the addresses of a man who follows on no explicit promise, nor much probability of success, for I would really wish to marry no more without the consent of my children (such I mean as are qualified to give their opinions); and how should Miss Thrales approve of my marrying Mr. Piozzi?  Here then I rest, and will torment my mind no longer, but commit myself, as he advises, to the hand of Providence, and all will end all’ ottima perfezzione.

“Written at Streatham, 1st October, 1782.”

[Footnote 1:  Note by Mrs. Piozzi:  “He was half a year older when our registers were both examined.”]

“October, 1782.—­There is no mercy for me in this island.  I am more and more disposed to try the continent.  One day the paper rings with my marriage to Johnson, one day to Crutchley, one day to Seward.  I give no reason for such impertinence, but cannot deliver myself from it.  Whitbred, the rich brewer, is in love with me too; oh, I would rather, as Ann Page says, be set breast deep in the earth[1] and bowled to death with turnips.

“Mr. Crutchley bid me make a curtsey to my daughters for keeping me out of a goal (sic), and the newspapers insolent as he!  How shall I get through?  How shall I get through?  I have not deserved it of any of them, as God knows.

“Philip Thicknesse put it about Bath that I was a poor girl, a mantua maker, when Mr. Thrale married me.  It is an odd thing, but Miss Thrales like, I see, to have it believed.”

[Footnote 1:  Anne Page says, “quick in the earth.”]

The general result down to this point is that, whatever the disturbance in Mrs. Thrale’s heart and mind, Johnson had no ground of complaint, nor ever thought he had, which is the essential point in controversy.  In other words, he was not driven, hinted, or manoeuvred out of Streatham.  Yet almost all his worshippers have insisted that he was.  Hawkins, after mentioning the kind offices undertaken by Johnson (which constantly took him to Streatham) says:—­“Nevertheless it was observed by myself, and other of Johnson’s friends, that soon after the decease of Mr. Thrale, his visits to Streatham became less and less frequent, and that he studiously avoided the mention of the place or the family.”  This statement is preposterous, and is only to be partially accounted for by the fact that Hawkins, as his daughter informs us, had no personal acquaintance with Mrs. Thrale or Streatham.  Boswell, who was in Scotland when Johnson and Mrs. Thrale left Streatham together, gratuitously infers that he left it alone, angry and mortified, in consequence of her altered manner: