before his return, these books might be confounded among the others in
her study."

On the next page the narrative begins, and with a truly astonishing
spirit for the writing of a woman in her eightieth year. Her old
vivacity is still natural to her; there is nothing forced in the
pleasantry of this introduction.

"A Lady once--'t was many years ago--asked me to lend her a book out
of my library at Streatham Park. 'A book of entertainment,' said J, 'of
course.' 'That I don't know or rightly comprehend;' was her odd answer;
'I wish for an _Abridgment_.' 'An Abridgment of what?' '_That_,' she
replied, 'you must tell _me_, my Dear; for I am no reader, like you and
Dr. Johnson; I only remember that the last book I read was very pretty,
and my husband called it an Abridgment.'.... And if I give some account
of myself here in these few little sheets prefixed to my 'Journey thro'
Italy,' you must kindly accept

"The Abridgment."

The first pages of the manuscript are occupied by Mrs. Piozzi with an
account of her family and of her own early life. They contain in brief
the same narrative that she gave in her "Autobiographical Memoirs,"
printed by Mr. Hayward, in his first volume. Here is a story, however,
which we do not remember to have seen before.

"My heart was free, my head full of Authors, Actors, Literature in every
shape; and I had a dear, dear friend, an old Dr. Collier, who said he
was sixty-six years old, I remember, the day I was sixteen, and whose
instructions I prized beyond all the gayeties of early life: nor have I
ever passed a day since we parted in which I have not recollected with
gratitude the boundless obligations that I owe him. He was intimate with
the famous James Harris of Salisbury, Lord Malmesbury's father, of whom
you have heard how Charles Townshend said, when he took his seat in the
House of Commons,--'Who is this man?'--to his next neighbour;
'I never saw him before.' 'Who? Why, Harris the author, that wrote one
book about Grammar [so he did] and one about Virtue.' 'What does he come
here for?' replies Spanish Charles; 'he will find neither Grammar nor
Virtue _here_.' Well, my dear old Dr. Collier had much of both, and
delighted to shake the superflux of his full mind over mine, ready to
receive instruction conveyed with so much tender assiduity."

In both her autobiographies, the printed as well as the manuscript, Mrs.
Piozzi speaks in very cold and disparaging terms of her first husband