me, though I must acknowledge her younger, handsomer, and a better scholar.  Of her chastity, however, I never had a doubt:  she was bred by Dr. Collier in the strictest principles of piety and virtue; she not only knows she will be always chaste, but she knows why she will be so.[1] Mr. Thrale is now by dint of disease quite out of the question, so I am a disinterested spectator; but her coquetry is very dangerous indeed, and I wish she were married that there might be an end on’t.  Mr. Thrale loves her, however, sick or well, better by a thousand degrees than he does me or any one else, and even now desires nothing on earth half so much as the sight of his Sophia.

  “’E’en from the tomb the voice of nature cries! 
  E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires!’

“The Saturday before Mr. Thrale was taken ill, Saturday, 19th February—­he was struck Monday, 21st February—­we had a large party to tea, cards, and supper; Miss Streatfield was one, and as Mr. Thrale sate by her, he pressed her hand to his heart (as she told me herself), and said ’Sophy, we shall not enjoy this long, and to-night I will not be cheated of my only comfort.’  Poor soul! how shockingly tender!  On the first Fryday that he spoke after his stupor, she came to see him, and as she sate by the bedside pitying him, ‘Oh,’ says he, ’who would not suffer even all that I have endured to be pitied by you!’ This I heard myself.”

[Footnote 1: 

  “Besides, her inborn virtue fortify,
  They are most firmly good, who best know why.”]

“Here is Sophy Streatfield again, handsomer than ever, and flushed with new conquests; the Bishop of Chester feels her power, I am sure; she showed me a letter from him that was as tender and had all the tokens upon it as strong as ever I remember to have seen ’em; I repeated to her out of Pope’s Homer—­’Very well, Sophy,’ says I: 

  “’Range undisturb’d among the hostile crew,
  But touch not Hinchliffe[1], Hinchliffe is my due.’

Miss Streatfield (says my master) could have quoted these lines in the Greek; his saying so piqued me, and piqued me because it was true.  I wish I understood Greek!  Mr. Thrale’s preference of her to me never vexed me so much as my consciousness—­or fear at least—­that he has reason for his preference.  She has ten times my beauty, and five times my scholarship:  wit and knowledge has she none.”

[Footnote 1:  For Hector.  Hinchliffe was Bishop of Peterborough.]

“May, 1781.—­Sophy Streatfield is an incomprehensible girl; here has she been telling me such tender passages of what passed between her and Mr. Thrale, that she half frights me somehow, at the same time declaring her attachment to Vyse yet her willingness to marry Lord Loughborough.  Good God! what an uncommon girl! and handsome almost to perfection, I think:  delicate in her manners, soft in her voice, and strict in her principles:  I never saw such a character, she is wholly out of my reach; and I can only say that the man who runs mad for Sophy Streatfield has no reason to be ashamed of his passion; few people, however, seem disposed to take her for life—­everybody’s admiration, as Mrs. Byron says, and nobody’s choice.