er existed.
Sir William says he never met with any human being who possessed the
talent of conversation in such a degree. I naturally felt anxious to
know whether Piozzi could in any degree add to this pleasure, and
found, as I expected, that he could not even understand her.

"Her infatuation for him seems perfectly unaccountable. Johnson in
his rough (I may here call it brutal) manner said to her, 'Why Ma'am,
he is not only a stupid, ugly dog, but he is an old dog too.' Sir
William says he really believes that she combated her inclination for
him as long as possible; so long, that her senses would have failed
her if she had attempted to resist any longer. She was perfectly
aware of her degradation. One day, speaking to Sir William of some
persons whom he had been in the habit of meeting continually at
Streatham during the lifetime of Mr. Thrale, she said, not one of
them has taken the smallest notice of me ever since: they dropped me
before I had done anything wrong. Piozzi was literally at her elbow
when she said this."

The reviewer quotes the remark, "She was perfectly aware of her
degradation," as resting on the personal responsibility of Miss Wynn,
"who knew her in later life in Wales." The context shews that Miss
Wynn (who did not know her) was simply repeating the impressions of
Sir William Pepys, one of the bitterest opponents of the marriage, to
whom she certainly never said anything derogatory to her second
husband. The uniform tenor of her letters and her conduct shew that
she never regarded her second marriage as discreditable, and always
took a high and independent, instead of a subdued or deprecating,
tone with her alienated friends. A bare statement of the treatment
she received from them is surely no proof of conscious degradation.

In a letter to a Welsh neighbour, near the end of her life, some time
in 1818, she says:

"Mrs. Mostyn (her youngest daughter) has written again on the road
back to Italy, where she likes the Piozzis above all people, she
says, _if they were not so proud of their family_. Would not that
make one laugh two hours before one's own death? But I remember when
Lady Egremont raised the whole nation's ill will here, while the
Saxons were wondering how Count Bruhle could think of marrying a lady
born Miss Carpenter. The Lombards doubted in the meantime of my being
a gentlewoman by birth, because my first husband was a brewer. A
pretty world, is it not? A Ship of Fooles, accordi