Lord Macaulay the semblance of an authority, an insulated
fact or phrase, a scrap of a journal, or the tag end of a song, and
on it, by the abused prerogative of genius, he would construct a
theory of national or personal character, which should confer undying
glory or inflict indelible disgrace.

Johnson was never driven or expelled from Mrs. Piozzi's house or
family: if very intelligible hints were given, they certainly were
not taken; the library was not formed by him; the Testament may or
may not have been Greek; his powerful frame shook with no convulsions
but what may have been occasioned by the unripe grapes and hard
peaches; he did not leave Streatham for his gloomy and desolate house
behind Fleet Street; the few and evil days (two years, nine weeks)
did not run out in that house; the music-master was generally admired
and esteemed; and the merry Christmas of concerts and
lemonade-parties is simply another sample of the brilliant
historian's mode of turning the abstract into the concrete in such a
manner as to degrade or elevate at will. An Italian concert is not a
merry meeting; and a lemonade-party, I presume, is a party where
(instead of _eau-sucree_ as at Paris) the refreshment handed about is
lemonade: not an enlivening drink at Christmas. In a word, all these
graphic details are mere creations of the brain, and the general
impression intended to be conveyed by them is false, substantially
false; for Mrs. Piozzi never behaved otherwise than kindly and
considerately to Johnson at any time.

Her life in Italy has been sketched in her best manner by her own
lively pen in the "Autobiography" and what she calls the "Travel
Book," to be presently mentioned. Scattered notices of her
proceedings occur in her letters to Mr. Lysons, and in the printed
correspondence of her cotemporaries.

On the 19th October, 1784, she writes to Mr. Lysons from Turin:

"We are going to Alexandria, Genoa, and Pavia, and then to Milan for
the winter, as Mr. Piozzi finds friends everywhere to delay us, and I
hate hurry and fatigue; it takes away all one's attention. Lyons was
a delightful place to me, and we were so feasted there by my
husband's old acquaintances. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland too
paid us a thousand caressing civilities where we met with them, and
we had no means of musical parties neither. The Prince of Sisterna
came yesterday to visit Mr. Piozzi, and present me with the key of
his box at the opera for the ti