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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
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