“‘Oh!’ cried she, ’how wicked you look!—­No need of seeing Mrs. Siddons for expression!—­However, you know how much that is my taste,—­tall and thin!—­but you don’t know how apropos it is just now!’”

Nine years after the last entry, we find: 

“May 25, 1792.—­We now met Mrs. Porteous; and who should be with her but the poor pretty S.S., whom so long I had not seen, and who has now lately been finally given up by her long-sought and very injurious lover, Dr. Vyse?

“She is sadly faded, and looked disturbed and unhappy but still beautiful, though no longer blooming; and still affectionate, though absent and evidently absorbed.  We had a little chat together about the Thrales.  In mentioning our former intimacy with them, ’Ah, those,’ she cried, ‘were happy times!’ and her eyes glistened.  Poor thing! hers has been a lamentable story!—­Imprudence and vanity have rarely been mixed with so much sweetness, and good-humour, and candour, and followed with more reproach and ill success.  We agreed to renew acquaintance next winter; at present she will be little more in town.”

In a letter to Madame D’Arblay, Oct. 20, 1820, Mrs. Piozzi says:  “Fell, the bookseller in Bond Street, told me a fortnight or three weeks ago, that Miss Streatfield lives where she did in his neighbourhood, Clifford Street, S.S. still.”  On the 18th January, 1821:  “’The once charming S.S. had inquired for me of Nornaville and Fell, the Old Bond Street book-sellers, so I thought she meditated writing, but was deceived.”

The story she told the author of “Piozziana,” in proof of Johnson’s want of firmness, clearly refers to this lady: 

“I had remarked to her that Johnson’s readiness to condemn any moral deviation in others was, in a man so entirely before the public as he was, nearly a proof of his own spotless purity of conduct.  She said, ’Yes, Johnson was, on the whole, a rigid moralist; but he could be ductile, I may say, servile; and I will give you an instance.  We had a large dinner-party at our house; Johnson sat on one side of me, and Burke on the other; and in the company there was a young female (Mrs. Piozzi named her), to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive, to the neglect of me and others; especially of myself, then near my confinement, and dismally low-spirited; notwithstanding which, Mr. T. very unceremoniously begged of me to change place with Sophy ——­, who was threatened with a sore throat, and might be injured by sitting near the door.  I had scarcely swallowed a spoonful of soup when this occurred, and was so overset by the coarseness of the proposal, that I burst into tears, said something petulant—­that perhaps ere long, the lady might be at the head of Mr. T.’s table, without displacing the mistress of the house, &c., and so left the apartment.  I retired to the drawing-room, and for an hour or two contended with my vexation, as I best could, when