to be sure, but such is the taste
of the times. They altered even my quotation from Pope; but that was
too impudent."

The comparison of Baretti to the hornet was truer than she
anticipated: _animamque in vulnere ponit_. Internal evidence leads
almost irresistibly to the conclusion that he was the author or
prompter of "The _Sentimental_ Mother: a Comedy in Five Acts. The
Legacy of an Old Friend, and his 'Last Moral Lesson' to Mrs. Hester
Lynch Thrale, now Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi. London: Printed for James
Ridgeway, York Street, St. James's Square, 1789. Price three
shillings." The principal _dramatis personae_ are Mr. Timothy Tunskull
(Thrale), Lady Fantasma Tunskull, two Misses Tunskull, and Signor
Squalici.

Lady Fantasma is vain, affected, silly, and amorous to excess. Not
satisfied with Squalici as her established gallant, she makes
compromising advances to her daughter's lover on his way to a
_tete-a-tete_ with the young lady, who takes her wonted place on his
knee with his arm round her waist. Squalici is also a domestic spy,
and in league with the mother to cheat the daughters of their
patrimony. Mr. Tunskull is a respectable and complacent nonentity.

The dialogue is seasoned with the same malicious insinuations which
mark Baretti's letters in the "European Magazine;" without the saving
clause with which shame or fear induced him to qualify them, namely,
that no breach of chastity was suspected or believed. It is difficult
to imagine who else would have thought of reverting to Thrale's
establishment eight years after it had been broken up by death; and
in one of his papers in the "European Magazine," he holds out a
threat that she might find herself the subject of a play: "Who knows
but some one of our modern dramatic geniusses may hereafter entertain
the public with a laughable comedy in five long acts, entitled, with
singular propriety, 'the _Scientific_ Mother'?"

Mrs. Piozzi had some-how contracted a belief, to which she alludes
more than once with unfeigned alarm, that Mr. Samuel Lysons had
formed a collection of all the libels and caricatures of which she
was the subject on the occasion of her marriage. His collections have
been carefully examined, and the sole semblance of warrant for her
fears is an album or scrap-book containing numerous extracts from the
reviews and newspapers, relating to her books. The only caricature
preserved in it is the celebrated one by Sayers entitled "Johnson's
Ghost."