Denbigh, Tuesday 1 Sep.

Dear Miss Weston,—I thank you for your invitation to pretty Ludlow, and shall let you know when we are likely to arrive there, that all possible advantage may be taken of your friendly hints. Mr. Knight is an old acquaintance of my Husband by the description you give of his taste and elegant conversation; at least it would be strange should there be two such men of any English name. Scotch and Welsh families are disposed in a different manner: we have but so many names, and all who bear those names are related to each other. I find a great resemblance between the two nations, in a hundred little peculiarities, and the Erse sounded so like my own native tongue that I wished for erudition to prove the original affinity between them.

The French nation was never a favourite of mine, and I see little done to encrease one's esteem of them as a nation. Their low people are very ignorant, their high ones very self-sufficient: you now read in every Paper the effects of that self-sufficiency acting upon that ignorance. Fermentation however will, after much turbulence, at length produce a clear spirit, though probably 'twill be a coarse one. They will know in a dozen years what they would have, and I fancy that will be once more an Absolute Monarchy....

Mr. Piozzi adds a P.S. "In a few days I intend go to see our little estate, and choose the place to building a little Cottage, and a little room for our dear friend Miss Weston.... G. P."

In her remarks on surnames Mrs. Piozzi does not display her usual acumen. There is hardly any English name of which it can safely be predicated that all the individuals who bear it are related to each other, and assuredly this is not the case with a name like Knight. She shows more penetration in her estimate of the trend of events in France, where the mutterings of the coming storm were already making themselves heard. The States-General had assembled in May, in June the Commons had constituted themselves the National Assembly, the Bastille had fallen on 14th July, and on 4th August the nobles had relinquished their hereditary privileges. Well within the twelve years which she postulates, the Revolution of Brumaire (1799) had practically put the supreme power in the hands of Bonaparte as First Consul, though he was not proclaimed Emperor till 1804.

From North Wales they went, by way of Ludlow, to Bath, probably for the benefit of Piozzi, who was already beginning to suffer from the attacks of gout which finally proved fatal.

Bath, 2 Nov. 1789.

Dear Miss Weston,—Not one letter do I owe you, nor three nor four, but forty if they would make compensation for your kind ones to Ludlow, where Miss Powell's politeness made the time pass very agreeably indeed, spight of rain, which, however provoking, could not conceal the beauty of its elegant environs, even from an eye made fastidious by the recent sight of richer and more splendid scenery.

Mrs. Byron read me the kind words for which Mr. Piozzi and I owe you so many thanks: she gains strength daily, and will be quite restored if kept clear from vexation, and indulged in her favourite exercises of riding and the Cold Bath. My husband and she have many an amicable spar about Bell's Oracle, on account of his savage treatment of dear Siddons, whose present state of health demands tenderness, while her general merit must enforce respect. I wonder, for my own part, what rage possesses the people who wish to see, or delight in seeing, virtue insulted. Let us not learn to tear characters in England, as persons are torne in France, and drink the intellectual life of our neighbours warm in our Lemonade.

Major Barry has written me a charming letter, Do tell him that he shall find my acknowledgements at Lichfield; I mean to write a reference to Miss Seward, about a critical dispute we had here at Bath some evenings ago, concerning the two new novels, which I find are set up in opposition to each other, and people take sides. You will easily imagine that Zeluco and Hayley's Young Widow are the competitors.

Give my kind love to Miss Williams when you see her, and tell her that she is one of the persons I please myself with hoping to see a great deal of this winter.

We are all going to the Milkwoman's Tragedy to-morrow; I fear with much ill will towards its success. Her ingratitude to Miss More deserves rough censure, but hissing the play will not mend her morals.

Miss Wallis is to play Belvidera next Saturday. She is scarcely more of a woman than Cecilia Thrale, and quite as young looking; very ladylike though, and a pretty behaved girl in a room. I advised Dimond in sport to act Douglas to her Lady Randolph, as a still more suitable part than Belvidera. Here's nonsense enough for one pacquet. 'Tis time to say how much I am dear Miss Weston's affecte servant

H. L. P.

Mrs. Byron, whose name frequently recurs in the letters, was a daughter of John Trevannion, who married, "pour ses péchés," as Mrs. Piozzi elsewhere remarks, Admiral the Hon. John Byron, known in the Service as Foulweather Jack, the grandfather of the poet.

The attack on Mrs. Siddons in Bell's Oracle was one of the rare exceptions to the general chorus of praise she commonly evoked from the Press; it seems to have been quite undeserved, and her reputation was far too firmly established to be shaken by it.

Zeluco has already been referred to. Its competitor, The Young Widow, or a History of Cornelia Sudley, was the work of William Hayley, the poet, of whom Southey said: "Everything about that man is good, except his poetry." Yet it hit the popular taste, and he was even offered the Laureateship in succession to Warton.

The Milkwoman, Anna Maria Yearsley, otherwise "Lactilla," was a rustic genius discovered by Hannah More, who brought out a volume of her poems, for which she wrote a preface. But her action in investing the proceeds for the benefit of the authoress, without giving the latter any control of the money, produced a rupture between them, and the quarrel was carried on in the Press "to a disgusting excess," as their contemporaries thought. Besides her play of Earl Godwin, she wrote a novel called The Royal Captives, which met with some success, so that she was enabled to set up a Circulating Library at the Hot Wells, Clifton.