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 get over her not
objecting to the passage remaining? She must have known, by knowing
Boswell, and by having a similar intention herself, that his
'Anecdotes' would certainly be published: in short, the ridiculous
woman will be strangely disappointed. As she must have heard that
_the whole first impression of her book was sold the first day_, no
doubt she expected on her landing, to be received like the governor
of Gibraltar, and to find the road strewed with branches of palm.
She, and Boswell, and their Hero, are the joke of the public. A Dr.
Walcot, _soi-disant_ Peter Pindar, has published a burlesque eclogue,
in which Boswell and the Signora are the interlocutors, and all the
absurdest passages in the works of both are ridiculed. The
print-shops teem with satiric prints in them: one in which Boswell,
as a monkey, is riding on Johnson, the bear, has this witty
inscription, 'My Friend _delineavit_.' But enough of these
mountebanks."

What Walpole calls the absurdest passages are precisely those which
possess most interest for posterity; namely, the minute personal
details, which bring Johnson home to the mind's eye. Peter Pindar,
however, was simply labouring in his vocation when he made the best
of them, as in the following lines. His satire is in the form of a
Town Eclogue, in which Bozzy and Madame Piozzi contend in anecdotes,
with Hawkins for umpire:

BOZZY.

"One Thursday morn did Doctor Johnson wake,
And call out 'Lanky, Lanky,' by mistake--
But recollecting--'Bozzy, Bozzy,' cry'd--
For in _contractions_ Johnson took a pride!"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"I ask'd him if he knock'd Tom Osborn down;
As such a tale was current through the town,--
Says I, 'Do tell me, Doctor, what befell.'--
'Why, dearest lady, there is nought to _tell_;
'I ponder'd on the _proper'st_ mode to _treat_ him--
'The dog was impudent, and so I beat him!
'Tom, like a fool, proclaim'd his fancied wrongs;
'_Others_, that I belabour'd, held their tongues.'"

"Did any one, t