Anecdotes of Johnson | Page 4

special use, because
his own was apt to be singed up the middle by close contact with the
candle, which he put, being short-sighted, between his eyes and a book.
Mrs. Thrale had skill in languages, read Latin, French, Italian, and
Spanish. She read literature, could quote aptly, and put knowledge as
well as playful life into her conversation. Johnson's regard for the
Thrales was very real, and it was heartily returned, though Mrs. Thrale
had, like her friend, some weaknesses, in common with most people
who feed lions and wish to pass for wits among the witty.
About fourteen years after Johnson's first acquaintance with the
Thrales-- when Johnson was seventy years old and Mrs. Thrale near
forty--the little lady, who had also lost several children, was unhappy in
the thought that she had ceased to be appreciated by her husband. Her
husband's temper became affected by the commercial troubles of 1762,
and Mrs. Thrale became jealous of the regard between him and Sophy
Streatfield, a rich widow's daughter. Under January, 1779, she wrote in
her "Thraliana," "Mr. Thrale has fallen in love, really and seriously,
with Sophy Streatfield; but there is no wonder in that; she is very pretty,
very gentle, soft, and insinuating; hangs about him, dances round him,
cries when she parts from him, squeezes his hand slily, and with her
sweet eyes full of tears looks so fondly in his face--and all for love of
me, as she pretends, that I can hardly sometimes help laughing in her
face. A man must not be a MAN but an IT to resist such artillery." Mrs.
Thrale goes on to record conquests made by this irresistible Sophy in
other directions, showing the same temper of jealousy. Thrale died on
the 4th of April, 1781.
Mrs. Thrale had entered in her "Thraliana" under July, 178O, being
then at Brighton, "I have picked up Piozzi here, the great Italian singer.
He is amazingly like my father. He shall teach Hesther." On the 25th of

July, 1784, being at Bath, her entry was, "I am returned from church
the happy wife of my lovely, faithful Piozzi. . . . subject of my prayers,
object of my wishes, my sighs, my reverence, my esteem." Her age
then was forty-four, and on the 13th of December in the same year
Johnson died. The newspapers of the day dealt hardly with her. They
called her an amorous widow, and Piozzi a fortune-hunter. Her eldest
daughter (afterwards Viscountess Keith) refused to recognise the new
father, and shut herself up in a house at Brighton with a nurse, Tib,
where she lived upon two hundred a year. Two younger sisters, who
were at school, lived afterwards with the eldest. Only the fourth
daughter, the youngest, went with her mother and her mother's new
husband to Italy. Johnson, too, was grieved by the marriage, and had
shown it, but had written afterwards most kindly. Mrs. Piozzi in
Florence was playing at literature with the poetasters of "The Florence
Miscellany" and "The British Album" when she was working at these
"Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson." Her book of anecdotes was
planned at Florence in 1785, the year after her friend's death, finished at
Florence in October, 1785, and published in the year 1786. There is a
touch of bitterness in the book which she thought of softening, but her
"lovely, faithful Piozzi" wished it to remain. H. M.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
I have somewhere heard or read that the preface before a book, like the
portico before a house, should be contrived so as to catch, but not
detain, the attention of those who desire admission to the family within,
or leave to look over the collection of pictures made by one whose
opportunities of obtaining them we know to have been not unfrequent. I
wish not to keep my readers long from such intimacy with the manners
of Dr. Johnson, or such knowledge of his sentiments as these pages can
convey. To urge my distance from England as an excuse for the book's
being ill-written would be ridiculous; it might indeed serve as a just
reason for my having written it at all; because, though others may print
the same aphorisms and stories, I cannot HERE be sure that they have
done so. As the Duke says, however, to the Weaver, in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, "Never excuse; if your play be a bad one, keep at least
the excuses to yourself."
I am aware that many will say I have not spoken highly enough of Dr.

Johnson; but it will be difficult for those who say so to speak more
highly. If I have described his manners as they were, I have been
careful to show his superiority to the common forms of common life. It