a waistcoat lined with elastic gum, which had very honourably saved his life formerly, when shot in a duel. This savage story is a little relieved by Cagliostro's Memorial, and by the exhibition of Mademoiselle la Chevalière D'Eon, who is come over. I trouble myself little to inquire into either of their histories-one shall never know the real truth of either; and what avails it to scrutinize what is unfathomable? What signifies exploring, when at last one's curiosity may rest on error?

I have a pleasanter theme for my own satisfaction: Captain Hugh Conway, a younger son of Lord Hertford, is going to marry Lady Horatio Waldegrave.* He is one of the first marine characters, and has every quality that would adorn any profession; but the striking resemblance between the lovers are good-nature and beauty. Lord Hertford is as much charmed with the match as I am; and we flatter ourselves the Duchess, to whom a courier is gone, and for whose consent they wait, will approve of it too, though it will not be an opulent alliance. Their RR. HH. are at Milan.

Lord and Lady Spencer are arrived,-and now I suppose the adventures of a certain Ladyt and her Cousin Vernon, which I have kept profoundly secret, will be public. I have lately received a letter from the Lady from Petersburgh: luckily, she gave me no direction to her, no more than from Venice; so, if necessary, I shall plead that I did not know whether I must direct next to Grand Cairo, or Constantinople. Petersburgh I think a very congenial asylum; the Sovereign has already fostered the Ducal Countess of Bristol-for in the family of Hervey double dignities couple with facility. Formerly our outlaws used to concentre at Boulogne; they are now spread over the face of the earth. Mr. Vernon's Cousin tells me she has been also at Warsaw! that she showed the King a letter of mine, who put it into his pocket, translated it into French (though returning the original,) and would send it to his sister the Princess Czartoriski at Vienna:-so, I may see it in an Utrecht Gazette! I know not what it contained; however, I comfort myself that I have never dealt with my heroine but in compliments or good advice: but this comes of corresponding with strolling Roxanas.

I have very lately been lent a volume of poems, composed and printed at Florence, in which another of our ex-heroines, Mrs. Piozzi, has a considerable share: her associates, three of the English bards who assisted in the little garland which Ramsay the painter sent me. The present is a plump octavo; and, if you have not sent me a copy by your nephew, I should be glad if you could get one for me: not for the merit of the verses, which are moderate enough, and faint imitations

Third daughter of the Duchess of Gloucester by her first husband, James, Earl of Waldegrave. Lady Horatia and Captain Conway were second cousins, once removed.

† Elizabeth Berkeley, Lady Craven, sister of the Earl of Berkeley.

Widow of Mr. Thrale, a great brewer, remarried to Piozzi, an Italian fiddler. She had broken with Sir Horace, because he could not invite her husband with the Italian nobility.

of our good poets; but for a short and sensible and genteel preface by La Piozzi, from whom I have just seen a very clever letter to Mrs. Montagu, to disavow a jackanapes who has lately made a noise here, one Boswell, by anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. In a day or two we expect another collection by the same Signora.

Though I ask for that volume, it made me very indignant. Though that constellation of ignes fatui have flattered one another as if they were real stars, I turned over the whole set of verses, (though I did not read a quarter,) and could not find the only name I expected to see-yours. What stocks and stones !-more insensible than their predecessors, who danced to Orpheus !-who lived under the shade of your virtues, and could drink of the stream of your humanity, benevolence, and attentions, and not attempt to pay one line to gratitude. If you send me the book, I think I will burn all but the preface.

I hope the spring will recruit your spirits, though it cannot replace your nephews! I am very impatient for their arrival. My own gout is gone, the chalk suspended for the present, and, except being six months older than Methusalem in point of strength, I am as well as I ever am.*

17th.

Your nephews are arrived; I have seen Sir Horace, he will write to you to-night himself. Adieu!

LETTER CCCCXLVI.

Berkeley Square, March 28, 1786. THIS is but a codicil to my letter of last week, and only to tell you that the Lively is arrived, and that I have received the vases and books; and, by the courier, your letter of the 10th. The form of the vases is handsome; the porcelain and the gilding inferior to ours, and both to those of France; as the paste of ours at Bristol, Worchester, and Derby is superior to all but that of Saxony. The French excel us all in ornaments of taste-I mean, in such ornaments as do not rise to serious magnificence; but they must keep within doors: they may deck dress, furniture, china, and snuff-boxes; but buildings, cities, gardens, will not allow of spangles.

You have not told me whether the vases are of Ginori's or the

* Notwithstanding his increasing infirmities, however, it would appear that his good spirits remained; for Mrs. Hannah More thus speaks of him about this time, April 1786" Neither years nor sufferings can abate the entertaining powers of the pleasant Horace, which rather improve than decay; though he himself says he is only fit to be a milkwoman, as the chalk-stones at his fingers' ends qualify him for nothing but scoring, but he declares he will not be a Bristol milkwoman."-Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 15.—

Great-Duke's manufacture; I imagine, of the former: but I shall ask your nephew when he returns to London. I thank you, too, for the volume of poems by the Quadruple Alliance, which, in my last, I have begged you to send me; a wish you had anticipated. In the case there were also four copies of the Panegyric on Captain Cook, -did you mean any of the copies for any particular persons?—and the poem on Lord Robert Manners. Once more, thanks for all!

Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed-in her, I mean; not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high varnished preface to a heap of rubbish, in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago. Her penegyric is loud in praise of her hero; and almost every fact she relates disgraces him. She allows and proves he was arrogant, yet affirms he was not proud; as if arrogance were not the flower of pride. A man may be proud, and may conceal it; if he is arrogant, he declares he is proud. She, and all Johnson's disciples, seem to have taken his brutal contradictions for bons-mots. Some of his own works show that he had, at times, strong, excellent sense; and that he had the virtue of charity to a high degree, is indubitable: but his friends (of whom he made woful choice) have taken care to let the world know, that in behaviour he was an ill-natured bear, and in opinions as senseless a bigot as an old washerwoman-a brave composition for a philosopher! Let me turn from such a Hottentot to his reverse-to you; to you, the mild, benevolent, beneficent friend of mankind, and the true contented philosopher in every stage. Your last resigned letter is an antidote to all Johnson's coarse, meditated, offensive apophthegms.

As spring must be arrived in Italy, though postponed again here by snow, frosts, and east-winds, I trust your cough will be softened, if not removed. I scarce can bring myself to hope it quite cured. My long observation has persuaded me that a cough, though a vexatious remedy, is a preservative of elderly persons, from exercising and clearing the breast and lungs. I know two or three, who for years have had a constant cough in winter, and who have dangerous illnesses if it does not return in its season.

Thank you for the Leyden Gazette; the theme is still very rife, but with no new event, though contradictory reports are coined every day: I do not repeat them, for I know not which are true, nor whether any are.

I interest myself much more in the slight shown to your nephew: it surprised me, for I thought that he at least was acceptible. Your nephew's delicacy was silent to me; and so must I be by the post.

I have at last been paid my fortune by my nephew-just forty years after my father's death! The only surviving son of that Grand Corrupter, who plundered England, has, after forty years, re

* Connexion of the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

ceived four thousand pounds; which, with three thousand more, is all I have ever had from my father's family!-yet calumny will not blush, but repeat the lie! My nephew, or Lucas, have acted like themselves, and have jockied me out of six hundred pounds by a finesse in the bond, by dating it three years later than it should have been, and which my negligence had overlooked; and, therefore, I may blame myself. Lucas, who extorted from Mozzi interest upon interest against my opinion, took care not to offer it to me, though the case is similar, except that mine would have been much less; and you may be sure I would not ask for what I would not have excepted, as I disapprove such extortion, and should be sorry to resemble them. The purport too of the bond was curious. Lucas did not know that my eldest brother had paid me one thousand pounds of my fortune, and drew the bond for five thousand. I would not accept it, but made him draw it for four thousand. I will do him the justice to acknowledge that he said, "Oh, my Lord would pay me the whole." I replied, "I would not be paid twice; I knew, if they did not, that I had received one thousand:" and so, because I would not accept of what was not due to me, they curtailed the interest that ought to be my due! Well! I have done with them, and so shall you of hearing of them.

29th.

I have effaced two lines that I had written, because upon recollection I can account better for what happened. There is a gentlewoman in the world who, a very few years ago, tried to captivate your nephew. She has had better success, I believe, lately in another place, though less to her honour. I ascribe to her the coldness; and dare to say, that a third person† did not know any thing of the matter. I imagine you will have this mystery explained, like another.

Signora Piozzi's book is not likely to gratify her expectation of renown. There is a Dr. Woolcot, a burlesque bard, who had ridiculed highly, and most deservedly, another of Johnson's biographic zanies, one Boswell; he has already advertised an eclogue between Bozzi and Piozzi, to be published next week; and, indeed there is ample matter. The Signora talks of her Doctor's expanded mind, and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor man is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out, but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his lowest conundrums as humour. Judge!-The Piozzi relates, that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied, “In Ireland; it was a bog planted

Lady Almeria Carpenter, Lady of the Bed-chamber to the Duchess of Gloucester, and mistress of the Duke.

The Duchess, who did not know of Sir H. Mann, jun. being at Genoa, where the Duke would not see him.

The well-known satirist, who wrote under the name of Peter Pindar.—Ed.

with palm-trees!" I am now rejoiced, and do not wonder that you was not thought worthy to be mentioned by such a panegyrist! But what will posterity think of us when it reads what an idol we adored.

LETTER CCCCXLVII.

Berkeley Square, April 30, 1786.

THE almanack tells me that I ought to write to you; but then it ought to tell me what to say. I know nothing people have been out of town for Easter, or rather for Newmarket; for our diversions mark the seasons, instead of their proclaiming themselves. We have no more spring than we had last year. I believe the milk-maids to-morrow will be forced to dress their garlands with Christmas nosegays of holly and ivy, for want of flowers.

The tragedy, or rather, I suppose, the farce, of Mr. Hasting's trial is also to commence to-morrow, when he is to make his defence before the House of Commons; where the majority of his judges are ready to be astonished at his eloquence, and the transparency of his innocence, and the lustre of his merit. In the mean time, the charges are enormous, and make numbers, who are not to be his jury, marvel how he will clear himself of half; and, if he does, what he will do with the remainder. I have not yet looked into the charge, which fills a thick octavo. My opinion is formed more summarily Innocence does not pave its way with diamonds, nor has a quarry of them on its estate. All conversation turns on a trio of culprits-Hastings, Fitzgerald, and the Cardinal of Rohan. I have heard so much of all lately that I confound them, and am not sure whether it was not the first who pretended to buy a brilliant necklace for the Queen, or who committed murders in Ireland, not in India; or whether it was not Fitzgerald who did not deal with Cagliostro for the secret of raising the dead, as he may have occasion for it soon. So much for tragedy!Our comic performers are Boswell and Dame Piozzi.* The cock biographer has fixed a direct lie on the hen, by an advertisement in which he affirms that he communicated his manuscript to Madame Thrale, and that she made no objection to what he says of her low opinion of Mrs. Montagu's book. It is very possible that it might not be her real opinion, but was uttered in compliment to Johnson, or for fear he should spit in her face if she disagreed with him; but how will she

*On this subject, Mrs. Hannah More thus writes to her sister, April 1786 :"The Bozzi, &c., subjects are not exhausted, though every body seems heartily sick of them. Every body, however, conspires not to let them drop. That the 'Cagliostro,' and the Cardinal's necklace,' spoil all conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepy's last night. The party was snug, and of my own bespeaking; consisting only of Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Montagu, the Burneys and Cambridge." .”—Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 16.—ED.

VOL. II.-33