an
Irishman would pronounce it _grait_. Now here were two men of the
highest rank, one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other
the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely." Mrs.
Piozzi has written on the margin:--"Sir William was in the right."
Two well-known couplets of Pope imply similar changes:--

"Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged."

* * * * *

"Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea."

Within living memory, elderly people of quality, both in writing and
conversation, stuck to Lunnun, Brummagem, and Cheyny (China). Charles
Fox would not give up "Bour_dux_." Johnson pronounced "heard"
_heerd_. In 1800 "flirtation" was deemed a vulgar word.[1] Lord Byron
wrote _redde_ (for _read_, in the past tense), and Lord Dudley
declined being helped to apple _tart_. When, therefore, we find Mrs.
Piozzi using words or idioms rejected by modern taste or
fastidiousness, we must not be too ready to accuse her of ignorance
or vulgarity. I have commonly retained her original syntax, and her
spelling, which frequently varies within a page.

[Footnote 1: "Those abstractions of different pairs from the rest of
the society, which I must call 'flirtation,' spite of the vulgarity
of the term."--_Journal kept during a Visit to Germany_ in 1799 and
1800. Edited by the Dean of Westminster (not published), p. 38.]

Two days afterwards, Walpole returns to the charge in a letter to
Miss Berry, which is alone sufficient to prove the worthlessness of
his literary judgments:--

"Read 'Sindbad the Sailor's Voyages,' and you will be sick of
AEneas's. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on
his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! A barn
metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an
effort of genius.... I do not think the Sultaness's narratives very
natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that
captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos of Dame
Piozzi's _though's_ and _so's_ and _I trows_, and cannot listen to
seven volumes of Scheherezade's narratives, I will sue for a divorce
in foro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor."

A single couplet of Gifford's was more damaging than all Walpole's
petulance:

"See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam,
And bring in pomp laborious nothin