The other instance is a story which she tells on Mr. Thrale’s authority, of an argument between Johnson and a gentleman, which the master of the house, a nobleman, tried to cut short by saying loud enough for the doctor to hear, “Our friend has no meaning in all this, except just to relate at the Club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day; this is all to do himself honour.”  “No, upon my word,” replied the other, “I see no honour in it, whatever you may do.”  “Well, Sir,” returned Mr. Johnson sternly, “if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace.”  Malone, on the authority of a nameless friend, asserts that it was not at the house of a nobleman, that the gentleman’s remark was uttered in a low tone, and that Johnson made no retort at all.  As Mrs. Piozzi could hardly have invented the story, the sole question is, whether Mr. Thrale or Malone’s friend was right.  She has written in the margin:  “It was the house of Thomas Fitzmaurice, son to Lord Shelburne, and Pottinger the hero."[1]

“Mrs. Piozzi,” says Boswell, “has given a similar misrepresentation of Johnson’s treatment of Garrick in this particular (as to the Club), as if he had used these contemptuous expressions:  ’If Garrick does apply, I’ll blackball him.  Surely one ought to sit in a society like ours—­

  “‘Unelbow’d by a gamester, pimp, or player.’”

The lady retorts, “He did say so, and Mr. Thrale stood astonished.”  Johnson was constantly depreciating the profession of the stage.[2]

[Footnote 1:  “Being in company with Count Z——­, at Lord ——­’s table, the Count thinking the Doctor too dogmatical, observed, he did not at all think himself honoured by the conversation.’  And what is to become of me, my lord, who feel myself actually disgraced?”—­Johnsoniana, p. 143, first edition.]

[Footnote 2:  “Boswell.  There, Sir, you are always heretical, you never will allow merit to a player. Johnson.  Merit, Sir, what merit?  Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?”—­Boswell’s Life of Johnson, p. 556.]

Whilst finding fault with Mrs. Piozzi for inaccuracy in another place, Boswell supplies an additional example of Johnson’s habitual disregard of the ordinary rules of good breeding in society:—­

“A learned gentleman [Dr. Vansittart], who, in the course of conversation, wished to inform us of this simple fact, that the council upon the circuit of Shrewsbury were much bitten by fleas, took, I suppose, seven or eight minutes in relating it circumstantially.  He in a plenitude of phrase told us, that large bales of woollen cloth were lodged in the town-hall; that by reason of this, fleas nestled there in prodigious numbers; that the lodgings of the council were near the town-hall; and that those little animals moved from place to place with wonderful agility.  Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however), ’It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must have served you a twelve-month.’”