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the Welch settlement has been examined and rewritten by Cator's desire in such a manner that a will can revoke it or charge the estate, or anything. I signed my settlement yesterday, and, before I slept, wrote my will, charging the estate with pretty near 3000l. But what signifies it? My daughters deserve no thanks from my tenderness and they want no pecuniary help from my purse-let me provide in some measure, for my dear, my absent Piozzi.-God give me strength to part with him courageously. I expect him every instant to breakfast with me for the last time.-Gracious Heavens, what words are these! Oh no, for mercy may we but meet again! and without diminished kindness. Oh my love, my love!

"We did meet and part courageously. I persuaded him to bring his old friend Mecci, who goes abroad with him and has long been his confidant, to keep the meeting from being too tender, the separation from being too poignant-his presence was a restraint on our conduct, and a witness of our vows, which we renewed with fervour, and will keep sacred in absence, adversity, and age. When all was over I flew to my dearest, loveliest friend, my Fanny Burney, and poured my sorrows into her tender bosom."

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"Bath, April 14th, 1783.-Here I am, settled in my plan of economy, with three daughters, three maids and a man," &c.

Piozzi left England the night of the 8th May, 1783.

"Come, friendly muse! some rhimes discover

With which to meet my dear at Dover,

Fondly to bless my wandering lover
And make him dote on dirty Dover.
Call each fair wind to waft him over,
Nor let him linger long at Dover,
But there from past fatigues recover,
And write his love some lines from Dover.
Too well he knows his skill to move her,
To meet him two years hence at Dover,
When happy with her handsome rover
She'll bless the day she din'd at Dover."

“Russell Street, Bath, Thursday, 8th May, 1783.—I sent him these verses to divert him on his passage. Dear angel! this day he leaves a nation to which he was sent for my felicity perhaps, I hope for his own. May I live but to make him happy, and hear him say 'tis me that make him so!"

In a note on the passage in which he states that Johnson studiously avoided all mention of Streatham or the family after Thrale's death, Hawkins says:"It seems that between him and the widow there was a formal taking of leave, for I find in his Diary the following note: 1783, April 5th, I took leave of Mrs. Thrale. I was much moved. I had some expostulations with her. She said she was likewise affected. I commended the Thrales with great good will to God; may my petitions have been heard.'” This being the day before her parting interview with Piozzi, no doubt she was much affected; and as the newspapers had already taken up the topic of

her engagement, the expostulations probably referred to it.

Preceding commentators were not bound to know what is now learned from "Thraliana "; but they were bound to know what might always have been learned from Johnson's printed letters; and the tone of these from the separation in April, 1783, to the marriage in July, 1784, is identically the same as at any period of the intimacy which can be specified. There are the same warm expressions of regard, the same gratitude for acknowledged kindness, the same alternations of hope and disappointment, the same medical details, and the same reproaches for silence or fancied coldness, in which he habitually indulged towards all his female correspondents. Shew me a complaint or reproach, and I will instantly match it with one from a period when the intimacy was confessedly and notoriously at its height. If her occasional explosions of irritability are to be counted, what inference is to be drawn from Johnson's depreciatory remarks on her, and indeed on everybody, so carefully treasured up by Hawkins and Boswell?

On June 13th, 1783, he writes to her:

"Your last letter was very pleasing; it expressed kindness to me, and some degree of placid acquiescence in your present mode of life, which is, I think, the best which is at present within your reach.

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My powers and attention have for a long time been almost wholly employed upon my health, I hope not wholly without success, but solitude is very tedious."

She replies:

"Bath, June 15th, 1783.

"I believe it is too true, my dear Sir, that you think on little except yourself and your own health, but then they are subjects on which every one else would think too and that is a great consolation.

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"I am willing enough to employ all my thoughts upon myself, but there is nobody here who wishes to think with or about me, so I am very sick and a little sullen, and disposed now and then to say, like king David, My lovers and my friends have been put away from me, and my acquaintance hid out of my sight." If the last letter I wrote showed some degree of placid acquiescence in a situation, which, however displeasing, is the best I can get at just now, I pray God to keep me in that disposition, and to lay no more calamity upon me which may again tempt me to murmur and complain. In the meantime assure yourself of my undiminished kindness and veneration: they have been long out of accident's power either to lessen or increase."

"That you should be solitary is a sad thing, and a strange one too, when every body is willing to drop in, and for a quarter of an hour at least, save you from a tête-à-tête with yourself. I never could catch a moment when you were alone whilst we were in London, and Miss Thrale says the same thing."

A few days afterwards, June 19th, he writes:

"I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected you with ten

derness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil."

Two days before, he had suffered a paralytic stroke, and lost the power of speech for a period. After minutely detailing his ailments and their treatment by his medical advisers, he proceeds:

"How this will be received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathise with me; but perhaps

"My mistress gracious, mild, and good,

Cries! Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.

"But can this be possible? I hope it cannot. I hope that what, when I could speak, I spoke of you, and to you, will be in a sober and serious hour remembered by you; and surely it cannot be remembered but with some degree of kindness. I have loved you with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great distress your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not, do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.

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"O God! give me comfort and confidence in Thee; forgive my sins; and if it be thy good pleasure, relieve my diseases for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

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