“I had seen Miss T. the day before.”

“‘So,’ said he, ‘did I.’

“I then said, ‘Do you ever, Sir, hear, from her mother?’

“‘No,’ cried he, ’nor write to her.  I drive her quite from my mind.  If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly.[1] I have burnt all I can find.  I never speak of her, and I desire never to hear of her name.  I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.’”

[Footnote 1:  If this was true, it is strange that he did not destroy the letter (No. 4) which gave him so sudden and mortifying a check.  Miss Hawkins says in her Memoirs:  “It was I who discovered the letter.  I carried it to my father; he enclosed and sent it to her, there never having been any intercourse between them.”  Anything from Hawkins about Streatham and its inmates must therefore have been invention or hearsay.]

In the “Memoirs,” describing the same interview, she says:—­“We talked then of poor Mrs. Thrale, but only for a moment, for I saw him greatly incensed, and with such severity of displeasure, that I hastened to start another subject, and he solemnly enjoined me to mention that no more.”

This was only eighteen days before he died, and he might be excused for being angry at the introduction of any agitating topic.  It would stain his memory, not hers, to prove that, belying his recent professions of tenderness and gratitude, he directly or indirectly encouraged her assailants.

“I was tempted to observe,” says the author of “Piozziana,” “that I thought, as I still do, that Johnson’s anger on the event of her second marriage was excited by some feeling of disappointment; and that I suspected he had formed some hope of attaching her to himself.  It would be disingenuous on my part to attempt to repeat her answer.  I forget it; but the impression on my mind is that she did not contradict me.”  Sir James Fellowes’ marginal note on this passage is:  “This was an absurd notion, and I can undertake to say it was the last idea that ever entered her head; for when I once alluded to the subject, she ridiculed the idea:  she told me she always felt for Johnson the same respect and veneration as for a Pascal."[1]

[Footnote 1:  When Sheridan was accused of making love to Mrs. Siddons, he said he should as soon think of making love to the Archbishop of Canterbury.]

On the margin of the passage in which Boswell says, “Johnson wishing to unite himself with this rich widow was much talked of, but I believe without foundation,”—­she has written, “I believe so too!!” The report sufficed to bring into play the light artillery of the wits, one of whose best hits was an “Ode to Mrs. Thrale, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., on their approaching Nuptials,” beginning: 

  “If e’er my fingers touched the lyre,
    In satire fierce, in pleasure gay,
  Shall not my Thralia’s smiles inspire,
    Shall Sam refuse the sportive lay?

  “My dearest lady, view your slave,
    Rehold him as your very Scrub: 
  Ready to write as author grave,
    Or govern well the brewing tub.