Why Croker-like curiosity?  Was there anything censurable in the curiosity which led an editor to ascertain whether a novel like “Evelina” was written by a girl of eighteen or a woman of twenty-six?  But Lord Macaulay sneered at the inquiry[1], and his worshippers must go on sneering like their model—­vitiis imitabile.  The certificate of the London marriage (now before me) shews that it was solemnised on the 23rd July, by a clergyman named Richard Smith, in the presence of three attesting witnesses.  This, and the entries in “Thraliana,” prove Baretti’s whole story to be false.  “Now Baretti was a libeller, and not to be believed except upon compulsion;” meaning, I suppose, without confirmatory evidence strong enough to dispense with his testimony altogether.  He was notorious for his black lies.  Yet he is believed eagerly, willingly, upon no compulsion, and without any confirmatory evidence at all.

[Footnote 1:  The following passage is reprinted in the corrected edition of Lord Macaulay’s Essays:—­“There was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney’s) first appearance.  There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams.  It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age.  That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for a worthless edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, some sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels of better books.”  There is reason to believe that the entry Mr. Croker copied was that of the baptism of an elder sister of the same name who died before the birth of the famous Fanny.]

The internal evidence of the improbability of the story has disappeared in the reviewer’s paraphrase.  Baretti says that at Salisbury “she suddenly declared that a letter she found of great importance demanded her immediate presence in London....  But Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no doubt, an immense wonder at her pertinacious silence.”  So she told her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was receiving letters from her, dated Bath!  Why, having formally announced her determination to marry Piozzi, she should not give him the meeting in London if she chose, fairly passes my comprehension.