“Strange, indeed, strange and most strange, the event considered, was this opening intercourse between Mrs. Thrale and Signor Piozzi.  Little could she imagine that the person she was thus called away from holding up to ridicule, would become, but a few years afterwards, the idol of her fancy and the lord of her destiny!  And little did the company present imagine, that this burlesque scene was but the first of a drama the most extraordinary of real life, of which these two persons were to be the hero and heroine:  though, when the catastrophe was known, this incident, witnessed by so many, was recollected and repeated from coterie to coterie throughout London, with comments and sarcasms of endless variety."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Memoirs of Dr. Burney, &c., vol. ii, pp. 105—­111.]

Madame D’Arblay mentioned the same circumstance in conversation to the Rev. W. Harness:  yet it seems strange in connection with an entry in “Thraliana” from which it would appear that her friend was far from wanting in susceptibility to sweet sounds: 

“13 August, 1780.—­Piozzi is become a prodigious favourite with me, he is so intelligent a creature, so discerning, one can’t help wishing for his good opinion; his singing surpasses everybody’s for taste, tenderness, and true elegance; his hand on the forte piano too is so soft, so sweet, so delicate, every tone goes to the heart, I think, and fills the mind with emotions one would not be without, though inconvenient enough sometimes.  He wants nothing from us:  he comes for his health he says:  I see nothing ail the man but pride.  The newspapers yesterday told what all the musical folks gained, and set Piozzi down 1200_l_. o’ year.”

On the 24th August, 1780, Madame D’Arblay writes:  “I have not seen Piozzi:  he left me your letter, which indeed is a charming one, though its contents puzzled me much whether to make me sad or merry.”  Mrs. Thrale was still at Brighton; so that the scene at Dr. Burney’s must have occurred subsequently; when she had already begun to find Piozzi what the Neapolitan ladies understand by simpatico.  Madame D’Arblay’s “Memoirs,” as I shall have occasion to point out, are by no means so trustworthy a register of dates, facts, or impressions as her “Diary.”

Whilst Thrale lived, Mrs. Thrale’s regard for Piozzi was certainly not of a nature to cause scandal or provoke censure, and as it ripened into love, it may be traced, step by step, from the frankest and fullest of all possible unveilings of the heart.  Rare indeed are the instances in which such revelations as we find in “Thraliana” could be risked by either man or woman, without giving scope to malevolence; and they should not only be judged as a whole and by the context, but the most favourable construction should be put upon them.  When, in this sort of self-communing, every passing emotion, every transitory inclination, is set down, it would be unfair and even foolish to infer that the emotion at once became a passion, or that the inclination was criminally indulged.