ost of
our literary women; it is indeed a fountain of perpetual flow. But he
did not tell me truth when he asserted that Piozzi was an ugly dog,
without particular skill in his profession. Mr. Piozzi is a handsome
man, in middle life, with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners, and
with very eminent skill in his profession. Though he has not a
powerful or fine-toned voice, he sings with transcending grace and
expression. I am charmed with his perfect expression on his
instrument. Surely the finest sensibilities must vibrate through his
frame, since they breathe so sweetly through his song."

The concluding sentence contains what Partridge would call a _non
sequitur_, for the finest musical sensibility may coexist with the
most commonplace qualities. But the lady's evidence is clear on the
essential point; and another passage from her letters may assist us
in determining the precise nature of Johnson's feelings towards Mrs.
Piozzi, and the extent to which his later language and conduct
regarding her were influenced by pique:

"Love is the great softener of savage dispositions. Johnson had
always a metaphysic passion for one princess or another: first, the
rustic Lucy Porter, before he married her nauseous mother; next the
handsome, but haughty, Molly Aston; next the sublimated, methodistic
Hill Boothby, who read her bible in Hebrew; and lastly, the more
charming Mrs. Thrale, with the beauty of the first, the learning of
the second, and with more worth than a bushel of such sinners and
such saints. It is ridiculously diverting to see the old elephant
forsaking his nature before these princesses:

"'To make them mirth, use all his might, and writhe,
His mighty form disporting.'

"_This last and long-enduring passion for Mrs. Thrale was, however,
composed perhaps of cupboard love, Platonic love, and vanity tickled
and gratified, from morn to night, by incessant homage_. The two
first ingredients are certainly oddly heterogeneous; but Johnson, in
religion and politics, in love and in hatred, was composed of such
opposite and contradictory materials, as never before met in the
human mind. This is the reason why folk are never weary of talking,
reading, and writing about a man--

"'So various that he seem'd to be,
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.'"

After quoting the sentence printed in italics, the reviewer says: "On
this hint Mr. Hayward enlarges, nothing loth." I quoted the entire
letter without a word of