Johnson's account of his departure and his comments thereupon are worth notice. He wrote to Boswell:
“Baretti went away from Thrales in some whimsical fit of disgust or ill-nature without taking any leave. It is well if he finds in any other place as good an habitation and as many conveniences.”
On the whole it is likely that a good many of Baretti's friends felt rather sorry than otherwise that the jury at the Old Bailey had taken so merciful a view of his accident. If Johnson and Murphy were really responsible for the line of defence which prevailed at the trial, one can quite believe that the Thrales and a good many of their associates bore them a secret grudge for their pains.
In the year 1782 he was granted by the Government the pension which he had failed to extort from the Thrales. It amounted to £80 per annum, and we may take it for granted that he had nothing but the most copious abuse for the Prime Minister who had only given him £80 when Sheridan was receiving £200 and Johnson £300. He drew his pension for seven years.
Baretti's portrait, painted by Reynolds for the Streatham gallery, fetched £31 10s., the smallest price of any in the whole collection, on its dispersal, years after the principal actors in the scene in the “awful Sessions House” had gone to another world.
THE FATAL GIFT
WHEN Mr. Boswell had been snubbed, and very soundly snubbed too, by a Duchess, one might fancy that his ambition was fully satisfied. But he was possibly the most persevering of the order of Pachydermata at that time extant; and in the matter of snubs he had the appetite of a leviathan. He was fired with the desire to be snubbed once more by Her Grace—and he was. Without waiting to catch her eye, he raised his glass and, bowing in her direction, said:
“My Lady Duchess, I have the honour to drink Your Grace's good health.”