n forgotten Swift's
lines on Celia? or the repudiation of the divine nature by Ermodotus,
which occurs twice in Plutarch? The late Lord Melbourne complained
that two ladies of quality, sisters, told him too much of their
"natural history."]

Rough language, too, although not incompatible with affectionate
esteem, can hardly be reconciled with imaginative romance--

"Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But why did you kick me down stairs?"

"His ugly old wife," says the reviewer, "was an angel." Yes, an angel
so far as exalted language could make her one; and he had always
half-a-dozen angels or goddesses on his list. "_Je change d'objet,
mais la passion reste_." For this very reason, I repeat, his
affection for Mrs. Piozzi was not a deep, devoted, or absorbing
feeling at any time; and the gloom which settled upon the evening of
his days was owing to his infirmities and his dread of death, not to
the loosening of cherished ties, nor to the compelled solitude of a
confined dwelling in Bolt Court. The plain matter of fact is that,
during the last two years of his life, he was seldom a month together
at his own house, unless when the state of his health prevented him
from enjoying the hospitality of his friends. When the fatal marriage
was announced, he was planning what Boswell calls a jaunt into the
country; and in a letter dated Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1784, he says: "I
passed the first part of the summer at Oxford (with Dr. Adams);
afterwards I went to Lichfield, then to Ashbourne (Dr. Taylor's), and
a week ago I returned to Lichfield."

In the journal which he kept for Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, Oct. 20:
"The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books to
which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir
Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life; and I
hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me _Go in peace_."
Boswell reports him saying about this time, "Sir, I look upon every
day to be lost when I do not make a new acquaintance."

After another visit to Dr. Adams, at Pembroke College, he returned on
the 16th Nov. to London, where he died on the 13th Dec. 1784. The
proximate cause of his death was dropsy; and there is not the
smallest sign of its having been accelerated or embittered by
unkindness or neglect.

Whoever has accompanied me thus far will be fully qualified to form
an independent opinion of Lord Macaulay's dashing summary of Mrs.