Autobiography Letters And Literary Remains Of Mrs Piozzi Thrale

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 ve...

[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 obje...

[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 b...

[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 o...

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 re...

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 Mr...

"When we were at Rouen together," says Mrs. Thrale, "he took a great fancy to the Abbe Kofiette, with whom he conversed about the destruction of the order of Jesuits, and condem...

"Now Johnson's virtue was engaged; and he, I doubt not, made it a point of conscience not to increase the distresses of a family already oppressed with affliction. Baretti, howe...

"She is sadly faded, and looked disturbed and unhappy but still beautiful, though no longer blooming; and still affectionate, though absent and evidently absorbed. We had a litt...

"DEAREST MADAM,--That you are gradually recovering your tranquillity, is the effect to be humbly expected from trust in God. Do not represent life as darker than it is. Your los...

Piozzi's attentions had attracted Johnson's notice without troubling his peace. On November 24th, 1781, he wrote from Ashbourne: "Piozzi, I find, is coming in spite of Miss Harr...

"The persecution I endure from men too who want to marry me--in good time--is another reason for my desiring to be gone. I wish to marry none of them, and Sir Philip's teazing m...

[Footnote 1: The Edinburgh reviewer says, "Johnson went in Oct. 1782 from Streatham to Brighton, where he lived a kind of boarding-house life;" and adds, "he was not asked out i...

"All these exactnesses in a man who was nothing less than exact himself, made him extremely impracticable as an inmate, though most instructive as a companion, and useful as a f...

He was so absorbed with his own complaints as to make no allowance for hers. Yet her health was in a very precarious state, and in the autumn of the same year, his complaints of...

In 1800, she wrote thus to Dr. Gray: "What a good example have you set them (his children)! going to visit dear mama at Twickenham--long may they keep their parents, pretty crea...

"I was tempted to observe," says the author of "Piozziana," "that I thought, as I still do, that Johnson's anger on the event of her second marriage was excited by some feeling...

Johnson was never driven or expelled from Mrs. Piozzi's house or family: if very intelligible hints were given, they certainly were not taken; the library was not formed by him;...

"Upon mentioning this story to my friend Mr. Wilkes," adds Boswell, "he pleasantly matched it with the following sentimental anecdote. He was invited by a young man of fashion a...

"He recommended, on something like the same principle, that when one person meant to serve another, he should not go about it slily, or, as we say, underhand, out of a false ide...

"She told me next, that in the second volume I also, was mentioned. Where she may have heard this I cannot gather, but it has given me a sickness at heart, inexpressible. It is...

This condemnatory verse is every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of po...

"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...

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 o...

Two other letters written about the same time contain the same piece of intelligence and the same joke. She was very fond of writing marginal notes; and after annotating one cop...