her with an expression of sad forebodings. Mrs.
Thrale, now Mrs. Piozzi, says that she replied affectionately; but the
letter is missing. The friendship was broken off, and during the brief
remainder of Johnson's life, the Piozzis were absent from England.

Of her there is little more to be said. After passing some time in
Italy, where she became a light of that wretched little Della Cruscan
society of which some faint memory is preserved by Gifford's ridicule,
now pretty nearly forgotten with its objects, she returned with her
husband to England. Her anecdotes of Johnson, published soon after his
death, had a success which, in spite of much ridicule, encouraged her to
some further literary efforts of a sprightly but ephemeral kind. She
lived happily with Piozzi, and never had cause to regret her marriage.
She was reconciled to her daughters sufficiently to renew a friendly
intercourse; but the elder ones set up a separate establishment. Piozzi
died not long afterwards. She was still a vivacious old lady, who
celebrated her 80th birthday by a ball, and is supposed at that ripe
age to have made an offer of marriage to a young actor. She died in May,
1821, leaving all that she could dispose of to a nephew of Piozzi's, who
had been naturalised in England.

Meanwhile Johnson was rapidly approaching the grave. His old inmates,
Levett and Miss Williams, had gone before him; Goldsmith and Garrick and
Beauclerk had become memories of the past; and the gloom gathered
thickly around him. The old man clung to life with pathetic earnestness.
Though life had been often melancholy, he never affected to conceal the
horror with which he regarded death. He frequently declared that death
must be dreadful to every reasonable man. "Death, my dear, is very
dreadful," he says simply in a letter to Lucy Porter in the last year of
his life. Still later he shocked a pious friend by admitting that the
fear oppressed him. Dr. Adams tried the ordinary consolation of the
divine goodness, and went so far as to suggest that hell might not imply
much positive suffering. Johnson's religious views were of a different
colour. "I am afraid," he said, "I may be one of those who shall be
damned." "What do you mean by damned?" asked Adams. Johnson replied
passionately and loudly, "Sent to hell, sir, and punished
everlastingly." Remonstrances only deepened his melancholy, and he
silenced his friends by exclaiming in gloomy agitation, "I'll have no
more on't