[Footnote 1:  Bride of Lammermoor.]

It was all very well for Johnson to tell Boswell, “I know no man who is more master of his wife and family than Thrale.  If he holds up a finger, he is obeyed.”  The sage never acted on the theory, and instead of treating the wife as a cipher, lost no opportunity of paying court to her, though in a manner quite compatible with his own lofty spirit of independence and self-respect.  Thus, attention having been called to some Italian verses by Baretti, he converted them into an elegant compliment to her by an improvised paraphrase: 

  “Viva! viva la padrona! 
  Tutta bella, e tutta buona,
  La padrona e un angiolella
  Tutta buona e tutta bella;
  Tutta bella e tutta buona;
  Viva! viva la padrona!”

  “Long may live my lovely Hetty! 
  Always young and always pretty;
  Always pretty, always young,
  Live my lovely Hetty long! 
  Always young and always pretty;
  Long may live my lovely Hetty!”

Her marginal note in the copy of the “Anecdotes” presented by her to Sir James Fellowes in 1816 is:—­“I heard these verses sung at Mr. Thomas’s by three voices not three weeks ago.”

It was in the eighth year of their acquaintance that Johnson solaced his fatigue in the Hebrides by writing a Latin ode to her.  “About fourteen years since,” wrote Sir Walter Scott, in 1829, “I landed in Sky with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every one’s mind at landing.  All answered separately that it was this ode.”  Thinking Miss Cornelia Knight’s version too diffuse, I asked Mr. Milnes for a translation or paraphrase, and he kindly complied by producing these spirited stanzas: 

“Where constant mist enshrouds the rocks,
Shattered in earth’s primeval shocks,
And niggard Nature ever mocks

                        The labourer’s toil,

I roam through clans of savage men,
Untamed by arts, untaught by pen;
Or cower within some squalid den

                        O’er reeking soil.

Through paths that halt from stone to stone,
Amid the din of tongues unknown,
One image haunts my soul alone,

                        Thine, gentle Thrale!

Soothes she, I ask, her spouse’s care? 
Does mother-love its charge prepare? 
Stores she her mind with knowledge rare,

                        Or lively tale?

Forget me not! thy faith I claim,
Holding a faith that cannot die,
That fills with thy benignant name

                        These shores of Sky.”

“On another occasion,” says Mrs. Thrale, in the “Anecdotes,” “I can boast verses from Dr. Johnson.  As I went into his room the morning of my birthday once and said to him, ’Nobody sends me any verses now, because I am five-and-thirty years old; and Stella was fed with them till forty-six, I remember.’  My being just recovered from illness and confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention towards it half a minute before: