footnote 1: "When the company were retired, we happened to be
talking of Dr. Barnard, the provost of Eton, who died about that
time; and after a long and just eulogium on his wit, his learning,
and goodness of heart--'He was the only man, too,' says Mr. Johnson,
quite seriously, 'that did justice to my good breeding; and you may
observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No
man,' continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers, 'no
man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so
necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so
steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly bestows it on
another, as I do; nobody holds so strongly as I do the necessity of
ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it: yet
people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice.'"--_Anecdotes_. "I
think myself a very polite man,"--_Boswell_. 1778.]

Sir Henry Bulwer (in his "France") says that Louis the Fourteenth was
entitled to be called a man of genius, if only from the delicate
beauty of his compliments. Mrs. Thrale awards the palm of excellence
in the same path to Johnson. "Your compliments, Sir, are made seldom,
but when they are made, they have an elegance unequalled; but then,
when you are angry, who dares make speeches so bitter and so cruel?"
"I am sure," she adds, after a semblance of defence on his part, "I
have had my share of scolding from you." _Johnson_. "It is true, you
have, but you have borne it like an angel, and you have been the
better for it." As the discussion proceeds, he accuses her of often
provoking him to say severe things by unreasonable commendation; a
common mode of acquiring a character for amiability at the expense of
one's intimates, who are made to appear uncharitable by being thus
constantly placed on the depreciating side.

Some years prior to this period (1778) Mrs. Thrale's mind and
character had undergone a succession of the most trying ordeals, and
was tempered and improved, without being hardened, by them. In
allusion to what she suffered in child-bearing, she said later in
life that she had nine times undergone the sentence of a
convict,--confinement with hard labour. Child after child died at the
age when the bereavement is most affecting to a mother. Her husband's
health kept her in a constant state of apprehension for his life, and
his affairs became embarrassed to the very verge of bankruptcy. So
long as they remained prosperous, he insisted on her not meddling
with them in any way, and even required her to keep to her
drawing-room and leave the conduct of their domestic establishment to
the butler and housekeeper. But when (from circumstances detailed in
the "Autobiography") his fortune was seriously endangered, he wisely
and gladly availed himself of her prudence and energy, and was saved
by so doing. I have now before me a collection of autograph letters
from her to Mr. Perkins, then manager and afterwards one of the
proprietors of the brewery, from which it appears that she paid the
most minute attention to the business, besides undertaking the
superintendence of her own hereditary estate in Wales. On September
28, 1773, she writes to Mr. Perkins, who was on a commercial
journey:--

"Mr. Thrale is still upon his little tour; I opened a letter from you
at the counting-house this morning, and am sorry to find you have so
much trouble with Grant and his affairs. How glad I shall be to hear
that matter is settled at all to your satisfaction. His letter and
remittance came while I was there to-day.... Careless, of the 'Blue
Posts,' has turned refractory, and applied to Hoare's people, who
have sent him in their beer. I called on him to-day, however, and by
dint of an unwearied solicitation, (for I kept him at the coach side
a full half-hour) I got his order for six butts more as the final
trial."

Examples of fine ladies pressing tradesmen for their votes with
compromising importunity are far from rare, but it would be difficult
to find a parallel for Johnson's Hetty doing duty as a commercial
traveller. She was simultaneously obliged to anticipate the
electioneering exploits of the Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe;
and in after life, having occasion to pass through Southwark, she
expresses her astonishment at no longer recognising a place, every
hole and corner of which she had three times visited as a canvasser.

After the death of Mr. Thrale, a friend of Mr. H. Thornton canvassed
the borough on behalf of that gentleman. He waited on Mrs. Thrale,
who promised her support. She concluded her obliging expressions by
saying:--"I wish your friend success, and I think he will have it: he
may probably come in for two parliaments, but if he tries for a
third, were he an angel from heaven, the people of Southwark would
cry, 'Not _this_ man, but Barabbas.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: Miss Laetitia Matilda Hawkins vouches for this
story.--"Memoir, &c." vol. i. p.66, note, where she adds:--"I have
heard it said, that into whatever company she (Mrs. T.) fell, she
could be the most agreeable person in it."]

On one of her canvassing expeditions, Johnson accompanied her, and a
rough fellow, a hatter by trade, seeing the moralist's hat in a state
of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the
back with the other, cried out, "Ah, Master Johnson, this is no time
to be thinking about hats." "No, no, Sir," replied the Doctor, "hats
are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and
huzzah with;" accompanying his words with the true election halloo.

Thrale had serious thoughts of repaying Johnson's electioneering aid
in kind, by bringing him into Parliament. Sir John Hawkins says that
Thrale had two meetings with the minister (Lord North), who at first
seemed inclined to find Johnson a seat, but eventually
discountenanced the project. Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that Lord
North did not feel quite sure that Johnson's support might not
sometimes prove rather an incumbrance than a help. "His lordship
perhaps thought, and not unreasonably, that, like the elephant in the
battle, he was quite as likely to trample down his friends as his
foes." Flood doubted whether Johnson, being long used to sententious
brevity and the short flights of conversation, would have succeeded
in the expanded kind of argument required in public speaking. Burke's
opinion was, that if he had come early into Parliament, he would have
been the greatest speaker ever known in it. Upon being told this by
Reynolds, he exclaimed, "I should like to try my hand now." On
Boswell's adding that he wished he _had_, Mrs. Thrale writes:
"Boswell had leisure for curiosity: Ministers had not. Boswell would
have been equally amused by his failure as by his success; but to
Lord North there would have been no joke at all in the experiment
ending untowardly."

He was equally ready with advice and encouragement during the
difficulties connected with the brewery. He was not of opinion with
Aristotle and Parson Adams, that trade is below a philosopher[1]; and
he eagerly buried himself in computing the cost of the malt and the
possible profits on the ale. In October 1772, he writes from
Lichfield:

[Footnote 1: "Trade, answered Adams, is below a philosopher, as
Aristotle proves in his first chapter of 'Politics,' and unnatural,
as it is managed now."--_Joseph Andrews_.]

"Do not suffer little things to disturb you. The brew-house must be
the scene of action, and the subject of speculation. The first
consequence of our late trouble ought to be, an endeavour to brew at
a cheaper rate; an endeavour not violent and transient, but steady
and continual, prosecuted with total contempt of censure or wonder,
and animated by resolution not to stop while more can be done. Unless
this can be done, nothing can help us; and if this be done, we shall
not want help. Surely there is something to be saved; there is to be
saved whatever is the difference between vigilance and neglect,
between parsimony and profusion. The price of malt has risen again.
It is now two pounds eight shillings the quarter. Ale is sold in the
public-houses at sixpence a quart, a price which I never heard of
before."

In November of the same year, from Ashbourne:

"DEAR MADAM,--So many days and never a letter!--_Fugere fides,
pietasque pudorque_. This is Turkish usage. And I have been hoping
and hoping. But you are so glad to have me out of your mind.[1]

"I think you were quite right in your advice about the thousand
pounds, for the payment could not have been delayed long; and a short
delay would have lessened credit, without advancing interest. But in
great matters you are hardly ever mistaken."

[Footnote 1: This tone of playful reproach, when adopted by Johnson
at a later period, has been cited as a proof of actual
ill-treatment.]

In May 17, 1773:

"Why should Mr. T---- suppose, that what I took the liberty of
suggesting was concerted with you? He does not know how much I
revolve his affairs, and how honestly I desire his prosperity. I hope
he has let the hint take some hold of his mind."

In the copy of the printed letters presented by Mrs. Thrale to Sir
James Fellowes, the blank is filled up with the name of Thrale, and
the passage is thus annotated in her handwriting:

"Concerning his (Thrale's) connection with quack chemists, quacks of
all sorts; jumping up in the night to go to Marlbro' Street from
Southwark, after some advertising mountebank, at hazard of his life,"
In "Thraliana":

"18_th July_, 1778.--Mr. Thrale overbrewed himself last winter and
made an artificial scarcity of money in the family which has
extremely lowered his spirits. Mr. Johnson endeavoured last night,
and so did I, to make him promise that he would never more brew a
larger quantity of beer in one winter than 80,000 barrels[1], but my
Master, mad with the noble ambition of emulating Whitbread and
Calvert, two fellows that he despises,--could scarcely be prevailed
on to promise even _this_, that he will not brew more than four score
thousand barrels a year for five years to come. He did promise that
much, however; and so Johnson bade me write it down in the
'Thraliana';--and so the wings of Speculation are clipped a
little--very fain would I have pinioned her, but I had not strength
to perform the operation."

[Footnote 1: "If he got but 2_s._ 6_d._ by each barrel, 80,000 half
crowns are L10,000; and what more would mortal man desire than an
income of ten thousand a year--five to spend, and five to lay up?"]

That Johnson's advice was neither thrown away nor undervalued, may be
inferred from an incident related by Boswell. Mr. Perkins had hung up
in the counting-house a fine proof of the mezzotinto of Dr. Johnson
by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him, somewhat flippantly, "Why
do you put him up in the counting-house?" Mr. Perkins answered,
"Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there." "Sir," said
Johnson, "I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I
believe you speak sincerely."

He was in the habit of paying the most minute attention to every
branch of domestic economy, and his suggestions are invariably marked
by shrewdness and good sense. Thus when Mrs. Thrale was giving
evening parties, he told her that though few people might be hungry
after a late dinner, she should always have a good supply of cakes
and sweetmeats on a side table, and that some cold meat and a bottle
of wine would often be found acceptable. Notwithstanding the
imperfection of his eyesight, and his own slovenliness, he was a
critical observer of dress and demeanour, and found fault without
ceremony or compunction when any of his canons of taste or propriety
were infringed. Several amusing examples are enumerated by Mrs.
Thrale:

"I commended a young lady for her beauty and pretty behaviour one
day, however, to whom I thought no objections could have been made.
'I saw her,' said Dr. Johnson, 'take a pair of scissors in her left
hand though; and for all her father is now become a nobleman, and as
you say excessively rich, I should, were I a youth of quality ten
years hence, hesitate between a girl so neglected, and a _negro_.'

"It was indeed astonishing how he _could_ remark such minuteness with
a sight so miserably imperfect; but no accidental position of a
riband escaped him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his
demands of propriety. When I went with him to Litchfield, and came
downstairs to breakfast at the inn, my dress did not please him, and
he made me alter it entirely before he would stir a step with us
about the town, saying most satirical things concerning the
appearance I made in a riding-habit; and adding, ''Tis very strange
that such eyes as yours cannot discern propriety of dress: if I had a
sight only half as good, I think I should see to the centre.'

"Another lady, whose accomplishments he never denied, came to our
house one day covered with diamonds, feathers, &c., and he did not
seem inclined to chat with her as usual. I asked him why? when the
company was gone. 'Why, her head looked so like that of a woman who
shows puppets,' said he, 'and her voice so confirmed the fancy, that
I could not bear her to-day; when she wears a large cap, I can talk
to her.'

"When the ladies wore lace trimmings to their clothes, he expressed
his contempt of the reigning fashion in these terms: 'A Brussels
trimming is like bread-sauce,' said he, 'it takes away the glow of
colour from the gown, and gives you nothing instead of it; but sauce
was invented to heighten the flavour of our food, and trimming is an
ornament to the manteau, or it is nothing. Learn,' said he, 'that
there is propriety or impropriety in every thing how slight soever,
and get at the general principles of dress and of behaviour; if you
then transgress them, you will at least know that they are not
observed.'"

Madame D'Arblay confirms this account. He had just been finding fault
with a bandeau worn by Lady Lade, a very large woman, standing six
feet high without her shoes:

"_Dr. J._--The truth is, women, take them in general, have no idea of
grace. Fashion is all they think of. I don't mean Mrs. Thrale and
Miss Burney, when I talk of women!--they are goddesses!--and
therefore I except them.

"_Mrs. Thrale._--Lady Lade never wore the bandeau, and said she never
would, because it is unbecoming.

"_Dr. J. (laughing.)_--Did not she? then is Lady Lade a charming
woman, and I have yet hopes of entering into engagements with her!

"_Mrs. T._--Well, as to that I can't say; but to be sure, the only
similitude I have yet discovered in you, is in size: there you agree
mighty well.

"_Dr. J._--Why, if anybody could have worn the bandeau, it must have
been Lady Lade; for there is enough of her to carry it off; but you
are too little for anything ridiculous; that which seems nothing upon
a Patagonian, will become very conspicuous upon a Lilliputian, and of
you there is so little in all, that one single absurdity would
swallow up half of you."

Matrimony was one of his favourite subjects, and he was fond of
laying down and refining on the duties of the married state, with the
amount of happiness and comfort to be found in it. But once when he
was musing over the fire in the drawing-room at Streatham, a young
gentleman called to him suddenly, "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me
to marry?" "I would advise no man to marry, Sir," replied the Doctor
in a very angry tone, "who is not likely to propagate understanding;"
and so left the room. "Our companion," adds Mrs. Thrale, in the
"Anecdotes," "looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered
the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and,
drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice,
joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the
subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation so
useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life,
and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected
the offence, except to rejoice in its consequences."

The young gentleman was Mr. Thrale's nephew, Sir John Lade; who was
proposed, half in earnest, whilst still a minor, by the Doctor as a
fitting mate for the author of "Evelina." He married a woman of the
town, became a celebrated member of the Four-in-Hand Club, and
contrived to waste the whole of a fine fortune before he died.

In "Thraliana" she says:--"Lady Lade consulted him about her son, Sir
John. 'Endeavour, Madam,' said he, 'to procure him knowledge; for
really ignorance to a rich man is like fat to a sick sheep, it only
serves to call the rooks about him.' On the same occasion it was that
he observed how a mind unfurnished with subjects and materials for
thinking can keep up no dignity at all in solitude. 'It is,' says he,
'in the state of a mill without grist.'"

The attractions of Streatham must have been very strong, to induce
Johnson to pass so much of his time away from "the busy hum of men"
in Fleet Street, and "the full tide of human existence" at Charing
Cross. He often found fault with Mrs. Thrale for living so much in
the country, "feeding the chickens till she starved her
understanding." Walking in a wood when it rained, she tells us, "was
the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; for he would say,
after one has gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them well
baked, and removed to a London eating-house for enjoyment." This is
almost as bad as the foreigner, who complained that there was no ripe
fruit in England but the roasted apples. Amongst other modes of
passing time in the country, Johnson once or twice tried hunting and,
mounted on an old horse of Mr. Thrale's, acquitted himself to the
surprise of the "field," one of whom delighted him by exclaiming,
"Why Johnson rides as well, for ought I see, as the most illiterate
fellow in England." But a trial or two satisfied him--

  "He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield,
  Who after a long chase o'er hills, dales, fields,
  And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
  Ask'd next day,'If men ever hunted twice?'"

It is very strange, and very melancholy, was his reflection, that the
paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting
one of them. The mode of locomotion in which he delighted was the
vehicular. As he was driving rapidly in a postchaise with Boswell, he
exclaimed, "Life has not many things better than this." On their way
from Dr. Taylor's to Derby in 1777, he said, "If I had no duties, and
no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in
a postchaise with a pretty woman, but she should be one who could
understand me, and would add something to the conversation."

Mr. Croker attributes his enjoyment to the novelty of the pleasure;
his poverty having in early life prevented him from travelling post.
But a better reason is given by Mrs. Thrale:

"I asked him why he doated on a coach so? and received for answer,
that in the first place, the company were shut in with him _there_;
and could not escape, as out of a room; in the next place, he heard
all that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf; and
very impatient was he at my occasional difficulty of hearing. On this
account he wished to travel all over the world: for the very act of
going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern
about accidents, which he said never happened; nor did the
running-away of the horses at the edge of a precipice between Vernon
and St. Denys in France convince him to the contrary: 'for nothing
came of it,' he said, 'except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the
carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again, looking as
_white_!' When the truth was, all their lives were saved by the
greatest providence ever exerted in favour of three human creatures:
and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest thing
in the world to produce broken limbs and death."

The drawbacks on his gratification and on that of his fellow
travellers were his physical defects, and his utter insensibility to
the beauty of nature, as well as to the fine arts, in so far as they
were addressed to the senses of sight and hearing. "He delighted,"
says Mrs. Thrale, "no more in music than painting; he was almost as
deaf as he was blind; travelling with Dr. Johnson was, for these
reasons, tiresome enough. Mr. Thrale loved pro