The Memoirs of Dr. Burney, by his daughter, published in 1832, together with her Diary and Letters, supplied the materials of Lord Macaulay’s celebrated article on Madame D’Arblay in the “Edinburgh Review” for January, 1843, since reprinted amongst his Essays.  He describes the Memoirs as a book “which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth, shame, and loathing,” and adds:—­“The two works are lying side by side before us; and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary without a sense of relief.  The difference is as great as the difference between the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop, scented with lavender water and jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Critical and Historical Essays (one volume edition), 1851, p. 652.  The Memoirs were composed between 1828 and 1832, more than forty years after the occurrence of the scenes I have quoted from them.]

The passages I have quoted amply establish the justice of this comparison, for they are utterly irreconcileable with the unvarnished statements of the Diary; from which we learn that “Cecilia” was published about the beginning of June, when Johnson was absent from Streatham; that the Diarist had left Streatham prior to August 12th, and did not return to it again that year.  How could she have passed many months there after she was entrusted with the great secret, which (as stated in “Thraliana”) she only guessed in September or October?

How again could Johnson have attributed Mrs. Thrale’s conduct to caprices “partly wealthy,” when he knew that one main source of her troubles was pecuniary; or how can his alleged sense of ill-treatment be reconciled with his own letters?  That he groaned over the terrible disturbance of his habits involved in the abandonment of Streatham, is likely enough; but as the only words he uttered were, “That house is lost to me for ever,” and “Good morning, dear lady,” the accompanying look is about as safe a foundation for a theory of conduct or feeling as Lord Burleigh’s famous nod in “The Critic.”  The philosopher was at this very time an inmate of Streatham, and probably returned that same evening to register a sample of its hospitality.  At all events, we know that, spite of hints and warnings, sighs and groans, he stuck to Streatham to the last; and finally left it with Mrs. Thrale, as a member of her family, to reside in her house at Brighton, as her guest, for six weeks.[1] To talk of conscious ill-treatment or wounded dignity, in the teeth of facts like these, is laughable.

[Footnote 1:  The Edinburgh reviewer says, “Johnson went in Oct. 1782 from Streatham to Brighton, where he lived a kind of boarding-house life;” and adds, “he was not asked out into company with his fellow-lodgers.”  The Thrales had a handsome furnished house at Brighton, which is mentioned both in the Correspondence and Autobiography.

It is amusing enough to watch these attempts to shade away the ruinous effect of the Brighton trip on Lord Macaulay’s Streatham pathos.]