your folly do no further mischief. If the last act is yet to do, I who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you, I who long thought you the first. of womankind, entreat that, before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I once was, Madam, most truly yours, "July 2, 1784. "SAM. JOHNSON. "I will come down, if you permit it." No. 4. "July 4, 1784. "SIR,- I have this morning received from you so rough a letter in reply to one which was both tenderly and respectfully written, that I am forced to desire the conclusion of a correspondence which I can bear to continue no longer. The birth of my second husband is not meaner than that of my first; his sentiments are not meaner; his profession is not meaner, and his superiority in what he professes acknowledged by all mankind. It is want of fortune, then, that is ignominious; the character of the man I have chosen has no other claim to such an epithet. The religion to which he has been always a zealous adherent will, I hope, teach him to forgive insults he has not deserved; mine will, I hope, enable me to bear them at once with dignity and patience. To hear that I have forfeited my fame is indeed the greatest insult I ever yet received. My fame * The four words which I have printed in italics are indistinctly written, and cannot be satisfactorily made out. JOHNSON'S LETTERS ON SECOND MARRIAGE. 241 is as unsullied as snow, or I should think it unworthy of him who must henceforth protect it. "I write by the coach the more speedily and effectually to prevent your coming hither. Perhaps by my fame (and I hope it is so) you mean only that celebrity which is a consideration of a much lower kind. I care for that only as it may give pleasure to my husband and his friends. 66 Farewell, dear Sir, and accept my best wishes. You have always commanded my esteem, and long enjoyed the fruits of a friendship never infringed by one harsh expression on my part during twenty years of familiar talk. Never did I oppose your will, or control your wish; nor can your unmerited severity itself lessen my regard; but till you have changed your opinion of Mr. Piozzi, let us converse no more. God bless you." No. 5. To Mrs. Piozzi. "London, July 8, 1784. "DEAR MADAM,-What you have done, however I may lament it, I have no pretence to resent, as it has not been injurious to me: I therefore breathe out one sigh more of tenderness, perhaps useless, but at least sincere. "I wish that God may grant you every blessing, that you may be happy in this world for its short continuance, and eternally happy in a better state; and whatever I can contribute to your happiness I am very ready to repay, for that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched. "Do not think slightly of the advice which I now presume to offer. Prevail upon Mr. Piozzi to settle in England: you may live here with more dignity than in Italy, and with more security; your rank will be higher, and your fortune more under your own eye. desire not to detail all my reasons, but every argument of prudence and interest is for England, and only some phantoms of imagination seduce you to Italy. "I am afraid, however, that my counsel is vain, yet I have eased my heart by giving it. * "When Queen Mary took the resolution of sheltering herself in England, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, attempting to dissuade her, attended on her journey; and when they came to the irremeable stream that separated the two kingdoms, walked by her side into the water, in the middle of which he seized her bridle, and with earnestness proportioned to her danger and his * Queen Mary left the Scottish for the English coast, on the Firth of Solway, in a fishing-boat. The incident to which Johnson alludes is introduced in "The Abbot; " where the scene is laid on the sea-shore. The unusual though expressive term “irremeable,” is defined in his dictionary, "admitting no return." His authority is Dryden's Virgil: "The keeper dream'd, the chief without delay The word is a Latin one anglicised: "Evaditque celer ripam irremeabilis undæ." ALLEGED DECEIT. own affection pressed her to return. 243 The Queen went forward.If the parallel reaches thus far, may it go no farther.--The tears stand in my eyes. "I am going into Derbyshire, and hope to be followed by your good wishes, for I am, with great affection, "Your, &c. "Any letters that come for me hither will be sent me." In a memorandum on this letter, she says:-"I wrote him (No. 6) a very kind and affectionate farewell." Before calling attention to the results of this correspondence, I must notice a charge built upon it by the reviewer, with the respectable aid of the foulmouthed and malignant Baretti: "This letter is now printed for the first time by Mr. Hayward. But he has omitted to notice the light which is thrown on it by Baretti's account of the marriage. That account is given in the European Magazine' for 1788. It is very circumstantial, and too long to transcribe, but the upshot is this: He says that, in order to meet her returning lover, she left Bath with her daughters as for a journey to Brighton; quitted them on some pretence at Salisbury, and posted off to town, deceiving Dr. Johnson, who continued to direct to her at Bath as usual.* In London she kept herself concealed for some days in my parish, and not very * These words, italicised by the reviewer, contain the pith of the charge, which has no reference to her visit to London six weeks before. far distant from my own habitation, ... in Suffolk Street, Middlesex Hospital.' 'In a few weeks,' he adds, she was in a condition personally to resort to Mr. Greenland (her lawyer) to settle preliminaries, then returned to Bath with Piozzi, and there was married.' Now Baretti was a libeller, and not to be believed except upon compulsion; but if he does speak the truth, then the date, Bath, June 30,' of her circular letter, is a mystification; so is the passage in her letter to Johnson of July 4, about sending it by the coach to prevent his coming.' Of course she was mortally afraid of the Doctor's coming, for if he had come he would have found her flown. According to this supposition, she did not return to Bath at all, but remained perdue in London, with her lover, during the whole 'Correspondence.' Is it the true one? "We cannot but suspect that it is, and that the solution of the whole of this little domestic mystery is to be found in a passage in the Autobiographical Memoir,' vol. i. p. 277. There were two marriages: "Miss Nicholson went with us to Stonehenge, Wilton, &c., whence I returned to Bath to wait for Piozzi. He was here on the eleventh day after he got Dobson's letter. In twenty-six more we were married in London by the Spanish ambassador's chaplain, and returned hither to be married by Mr. Morgan, of Bath, at St. James's Church, July 25, 1784.' "Now in order to make this account tally with Baretti's we must allow for a slight exertion of that talent for 'white lies' on the lady's part, of which her |