"Mrs. Piozzi, in her travels, quite solemnly sets forth that poor Dr. Goldsmith said once, 'I would advise every young fellow setting forth in life to love gravy,' alleging for it the serious reason that 'he had formerly seen a glutton's eldest nephew disinherited because his uncle never could persuade him to say he liked gravy.' Imagine the dullness that would convert a jocose saying of this kind into an unconscious utterance of grave absurdity."[1] In his index may be read: "Mrs. Piozzi's absurd instance of Goldsmith's absurdity." Mrs. Piozzi does not quote the saying as an instance of absurdity; nor set it forth solemnly. She repeats it, as an illustration of her argument, in the same semi-serious spirit in which it was originally hazarded. Sydney Smith took a different view of this grave gravy question. On a young lady's declining gravy, he exclaimed: "I have been looking all my life for a person who, on principle, rejected gravy: let us vow eternal friendship."

The "British Synonymy" appeared in 1794. It was thus assailed by Gifford:

"Though 'no one better knows his own house' than I the vanity of this woman; yet the idea of her undertaking such a work had never entered my head; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be numbered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapability of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from a child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance she so anxiously labours to conceal. 'If such a one be fit to write on Synonimes, speak.' Pignotti himself laughs in his sleeve; and his countrymen, long since undeceived, prize the lady's talents at their true worth,

Other critics have been more lenient or more just. Enough philosophical knowledge and acuteness were discovered in the work to originate a rumour that she had retained some of the great lexicographer's manuscripts, or derived a posthumous advantage, in some shape, from her former intimacy with him. In "Thraliana," Denbigh, 2nd January, 1795, she writes:

"My 'Synonimes' have been reviewed at last. The critics are all civil for aught I see, and nearly just, except when they say that Johnson left some fragments of a work upon Synonymy: of which God knows I never heard till now one syllable; never had he and I, in all the time we lived together, any conversation upon the subject."

Even Walpole admits that it has some marked and peculiar merits, although its value consists rather in the illustrative matter, than in the definitions and etymologies. Thus, in distinguishing between lavish, profuse and prodigal, she relates:

"Two gentlemen were walking leisurely up the Hay-Market some time in the year 1749, lamenting the fate of the famous Cuzzona, an actress who some time before had been in high vogue, but was then as they heard in a very pitiable situation. 'Let us go and visit her,' said one of them, 'she lives but over the way.' The other consented; and calling at the door, they were shown up stairs, but found the faded beauty dull and spiritless, unable or unwilling to converse on any subject. 'How's this?' cried one of her consolers, 'are you ill? or is it but low spirits chains your tongue so?'—'Neither,' replied she: ''tis hunger I suppose. I ate nothing yesterday, and now 'tis past six o'clock, and not one penny have I in the world to buy me any food.'—'Come with us instantly to a tavern; we will treat you with the best roast fowls and Port wine that London can produce.'—'But I will have neither my dinner nor my place of eating it prescribed to me,' answered Cuzzona, in a sharper tone, 'else I need never have wanted.' 'Forgive me,' cries the friend; 'do your own way; but eat in the name of God, and restore fainting nature.'—She thanked him then; and, calling to her a friendly wretch who inhabited the same theatre of misery, gave him the guinea the visitor accompanied his last words with; 'and run with this money,' said she, 'to such a wine-merchant,' (naming him); 'he is the only one keeps good Tokay by him. 'Tis a guinea a bottle, mind you,' to the boy; 'and bid the gentleman you buy it of give you a loaf into the bargain,—he won't refuse.' In half an hour or less the lad returned with the Tokay. 'But where,' cries Cuzzona, 'is the loaf I spoke for?' 'The merchant would give me no loaf,' replies her messenger; 'he drove me from the door, and asked if I took him for a baker.' 'Blockhead!' exclaims she; 'why I must have bread to my wine, you know, and I have not a penny to purchase any. Go beg me a loaf directly.' The fellow returns once more with one in his hand and a halfpenny, telling 'em the gentleman threw him three, and laughed at his impudence. She gave her Mercury the money, broke the bread into a wash-hand basin which stood near, poured the Tokay over it, and devoured the whole with eagerness. This was indeed a heroine in PROFUSION. Some active well-wishers procured her a benefit after this; she gained about 350l., 'tis said, and laid out two hundred of the money instantly in a shell-cap. They wore such things then."

When Savage got a guinea, he commonly spent it in a tavern at a sitting; and referring to the memorable morning when the "Vicar of Wakefield" was produced, Johnson says: "I sent him (Goldsmith) a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him." Mrs. Piozzi continues:

"But Doctor Johnson had always some story at hand to check extravagant and wanton wastefulness. His improviso verses made on a young heir's coming of age are highly capable of restraining such folly, if it is to be restrained: they never yet were printed, I believe.

These verses were addressed to Thrale's nephew, Sir John Lade, in August, 1780. They bear a strong resemblance to some of Burns' in his "Beggar's Sonata," written in 1785:—

Boswell's "Life of Johnson" was published in May, 1791. It is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":—

"May, 1791.—Mr. Boswell's book is coming out, and the wits expect me to tremble: what will the fellow say? ... that has not been said already."

No date, but previous to 25th May, 1791.—"I have been now laughing and crying by turns, for two days, over Boswell's book. That poor man should have a Bon Bouillon and be put to bed ... he is quite light-headed, yet madmen, drunkards, and fools tell truth, they say ... and if Johnson was to me the back friend he has represented ... let it cure me of ever making friendship more with any human being."

"25th May, 1791.—The death of my son, so suddenly, so horribly produced before my eyes now suffering from the tears then shed ... so shockingly brought forward in Boswell's two guinea book, made me very ill this week, very ill indeed[1]; it would make the modern friends all buy the work I fancy, did they but know how sick the ancient friends had it in their power to make me, but I had more wit than tell any of 'em. And what is the folly among all these fellows of wishing we may know one another in the next world.... Comical enough! when we have only to expect deserved reproaches for breach of confidence and cruel usage. Sure, sure I hope, rancour and resentment will at least be put off in the last moments: ... sure, surely, we shall meet no more, except on the great day when each is to answer to other and before other.... After that I hope to keep better company than any of them."

In 1801, Mrs. Piozzi published "Retrospection; or a 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." It is in two volumes quarto, containing rather more than 1000 pages. A fitting motto for it would have been De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. The subject, or range of subjects, was beyond her grasp; and the best that can be said of the book is that a good general impression of the stream of history, lighted up with some striking traits of manners and character, may be obtained from it. It would have required the united powers and acquirements of Raleigh, Burke, Gibbon, and Voltaire to fill so vast a canvass with appropriate groups and figures; and she is more open to blame for the ambitious conception of the work than for her comparative failure in the execution. In 1799 she writes to Dr. Gray: "The truth is, my plans stretch too far for these times, or for my own age; but the wish, though scarce hope, of my heart, is to finish the work I am engaged in, get you to look it over for me, and print in March 1801." She published it in January 1801, but it was not looked over by her learned correspondent. Some slight misgiving is betrayed in the Preface:

"If I should have made improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later times, that Doctor Johnson used to tell us of; who being advised to take subscriptions for a new Geographical Dictionary, hastened to Bolt Court and begged advice. There having listened carefully for half-an-hour, 'Ah, but dear Sir,' exclaimed the admiring parasite, 'if I am to make all this eloquent ado about Athens and Rome, where shall we find place, do you think, for Richmond, or Aix La Chapelle?'"

Writing from Bath, December 15th, 1802, she says:

"The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for July 1801 contained my answer to such critics as confined themselves to faults I could have helped committing—had they been faults. Those who merely told disagreeable truths concerning my person, or dress, or age, or such stuff, expected, of course, no reply. There are innumerable press errors in the book, from my being obliged to print on new year's day—during an insurrection of the printers. These the 'Critical Review' laid hold of with an acuteness sharpened by malignity."

Moore, who was staying at Bowood, sets down in his diary for April, 1823: "Lord L. in the evening, quoted a ridiculous passage from the Preface to Mrs. Piozzi's 'Retrospections,' in which, anticipating the ultimate perfection of the human race, she says she does not despair of the time arriving when 'Vice will take refuge in the arms of impossibility.' Mentioned also an ode of hers to Posterity, beginning, 'Posterity, gregarious dame,' the only meaning of which must be, a lady chez qui numbers assemble—a lady at home."[1]

There is no such passage in the Preface to "Retrospection," and the ode is her "Ode to Society," who is not improperly addressed as "gregarious."

"I repeated," adds Moore, "what Jekyll told the other day of Bearcroft saying to Mrs. Piozzi, when Thrale, after she had repeatedly called him Mr. Beercraft: 'Beercraft is not my name, Madam; it may be your trade, but it is not my name.'" It may always be questioned whether this offensive description of repartee was really uttered at the time. But Bearcroft was capable of it. He began his cross-examination of Mr. Vansittart by—"With your leave, Sir, I will call you Mr. Van for shortness." "As you please, Sir, and I will call you Mr. Bear."

Towards the end of 1795, Mrs. Piozzi left Streatham for her seat in North Wales, where (1800 or 1801) she was visited by a young nobleman, now an eminent statesman, distinguished by his love of literature and the fine arts, who has been good enough to recall and write down his impressions of her for me:

"I did certainly know Madame Piozzi, but had no habits of acquaintance with her, and she never lived in London to my knowledge. When in my youth I made a tour in Wales—times when all inns were bad, and all houses hospitable—I put up for a day at her house, I think in Denbighshire, the proper name of which was Bryn, and to which, on the occasion of her marriage I was told, she had recently added the name of Bella. I remember her taking me into her bed-room to show me the floor covered with folios, quartos, and octavos, for consultation, and indicating the labour she had gone through in compiling an immense volume she was then publishing, called 'Retrospection.' She was certainly what was called, and is still called, blue, and that of a deep tint, but good humoured and lively, though affected; her husband, a quiet civil man, with his head full of nothing but music.

"I afterwards called on her at Bath, where she chiefly resided. I remember it was at the time Madame de Staël's 'Delphine,' and 'Corinne,' came out[1], and that we agreed in preferring 'Delphine,' which nobody reads now, to 'Corinne,' which most people read then, and a few do still. She rather avoided talking of Johnson. These are trifles, not worth recording, but I have put them down that you might not think me neglectful of your wishes; but now j'ai vuidé mon sac."

Her mode of passing her time when she had ceased writing books, with the topics which interested her, will be best learned from her letters. Her vivacity never left her, and the elasticity of her spirits bore up against every kind of depression. A lady who met her on her way to Wynnstay in January, 1803, describes her as "skipping about like a kid, quite a figure of fun, in a tiger skin shawl, lined with scarlet, and only five colours upon her head-dress—on the top of a flaxen wig a bandeau of blue velvet, a bit of tiger ribbon, a white beaver hat and plume of black feathers—as gay as a lark."

In a letter, dated Jan. 1799, to a Welsh neighbour, Mrs. Piozzi says:

"Mr. Piozzi has lost considerably in purse, by the cruel inroads of the French in Italy, and of all his family driven from their quiet homes, has at length with difficulty saved one little boy who is now just turned of five years old. We have got him here (Bath) since I wrote last, and his uncle will take him to school next week; for as our John has nothing but his talents and education to depend upon, he must be a scholar, and we will try hard to make him a very good one.

"My poor little boy from Lombardy said as I walked him across our market, 'These are sheeps' heads, are they not, aunt? I saw a basket of men's heads at Brescia.'

"As he was by a lucky chance baptized, in compliment to me, John Salusbury, five years ago, when happier days smiled on his family, he will be known in England by no other, and it will be forgotten he is a foreigner. A lucky circumstance for one who is intended to work his way among our islanders by talent, diligence, and education."

She thus mentions this event in "Thraliana," January 17th, 1798:

"Italy is ruined and England threatened. I have sent for one little boy from among my husband's nephews. He was christened John Salusbury: he shall be naturalised, and then we will see whether he will be more grateful and natural and comfortable than Miss Thrales have been to the mother they have at length driven to desperation."

She could hardly have denied her husband the satisfaction of rescuing a single member of his family from the wreck; and they were bound to provide handsomely for the child of their adoption. Whether she carried the sentiment too far in giving him the entire estate (not a large one) is a very different question; on which she enters fearlessly in one of the fragments of the Autobiography. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters in which Johnson writes: "Mrs. Davenant says you regain your health,"—she remarks: "Mrs. Davenant neither knew nor cared, as she wanted her brother Harry Cotton to marry Lady Keith, and I offered my estate with her. Miss Thrale said she wished to have nothing to do either with my family or my fortune. They were all cruel and all insulting." Her fits of irritation and despondency never lasted long.

Her mode of bringing up her adopted nephew was more in accordance with her ultimate liberality, than with her early intentions or professions of teaching him to "work his way among our islanders." Instead of suffering him to travel to and from the University by coach, she insisted on his travelling post; and she is said to have remarked to the mother of a Welsh baronet, who was similarly anxious for the comfort and dignity of her heir, "Other people's children are baked in coarse common pie dishes, ours in patty-pans."

She was misreported, or afterwards improved upon the thought; for, in June 1810, she writes to Dr. Gray: "He is a boy of excellent principle. Education at a private school has an effect like baking loaves in a tin. The bread is more insipid, but it comes out clean; and Mr. Gray laughed, when at breakfast this morning, our undercrusts suggested the comparison."

In the Conway Notes, she says:

"Had we vexations enough? We had certainly many pleasures. The house in Wales was beautiful, and the Boy was beautiful too. Mr. Piozzi said I had spoiled my own children and was spoiling his. My reply was, that I loved spoiling people, and hated any one I could not spoil. Am I not now trying to spoil dear Mr. Conway?"

When she talks of spoiling, she must not be understood literally. In 1817 she writes from Bath to Dr. Gray:

"Sir John and Lady Salusbury staid with me six or seven weeks, and made themselves most beloved among us. They are very good young creatures.... My children read your Key to each other on Sunday noons: the Connection on Sunday nights. You remember me hoping and proposing to make dear Salusbury a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar; and when one has succeeded in the first two wishes, there is no need to fret if the third does fail a little. Such is my situation concerning my adopted, as you are accustomed to call him."

Before she died she had the satisfaction of seeing him sheriff of his county; and on carrying up an address, he was knighted and became Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury. Miss Williams Wynn has preserved a somewhat apocryphal anecdote of his disinterestedness:

"When I read her (Mrs. P.'s) lamentations over her poverty, I could not help believing that Sir J. Salusbury had proved ungrateful to his benefactress. For the honour of human nature I rejoice to find this is not the case. When he made known to his aunt his wish to marry, she promised to make over to him the property of Brynbella. Even before the marriage was concluded she had distressed herself by her lavish expenditure at Streatham. I saw by the letters that Gillow's bill amounted to near 2,400l., and Mr. (the late Sir John) Williams tells me she had continually very large parties from London. Sir John Salusbury then came to her, offered to relinquish all her promised gifts and the dearest wish of his heart, saying he should be most grateful to her if she would only give him a commission in the army, and let him seek his fortune. At the same time he added that he made this offer because all was still in his power, but that from the moment he married, she must be aware that it would be no longer so, that he should not feel himself justified in bringing a wife into distress of circumstances, nor in entailing poverty on children unborn.[1] She refused; he married; and she went on in her course of extravagance. She had left herself a life income only, and large as it was, no tradesman would wait a reasonable time for payment; she was nearly eighty; and they knew that at her death nothing would be left to pay her debts, and so they seized the goods."

When Fielding, the novelist, rather boastingly avowed that he never knew, and believed he never should know, the difference between a shilling and sixpence, he was told: "Yes, the time will come when you will know it—when you have only eighteen pence left." If the author of "Tom Jones" could not be taught the value of money, we must not be too hard on Mrs. Piozzi for not learning it, after lesson upon lesson in the hard school of "impecuniosity." Whilst Piozzi lived, her affairs were faithfully and carefully administered. Although they built Brynbella, spent a good deal of money on Streatham, and lived handsomely, they never wanted money. He had a moderate fortune, the produce of his professional labours, and left it, neither impaired nor materially increased, to his family. With peculiar reference probably to her habits of profuse expenditure, he used to say that "white monies were good for ladies, yellow for gentlemen." He took the guineas under his especial charge, leaving only the silver to her. This was a matter of notoriety in the neighbourhood, and the tenants, to please her or humour the joke, sometimes brought bags of shillings and sixpences in part payment of their rents.

In the Conway Notes she says:

"Our head-quarters were in Wales, where dear Piozzi repaired my church, built a new vault for my old ancestors, chose the place in it where he and I are to repose together.... He lived some twenty-five years with me, however, but so punished with gout that we found Bath the best wintering-place for many, many seasons.—Mrs. Siddons' last appearance there he witnessed, when she played Calista to Dimond's Lothario, in which he looked so like Garrick, it shocked us all three, I believe; for Garrick adored Mr. Piozzi, and Siddons hated the little great man to her heart. Poor Dimond! he was a well-bred, pleasing, worthy creature, and did the honours of his own house and table with peculiar grace indeed. No likeness in private life or manner,—none at all; no wit, no fun, no frolic humour had Mr. Dimond:—no grace, no dignity, no real unaffected elegance of mien or behaviour had his predecessor, David,—whose partiality to my fastidious husband was for that reason never returned. Merriment, difficult for him to comprehend, made no amends for the want of that which no one understood better,—so he hated all the wits but Murphy."

There is hardly a family of note or standing within visiting distance of their place, that has not some tradition or reminiscence to relate concerning them; and all agree in describing him as a worthy good sort of man, obliging, inoffensive, kind to the poor, principally remarkable for his devotion to music, and utterly unable to his dying day to familiarise himself with the English language or manners. It is told of him that being required to pay a turnpike toll near the house of a country neighbour whom he was on his way to visit, he took it for granted that the toll went into his neighbour's pocket, and proposed setting up a gate near Brynbella with the view of levying toll in his turn.

In September, 1800, she wrote from Brynbella to Dr. Gray:

"Dear Mr. Piozzi, who takes men out of misery so far as his power extends in this neighbourhood, feels flattered and encouraged by your very kind approbation. He has been getting rugs for the cottagers' beds to keep them warm this winter, while we are away, and they all take me into their sleeping rooms when I visit them now, to show how comfortably they live. As for the old hut you so justly abhorred, and so kindly noticed—it is knocked down and its coarse name too, Potlicko: we call it Cottage-o'-the-Park. Some recurrence to the original derivation in soup season will not, however, be much amiss I suppose."

"Amongst the company," says Moore, "was Mrs. John Kemble. She mentioned an anecdote of Piozzi, who upon calling upon some old lady of quality, was told by the servant, she was 'indifferent.' 'Is she indeed?' answered Piozzi, huffishly, 'then pray tell her I can be as indifferent as she;' and walked away."[1]

Till he was disabled by the gout, his principal occupation was his violin, and it was her delight to listen to him. She more than once observed to the vicar, "Such music is quite heavenly." "I am in despair," cried out the village fiddler, "I may now stick my fiddle in my thatched roof, for a greater performer is come to reside in the parish." The existing superstition of the country is that his spirit, playing on his favourite instrument, still haunts one wing of Brynbella. If he designed the building, his architectural taste does not merit the praises she lavishes on it. The exterior is not prepossessing; but there is a look of comfort about the house; the interior is well arranged: the situation, which commands a fine and extensive view of the upper part of the valley of the Clywd, is admirably chosen; the garden and grounds are well laid out; and the walks through the woods on either side, especially one called the Lovers' Walk, are remarkably picturesque. Altogether, Brynbella may be fairly held to merit the appellation of a "pretty villa." The name implies a compliment to Piozzi's country as well as to his taste; for she meant it to typify the union between Wales and Italy in his and her own proper persons. She says in the Conway Notes:

"Mr. Piozzi built the house for me, he said; my own old chateau, Bachygraig by name, tho' very curious, was wholly uninhabitable; and we called the Italian villa he set up as mine in the Vale of Cluid, Brynbella, or the beautiful brow, making the name half Welsh and half Italian, as we were."

Dr. Burney, in a letter to his daughter, thus described the position and feelings of the couple towards each other in 1808:

"During my invalidity at Bath I had an unexpected visit from your Streatham friend, of whom I had lost sight for more than ten years. She still looks very well, but is graver, and candour itself; though she still says good things, and writes admirable notes and letters, I am told, to my granddaughters C. and M., of whom she is very fond. We shook hands very cordially, and avoided any allusion to our long separation and its cause. The caro sposo still lives, but is such an object from the gout, that the account of his sufferings made me pity him sincerely; he wished, she told me, 'to see his old and worthy friend,' and un beau matin I could not refuse compliance with his wish. She nurses him with great affection and tenderness, never goes out or has company when he is in pain."

In the Conway Notes she says:

"Piozzi's fine hand upon the organ and pianoforte deserted him. Gout, such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into every dreadful shape.... A little girl, shown to him as a musical wonder of five years old, said, 'Pray, Sir, why are your fingers wrapped up in black silk so?' 'My dear,' replied he, 'they are in mourning for my voice.' 'Oh, me!' cries the child, 'is she dead?' He sung an easy song, and the baby exclaimed, 'Ah, Sir! you are very naughty—you tell fibs!' Poor dears! and both gone now!"

"When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him at Bath, in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish priest,—we had full opportunity there. 'By no means,' said he. 'Call Mr. Leman of the Crescent.' We did so,—poor Bessy ran and fetched him. Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but recovered sufficiently to go home and die in his own house."

He died of gout at Brynbella in March 1809, and was buried in a vault constructed by her desire in Dymerchion Church. There is a portrait of him (period and painter unknown) still preserved amongst the family portraits at Brynbella. It is that of a good-looking man of about forty, in a straight-cut brown coat with metal buttons, lace frill and ruffles, and some leaves of music in his hand. There are also two likenesses of Mrs. Piozzi: one a three-quarter length (kit-kat), taken apparently when she was about forty; the other a miniature of her at an advanced age. Both confirm her description of herself as too strong-featured to be pretty. The hands in the three-quarter length are gloved.

Brynbella continued her headquarters till 1814, when she gave it up to Sir John Salusbury. From that period she resided principally at Bath and Clifton, occasionally visiting Streatham or making summer trips to the seaside.

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

Miss Thrale's marriage with Lord Keith in 1808 is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"The 'Thraliana' is coming to an end; so are the Thrales. The eldest is married now. Admiral Lord Keith the man; a good man for ought I hear: a rich man for ought I am told: a brave man we have always heard: and a wise man I trow by his choice. The name no new one, and excellent for a charade, e.g.

Her way of life after Piozzi's death may be collected from the Letters, with the exception of one strange episode towards the end. When nearly eighty, she took a fancy for an actor named Conway, who came out on the London boards in 1813, and had the honour of acting Romeo and Jaffier to the Juliet and Belvidera of Miss O'Neill (Lady Becher). He also acted with her in Dean Milman's fine play, "Fazio." But it was his ill fate to reverse Churchill's famous lines:

Conway was six feet high, and a very handsome man to boot; but his advantages were purely physical; not a spark of genius animated his fine features and commanding figure, and he was battling for a moderate share of provincial celebrity, when Mrs. Piozzi fell in with him at Bath. It has been rumoured in Flintshire that she wished to marry him, and offered Sir John Salusbury a large sum in ready money (which she never possessed) to give up Brynbella (which he could not give up), that she might settle it on the new object of her affections. But none of the letters or documents that have fallen in my way afford even plausibility to the rumour, and some of the testamentary papers in which his name occurs, go far towards discrediting the belief that her attachment ever went beyond admiration and friendship expressed in exaggerated terms.[1]

Conway threw himself overboard and was drowned in a voyage from New York to Charleston in 1828. His effects were sold at New York, and amongst them a copy of the folio edition of Young's "Night Thoughts," in which he had made a note of its having been presented to him by his "dearly attached friend, the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi." In the preface to "Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, Written when she was Eighty, to William Augustus Conway," published in London in 1842, it is stated that the originals, seven in number, were purchased by an American "lady," who permitted a "gentleman" to take copies and use them as he might think fit. What this "gentleman" thought fit, was to publish them with a catchpenny title and an alleged extract by way of motto to sanction it. The genuineness of the letters is doubtful, and the interpolation of three or four sentences would alter their entire tenor. But taken as they stand, their language is not warmer than an old woman of vivid fancy and sensibility might have deemed warranted by her age. "Tell Mr. Johnson I love him exceedingly," is the mission given by the old Countess of Eglinton to Boswell in 1778. L'age n'a point de sexe; and no one thought the worse of Madame Du Deffand for the impassioned tone in which she addressed Horace Walpole, whose dread of ridicule induced him to make a most ungrateful return to her fondness.[1] Years before the formation of this acquaintance, Mrs. Piozzi had acquired the difficult art of growing old; je sais vieillir: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received from some younger beauty:

"'Tis not a year and a quarter since, dear Conway, accepting of my portrait sent to Birmingham, said to the bringer, 'Oh if your lady but retains her friendship: oh if I can but keep her patronage, I care not for the rest.' And now, when that friendship follows you through sickness and through sorrow; now that her patronage is daily rising in importance: upon a lock of hair given or refused by une petite Traitresse, hangs all the happiness of my once high-spirited and high-blooded friend. Let it not be so. EXALT THY LOVE: DEJECTED HEART—and rise superior to such narrow minds. Do not however fancy she will ever be punished in the way you mention: no, no; she'll wither on the thorny stem dropping the faded and ungathered leaves:—a China rose, of no good scent or flavour—false in apparent sweetness, deceitful when depended on—unlike the flower produced in colder climates, which is sought for in old age, preserved even after death, a lasting and an elegant perfume,—a medicine, too, for those whose shattered nerves require astringent remedies.

"And now, dear Sir, let me request of you—to love yourself—and to reflect on the necessity of not dwelling on any particular subject too long, or too intensely. It is really very dangerous to the health of body and soul. Besides that our time here is but short; a mere preface to the great book of eternity: and 'tis scarce worthy of a reasonable being not to keep the end of human existence so far in view that we may tend to it—either directly or obliquely in every step. This is preaching—but remember how the sermon is written at three, four, and five o'clock by an octogenary pen—a heart (as Mrs. Lee says) twenty-six years old: and as H.L.P. feels it to be,—ALL YOUR OWN. Suffer your dear noble self to be in some measure benefited by the talents which are left me; your health to be restored by soothing consolations while I remain here, and am able to bestow them. All is not lost yet. You have a friend, and that friend is PIOZZI."

Conway's "high blood" was as great a recommendation to Mrs. Piozzi as his good looks, and he vindicated his claim to noble descent by his conduct, which was disinterested and gentlemanlike throughout.

Moore sets down in his Diary, April 28, 1819: "Breakfasted with the Fitzgeralds. Took me to call on Mrs. Piozzi; a wonderful old lady; faces of other times seemed to crowd over her as she sat,—the Johnsons, Reynoldses, &c. &c.: though turned eighty, she has all the quickness and intelligence of a gay young woman."

Nichol, the bookseller, had said that "Johnson was the link that connected Shakespeare with the rest of mankind." On hearing this, Mrs. Piozzi at eighty exclaimed, "Oh, the dear fellow, I must give him a kiss for that idea." When Nichol told the story, he added, "I never got it, and she went out of the world a kiss in my debt."

One of the most characteristic feats or freaks of this extraordinary woman was the celebration of her eightieth birthday by a concert, ball, and supper, to between six and seven hundred people, at the Kingston Rooms, Bath, on the 27th January, 1820. At the conclusion of the supper, her health was proposed by Admiral Sir James Sausmarez, and drunk with three times three. The dancing began at two, when she led off with her adopted son, Sir John Salusbury, dancing (according to the author of "Piozziana," an eye-witness) "with astonishing elasticity, and with all the true air of dignity which might have been expected of one of the best bred females in society." When fears were expressed that she had done too much, she replied:—"No: this sort of thing is greatly in the mind; and I am almost tempted to say the same of growing old at all, especially as it regards those of the usual concomitants of age, viz., laziness, defective sight, and ill-temper."

"So far from feeling fatigued or exhausted on the following day by her exertions," remarks Sir James Fellowes in a note on this event, "she amused us by her sallies of wit, and her jokes on 'Tully's Offices,' of which her guests had so eagerly availed themselves.". Tully was the cook and confectioner, the Bath Gunter, who provided the supper.

Mrs. Piozzi died in May, 1821. Her death is circumstantially communicated in a letter from Mrs. Pennington, the lady mentioned in Miss Seward's correspondence as the beautiful and agreeable Sophia Weston:—

"Hot Wells, May 5th, 1821.

"Dear Miss Willoughby,—It is my painful task to communicate to you, who have so lately been the kind associate of dearest Mrs. Piozzi, the irreparable loss we have all sustained in that incomparable woman and beloved friend.

"She closed her various life about nine o'clock on Wednesday, after an illness of ten days, with as little suffering as could be imagined under these awful circumstances. Her bed-side was surrounded by her weeping daughters: Lady Keith and Mrs. Hoare arrived in time to be fully recognised[1]; Miss Thrale, who was absent from town, only just before she expired, but with the satisfaction of seeing her breathe her last in peace.

"Nothing could behave with more tenderness and propriety than these ladies, whose conduct, I am convinced, has been much misrepresented and calumniated by those who have only attended to one side of the history: but may all that is past be now buried in oblivion! Retrospection seldom improves our view of any subject. Sir John Salusbury was too distant, the close of her illness being so rapid, for us to entertain any expectation of his arriving in time to see the dear deceased. He only reached Clifton late last night. I have not yet seen him; my whole time has been devoted to the afflicted ladies."