could never bear me, and always contrived
to trundle me out before the honey-moon was over."[1]

[Footnote 1: Bride of Lammermoor.]

It was all very well for Johnson to tell Boswell, "I know no man who
is more master of his wife and family than Thrale. If he holds up a
finger, he is obeyed." The sage never acted on the theory, and
instead of treating the wife as a cipher, lost no opportunity of
paying court to her, though in a manner quite compatible with his own
lofty spirit of independence and self-respect. Thus, attention having
been called to some Italian verses by Baretti, he converted them into
an elegant compliment to her by an improvised paraphrase:

"Viva! viva la padrona!
Tutta bella, e tutta buona,
La padrona e un angiolella
Tutta buona e tutta bella;
Tutta bella e tutta buona;
Viva! viva la padrona!"

"Long may live my lovely Hetty!
Always young and always pretty;
Always pretty, always young,
Live my lovely Hetty long!
Always young and always pretty;
Long may live my lovely Hetty!"

Her marginal note in the copy of the "Anecdotes" presented by her to
Sir James Fellowes in 1816 is:--"I heard these verses sung at Mr.
Thomas's by three voices not three weeks ago."

It was in the eighth year of their acquaintance that Johnson solaced
his fatigue in the Hebrides by writing a Latin ode to her. "About
fourteen years since," wrote Sir Walter Scott, in 1829, "I landed in
Sky with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was
the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered
separately that it was this ode." Thinking Miss Cornelia Knight's
version too diffuse, I asked Mr. Milnes for a translation or
paraphrase, and he kindly complied by producing these spirited
stanzas:

"Where constant mist enshrouds the rocks,
Shattered in earth's primeval shocks,
And niggard Nature ever mocks
The labourer's toil,

I roam through clans of savage men,
Untamed by arts, untaught by pen;
Or cower within some squalid den
O'er reeking soil.

Through paths that halt from stone to stone,
Amid the din of tongues unknown,
One image haunts my soul alone,
Thine, gentle Thrale!

Soothes she, I ask, her spouse's care?
Does mother-love its charge prepare?
Stores she her mind with knowledge rare,
Or lively tale?

Forget me not! thy faith I claim,
Holding a faith that cannot die,
That fills wi