Mrs. Piozzi’s next publication was “Letters To and From the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., &c.”  In the Preface she speaks of the “Anecdotes” having been received with a degree of approbation she hardly dared to hope, and exclaims, “May these Letters in some measure pay my debt of gratitude! they will not surely be the first, the only thing written by Johnson, with which our nation has not been pleased.” ...  “The good taste by which our countrymen are distinguished, will lead them to prefer the native thoughts and unstudied phrases scattered over these pages to the more laboured elegance of his other works; as bees have been observed to reject roses, and fix upon the wild fragrance of a neighbouring heath.”

Whenever Johnson took pen in hand, the chances were, that what he produced would belong to the composite order; the unstudied phrases were reserved for his “talk;” and he wished his Letters to be preserved.[1] The main value of these consists in the additional illustrations they afford of his conduct in private life, and of his opinions on the management of domestic affairs.  The lack of literary and public interest is admitted and excused: 

[Footnote 1:  “Do you keep my letters?  I am not of your opinion that I shall not like to read them hereafter.”—­Letters, vol. i. p. 295.]

“None but domestic and familiar events can be expected from a private correspondence; no reflexions but such as they excite can be found there; yet whoever turns away disgusted by the insipidity with which this, and I suppose every correspondence must naturally and almost necessarily begin—­will here be likely to lose some genuine pleasure, and some useful knowledge of what our heroic Milton was himself contented to respect, as

  “‘That which before thee lies in daily life.’

“And should I be charged with obtruding trifles on the public, I might reply, that the meanest animals preserved in amber become of value to those who form collections of natural history; that the fish found in Monte Bolca serve as proofs of sacred writ; and that the cart-wheel stuck in the rock of Tivoli, is now found useful in computing the rotation of the earth.”

In “Thraliana” she thus refers to the reception of the book: 

“The Letters are out.  They were published on Saturday, 8th of March.  Cadell printed 2,000 copies, and says 1,100 are already sold.  My letter to Jack Rice on his marriage (Vol. i. p. 96), seems the universal favourite.  The book is well spoken of on the whole; yet Cadell murmurs.  I cannot make out why.”

This entry is not dated; the next is dated March 27th, 1788.

“This collection,” says Boswell, “as a proof of the high estimation set on any thing that came from his pen, was sold by that lady for the sum of 500_l_.”  She has written on the margin:  “How spiteful.”

Boswell states that “Horace Walpole thought Johnson a more amiable character after reading his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, but never was one of the true admirers of that great man.”  Madame D’Arblay came to an opposite conclusion; in her Diary, January 9th, 1788, she writes: