[Footnote 1:  After Buckingham had been some time married to Fairfax’s daughter, he said it was like marrying the devil’s daughter and keeping house with your father-in-law.]

Is it possible to misconstrue such a letter as the following from Johnson to her, now that the querulous and desponding tone of the writer is familiar to us?

“London, Nov. 13th, 1783.

“DEAR MADAM,—­Since you have written to me with the attention and tenderness of ancient time, your letters give me a great part of the pleasure which a life of solitude admits.  You will never bestow any share of your good-will on one who deserves better.  Those that have loved longest, love best.  A sudden blaze of kindness may by a single blast of coldness be extinguished, but that fondness which length of time has connected with many circumstances and occasions, though it may for a while be suppressed by disgust or resentment, with or without a cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection.[1] To those that have lived long together, every thing heard and every thing seen recals some pleasure communicated, or some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel, or some slight endearment.  Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.  A friend may be often found and lost, but an old friend never can be found, and Nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.”

[Footnote 1: 

  “Yet, oh yet thyself deceive not: 
  Love may sink by slow decay,
  But by sudden wrench believe not
  Hearts can thus be torn away.”—­BYRON.]

The date of the following scene, as described by Madame D’Arblay in the “Memoirs,” is towards the end of November, 1783: 

“Nothing had yet publicly transpired, with certainty or authority, relative to the projects of Mrs. Thrale, who had now been nearly a year at Bath[1]; though nothing was left unreported, or unasserted, with respect to her proceedings.  Nevertheless, how far Dr. Johnson was himself informed, or was ignorant on the subject, neither Dr. Burney nor his daughter could tell; and each equally feared to learn.

“Scarcely an instant, however, was the latter left alone in Bolt Court, ere she saw the justice of her long apprehensions; for while she planned speaking upon some topic that might have a chance to catch the attention of the Doctor, a sudden change from kind tranquillity to strong austerity took place in his altered countenance; and, startled and affrighted, she held her peace....

“Thus passed a few minutes, in which she scarcely dared breathe; while the respiration of the Doctor, on the contrary, was of asthmatic force and loudness; then, suddenly turning to her, with an air of mingled wrath and woe, he hoarsely ejaculated:  ‘Piozzi!’

“He evidently meant to say more; but the effort with which he articulated that name robbed him of any voice for amplification, and his whole frame grew tremulously convulsed.