ng to the old poem;
and they will upset the vessel by and by."

This is not the language of one who wished to apologise for a
misalliance.

As to Piozzi's assumed want of youth and good looks, Johnson's
knowledge of womankind, to say nothing of his self-love, should have
prevented him from urging this as an insuperable objection. He might
have recollected the Roman matron in Juvenal, who considers the world
well lost for an old and disfigured prize-fighter; or he might have
quoted Spenser's description of one--

"Who rough and rude and filthy did appear,
Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye,
Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear,
When fairer faces were bid standen by:
Oh! who can tell the bent of woman's phantasy?"

Madame Campan, speaking of Caroline of Naples, the sister of Marie
Antoinette, says, she had great reason to complain of the insolence
of a Spaniard named Las Casas, whom the king, her father-in-law, had
sent to persuade her to remove M. Acton[1] from the conduct of
affairs and from about her person. She had told him, to convince him
of the nature of her sentiments, that she would have Acton painted
and sculptured by the most celebrated artists of Italy, and send his
bust and his portrait to the King of Spain, to prove to him that the
desire of fixing a man of superior capacity could alone have induced
her to confer the favour he enjoyed. Las Casas had dared to reply,
that she would be taking useless trouble; that a man's ugliness did
not always prevent him from pleasing, and that the King of Spain had
too much experience to be ignorant that the caprices of a woman were
inexplicable. Johnson may surely be allowed credit for as much
knowledge of the sex as the King of Spain.

[Footnote 1: M. Acton, as Madame Campan calls him, was a member of
the ancient English family of that name. He succeeded to the
baronetcy in 1791, and was the grandfather of Sir John E.E. Dalberg
Acton, Bart., M.P., &c.]

Others were simultaneously accusing her of marrying a young man to
indulge a sensual inclination. The truth is, Piozzi was a few months
older than herself, and was neither ugly nor disagreeable. Madame
D'Arblay has been already quoted as to his personal appearance, and
Miss Seward (October, 1787) writes:

"I am become acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi. Her conversation is
that bright wine of the intellects which has no lees. Dr. Johnson
told me truth when he said she had more colloquial wit than m