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, 1780, 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