The dialogue is seasoned with the same malicious insinuations which mark Baretti’s letters in the “European Magazine;” without the saving clause with which shame or fear induced him to qualify them, namely, that no breach of chastity was suspected or believed.  It is difficult to imagine who else would have thought of reverting to Thrale’s establishment eight years after it had been broken up by death; and in one of his papers in the “European Magazine,” he holds out a threat that she might find herself the subject of a play:  “Who knows but some one of our modern dramatic geniusses may hereafter entertain the public with a laughable comedy in five long acts, entitled, with singular propriety, ’the Scientific Mother’?”

Mrs. Piozzi had some-how contracted a belief, to which she alludes more than once with unfeigned alarm, that Mr. Samuel Lysons had formed a collection of all the libels and caricatures of which she was the subject on the occasion of her marriage.  His collections have been carefully examined, and the sole semblance of warrant for her fears is an album or scrap-book containing numerous extracts from the reviews and newspapers, relating to her books.  The only caricature preserved in it is the celebrated one by Sayers entitled “Johnson’s Ghost.”  The ghost, a flattering likeness of the doctor, addresses a pretty woman seated at a writing table: 

  “When Streatham spread its pleasant board,
  I opened learning’s valued hoard,
    And as I feasted, prosed. 
  Good things I said, good things I eat,
  I gave you knowledge for your meat,
    And thought th’ account was closed.

  “If obligations still I owed,
  You sold each item to the crowd,
    I suffered by the tale. 
  For God’s sake, Madam, let me rest,
  No longer vex your quondam guest,
    I’ll pay you for your ale.”

When a prize was offered for the best address on the rebuilding of Drury Lane, Sheridan proposed an additional reward for one without a phoenix.  Equally acceptable for its rarity would be a squib on Mrs. Piozzi without a reference to the brewery.

Her manuscript notes on the two volumes of Letters are numerous and important, comprising some curious fragments of autobiography, written on separate sheets of paper and pasted into the volumes opposite to the passages which they expand or explain.  They would create an inconvenient break in the narrative if introduced here, and they are reserved for a separate section.

Her next literary labour is thus mentioned in “Thraliana”: 

“While Piozzi was gone to London I worked at my Travel Book, and wrote it in two months complete—­but ’tis all to correct and copy over again.  While my husband was away I wrote him these lines:  he staid just a fortnight: 

  “I think I’ve worked exceeding hard
     To finish five score pages. 
  I write you this upon a card,
     In hopes you’ll pay my wages. 
  The servants all get drunk or mad,
     This heat their blood enrages,
  But your return will make me glad,—­
     That hope one pain assuages.