“H.  L. PIOZZI."[1]

[Footnote 1:  The letters to Mr. Cadell were published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for March and April, 1852.]

The early portions of “Thraliana” were evidently amongst the papers locked up in the Bank, and she consequently wrote most of the Anecdotes from memory, which may account for some minor discrepancies, like that relating to the year in which she made the acquaintance with Johnson.

The book attracted great attention; and whilst some affected to discover in it the latent signs of wounded vanity and pique, others vehemently impugned its accuracy.  Foremost amongst her assailants stood Boswell, who had an obvious motive for depreciating her, and he attempts to destroy her authority, first, by quoting Johnson’s supposed imputations on her veracity; and secondly, by individual instances of her alleged departure from truth.

Thus, Johnson is reported to have said:—­“It is amazing, Sir, what deviations there are from precise truth, in the account which is given of almost everything.  I told Mrs. Thrale, You have so little anxiety about truth that you never tax your memory with the exact thing.”

Her proneness to exaggerated praise especially excited his indignation, and he endeavours to make her responsible for his rudeness on the strength of it.

“Mrs. Thrale gave high praise to Mr. Dudley Long (now North). Johnson.  ’Nay, my dear lady, don’t talk so.  Mr. Long’s character is very short.  It is nothing.  He fills a chair.  He is a man of genteel appearance, and that is all.  I know nobody who blasts by praise as you do:  for whenever there is exaggerated praise, every body is set against a character.  They are provoked to attack it.  Now there is Pepys; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves. His blood is upon your head.  By the same principle, your malice defeats itself; for your censure is too violent.  And yet (looking to her with a leering smile) she is the first woman in the world, could she but restrain that wicked tongue of hers;—­she would be the only woman, could she but command that little whirligig.’”

Opposite the words I have printed in italics she has written:  “An expression he would not have used; no, not for worlds.”

In Boswell’s note of a visit to Streatham in 1778, we find:—­

“Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness:  I mean a strict attention to truth even in the most minute particulars.  ‘Accustom your children,’ said he, ’constantly to this:  if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them:  you do not know where deviation from truth will end.’ Boswell.  ’It may come to the door:  and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it