ness and to be repaid with
gratitude, and yet his presence and his affection were full of
intolerable inconveniences. When an old friendship becomes a burden, the
smaller infirmities of manner and temper to which we once submitted
willingly, become intolerable. She had borne with Johnson's modes of
eating and with his rough reproofs to herself and her friends during
sixteen years of her married life; and for nearly a year of her
widowhood she still clung to him as the wisest and kindest of monitors.
His manners had undergone no spasmodic change. They became intolerable
when, for other reasons, she resented his possible interference, and
wanted a very different guardian and confidant; and, therefore, she
wished to part, and yet wished that the initiative should come from him.

The decision to leave Streatham was taken. Johnson parted with deep
regret from the house; he read a chapter of the Testament in the
library; he took leave of the church with a kiss; he composed a prayer
commending the family to the protection of Heaven; and he did not forget
to note in his journal the details of the last dinner of which he
partook. This quaint observation may have been due to some valetudinary
motive, or, more probably, to some odd freak of association. Once, when
eating an omelette, he was deeply affected because it recalled his old
friend Nugent. "Ah, my dear friend," he said "in an agony," "I shall
never eat omelette with thee again!" And in the present case there is an
obscure reference to some funeral connected in his mind with a meal. The
unlucky entry has caused some ridicule, but need hardly convince us that
his love of the family in which for so many years he had been an
honoured and honour-giving inmate was, as Miss Seward amiably suggests,
in great measure "kitchen-love."

No immediate rupture followed the abandonment of the Streatham
establishment. Johnson spent some weeks at Brighton with Mrs. Thrale,
during which a crisis was taking place, without his knowledge, in her
relations to Piozzi. After vehement altercations with her daughters,
whom she criticizes with great bitterness for their utter want of heart,
she resolved to break with Piozzi for at least a time. Her plan was to
go to Bath, and there to retrench her expenses, in the hopes of being
able to recall her lover at some future period. Meanwhile he left her
and returned to Italy. After another winter in London, during which
Johnson was still a frequent inmat