The ghost, a flattering likeness of the doctor, addresses a
pretty woman seated at a writing table:

"When Streatham spread its pleasant board,
I opened learning's valued hoard,
And as I feasted, prosed.
Good things I said, good things I eat,
I gave you knowledge for your meat,
And thought th' account was closed.

"If obligations still I owed,
You sold each item to the crowd,
I suffered by the tale.
For God's sake, Madam, let me rest,
No longer vex your _quondam_ guest,
I'll pay you for your ale."

When a prize was offered for the best address on the rebuilding of
Drury Lane, Sheridan proposed an additional reward for one without a
phoenix. Equally acceptable for its rarity would be a squib on Mrs.
Piozzi without a reference to the brewery.

Her manuscript notes on the two volumes of Letters are numerous and
important, comprising some curious fragments of autobiography,
written on separate sheets of paper and pasted into the volumes
opposite to the passages which they expand or explain. They would
create an inconvenient break in the narrative if introduced here, and
they are reserved for a separate section.

Her next literary labour is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"While Piozzi was gone to London I worked at my Travel Book, and
wrote it in two months complete--but 'tis all to correct and copy
over again. While my husband was away I wrote him these lines: he
staid just a fortnight:

"I think I've worked exceeding hard
To finish five score pages.
I write you this upon a card,
In hopes you'll pay my wages.
The servants all get drunk or mad,
This heat their blood enrages,
But your return will make me glad,--
That hope one pain assuages.

"To shew more kindness, we defy
All nations and all ages,
And quite prefer your company
To all the seven sages.
Then hasten home, oh, haste away!
And lengthen not your stages;
We then will sing, and dance and play,
And quit awhile our cages."

She had now taken rank as a popular writer, and thought herself
entitled to use corresponding language to her publisher:

"MR. CADELL,--Sir, this is a letter of business. I have finished the
book of observations and reflections made in the course of my journey
thro' France, Italy, and Germany, and if you have a mind to purchase
the MS. I make you the first offer of it. Here, if complaints had any
connection with business, I would invent a