he fashion of condemning this second
marriage as a disgraceful _mesalliance_; but it is not very easy to see
in what respect it was so. In social position she had certainly had the
advantage over Mr. Thrale, being the daughter of a Carnarvonshire
baronet of ancient family. But a first-rate musician was surely the
equal of a brewer. After Johnson's death she published a volume of her
reminiscences of him, which may be allowed to have been worthy neither
of him nor of her, and which was ridiculed by Peter Pindar in "A Town
Eclogue," in which the rivals Bozzy and Piozzi, on Virgil's
principle--_Alternis dicetis, amant alterna Camaenae_--relate in turn
anecdotes of Johnson's way of life, his witty sayings, &c., &c. Sir John
Hawkins, as judge of the contest, gives neither a prize; tells the lady,
"Sam's Life, dear ma'am, will only _damn your own_;" calls the gentleman
"a chattering magpie;" and--

Then to their pens and paper rush'd the twain,
To kill the mangled RAMBLER o'er again.]

[Footnote 3: In 1785 the wits of Brooks's, being much disappointed at
the result of the political conflict of 1784, gave some vent to their
spleen in verse. For their subject they selected an imaginary epic, of
which they gave fictitious extracts, and for their hero they took the
Member for Devonshire, John Rolle, invoking him--

Illustrious Rolle! oh may thy honoured name
Roll down distinguished on the rolls of fame.

It is a little odd that they abstained from similar puns on Pitt and
_pit_; but their indignation was chiefly directed at his youth as
ill-suited to his powers--

A sight to make surrounding nations stare,
A kingdom trusted to a schoolboy's care.

The chief contributors were Burke's friend, Dr. Lawrence; Sheridan's
brother-in-law, Tickell; General Fitzpatrick, Mr. G. Ellis, Lord G.
Townshend, and General Burgoyne.]

[Footnote 4: "The Dispensary" was a poem by a physician named Garth, to
advocate the cause of the physicians in a quarrel between them and the
apothecaries about the price to be charged for medicines. Johnson, in
his "Lives of the Poets," allows it the credit of smooth and free
versification, but denies it that of elegance. "No passage falls below
mediocrity, and few rise above it." It may be doubted whether Byron
himself could have risen high "above it" on subjects so unpoetical as
pills and black-doses.]

News I have none, wet or dry, to send you: politics are stagnated, and
pleasu