“To-day Mrs. Schwellenberg did me a real favour, and with real good nature, for she sent me the letters of my poor lost friends, Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, which she knew me to be almost pining to procure.  The book belongs to the Bishop of Carlisle, who lent it to Mr. Turbulent, from whom it was again lent to the Queen, and so passed on to Mrs. S. It is still unpublished.  With what a sadness have I been reading!  What scenes has it revived!  What regrets renewed!  These letters have not been more improperly published in the whole than they are injudiciously displayed in their several parts.  She has given all, every word, and thinks that perhaps a justice to Dr. Johnson, which, in fact, is the greatest injury to his memory.

“The few she has selected of her own do her, indeed, much credit; she has discarded all that were trivial and merely local, and given only such as contain something instructive, amusing, or ingenious.”

She admits only four of Johnson’s letters to be worthy of his exalted powers:  one upon Death, in considering its approach, as we are surrounded, or not, by mourners; another upon the sudden death of Mrs. Thrale’s only son.  Her chief motive for “almost pining” for the book, steeped as she was in egotism, may be guessed: 

“Our name once occurred; how I started at its sight!  ’Tis to mention the party that planned the first visit to our house.”

She says she had so many attacks upon “her (Mrs. Piozzi’s) subject,” that at last she fairly begged quarter.  Yet nothing she could say could put a stop to, “How can you defend her in this? how can you justify her in that? &c. &c.”  “Alas! that I cannot defend her is precisely the reason I can so ill bear to speak of her.  How differently and how sweetly has the Queen conducted herself upon this occasion.  Eager to see the Letters, she began reading them with the utmost avidity.  A natural curiosity arose to be informed of several names and several particulars, which she knew I could satisfy; yet when she perceived how tender a string she touched, she soon suppressed her inquiries, or only made them with so much gentleness towards the parties mentioned, that I could not be distressed in my answers; and even in a short time I found her questions made in so favourable a disposition, that I began secretly to rejoice in them, as the means by which I reaped opportunity of clearing several points that had been darkened by calumny, and of softening others that had been viewed wholly through false lights.  To lessen disapprobation of a person, and so precious to me in the opinion of another, so respectable both in rank and virtue, was to me a most soothing task, &c.”

This is precisely what many will take the liberty to doubt; or why did she shrink from it, or why did she not afford to others the explanations which proved so successful with the Queen?

The day following (Jan. 10th), her feelings were so worked upon by the harsh aspersions on her friend, that she was forced, she tells us, abruptly to quit the room; leaving not her own (like Sir Peter Teazle) but her friend’s character behind her: