me) shews that it was solemnised
on the 23rd July, by a clergyman named Richard Smith, in the presence
of three attesting witnesses. This, and the entries in "Thraliana,"
prove Baretti's whole story to be false. "Now Baretti was a libeller,
and not to be believed except upon compulsion;" meaning, I suppose,
without confirmatory evidence strong enough to dispense with his
testimony altogether. He was notorious for his _black_ lies. Yet he
is believed eagerly, willingly, upon no compulsion, and without any
confirmatory evidence at all.

[Footnote 1: The following passage is reprinted in the corrected
edition of Lord Macaulay's Essays:--"There was no want of low minds
and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney's)
first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage
Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did
not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in
order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed
her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer
of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him
with materials for a worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson,
some sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels of
better books." There is reason to believe that the entry Mr. Croker
copied was that of the baptism of an elder sister of the same name
who died before the birth of the famous Fanny.]

The internal evidence of the improbability of the story has
disappeared in the reviewer's paraphrase. Baretti says that at
Salisbury "she suddenly declared that a letter she found of great
importance demanded her immediate presence _in London_.... But
Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he
continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no
doubt, an immense wonder _at her pertinacious silence_." So she told
her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived
Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was
wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was
receiving letters from her, dated Bath! Why, having formally
announced her determination to marry Piozzi, she should not give him
the meeting in London if she chose, fairly passes my comprehension.

Whilst the reviewer thinks he is strengthening one point, he is
palpably weakening another. She would not have been "mortally afraid
of the