My dear sweet friend rates my little tokens of goodwill too high.... But let us talk of nothing but your happiness, and my comfort in the thought of it. Dear Mr. Pennington is already sensible of your worth, and will be more so, when he knows you as I do! He has won all our hearts here, and his charming wife will do the same with his friends wherever they are....

Poor Siddons pities my very soul to see her: an indignant melancholy sits on her fine face, and care corrodes her very vitals, I do think. God only can comfort her, and His grace alone support her, for she is all resentment; and that beauty, fame, and fortune she has now so long posess'd, add to her misery, not take from it. I am sincerely afflicted for her suffering virtue, never did I see a purer mind, but it is now sullied by the thoughts that she has washed her hands in innocence in vain! How shall I do to endure the sight of her odious husband? I suppose he comes to-morrow.

Streatham Park, Thursday, 10 Jan. 1793.

Who is silent and sullen now of these two scribbling Mrs. P.P.'s? not Mrs. Piozzi, sure. No, nor her poor Husband, who, tho' now laid up with the gout worse than ever I knew him, thinks of you often, and added a Postscript to my last letter with the Ballad in it. Oh, but the Church and King Ballad is a great deal better than mine; 'tis really a sweet copy of verses, and you will cry over it. Enquire and get it to read. I doubt not of its being the production of some very capital hand.

Our Master is too bad to be diverted by anything: 50 hours has that unhappy Mortal lain on an actual rack of torment, nor ever dozed once except for 7 or 8 minutes, not ten. 'Tis truly a dismal life, and Mrs. Siddons has called home Sally, and Mr. Davies is making holyday at Brighthelmston, and there is nobody to make out Whist with good old Mr. Jones. I just had a peep of the Lees and Greatheeds, it was however but a peep. We went to Town one night and saw Euphrasia, and caught a cold which Piozzi attributes to the Kanquroo, etc., that we carried the children to look at next morning. "Ah! those Ferocious Beasts are been my Ruin" quoth he....

Marquis Trotti writes from Vienna, where he is retired, like Isabinda in The Wonder, to avoid matrimony, as the Italians here tell me; and they fancy him attached to Miss Hamilton, who, they say, is highly accomplished, tho' plain, and a prodigiously well known and admired authour. When we talk of people's affairs, I hope and suppose we always make just such wise assertions, for who at last really knows the affairs and thoughts of another? You are however ignorant of nothing belonging to my family concerns, you'll say; 'tis true; but one reason may be there is nothing I wish to conceal. We have no money for Bath this year, Brynbella drains all away; and Cecy prefers a week's flash in London to a month at Bath, she says. And she perhaps knows why better than she will tell to you, or to yours ever,

H. L. P.

Say you are alive, and well, and happy, and tell Mr. Pennington how much we all wish him so. Adieu! My Master's bell rings, I run. Farewell.

By "Euphrasia" she probably meant to designate Murphy's play, usually known as The Grecian Daughter, in which the heroine Euphrasia, daughter of Evander, saves her father's life in prison by suckling him. In her reference to Isabinda she seems to have suffered from a momentary (and unusual) lapse of memory. The name of the heroine in The Wonder, otherwise A Woman keeps a Secret, by Mrs. Centlivre, is Isabella; Isabinda is a character in The Busybody, by the same writer.

The Miss Hamilton here referred to seems to have been Eliza, sister of Captain Charles Hamilton, a member of the Woodhall family, who was living in London shortly before this date; but her most successful work, the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, was not published till 1796.

Mr. Broadley's collection contains a letter written this year to Mrs. Piozzi by Harriet Lee, which shows that the latter had not quite banished Trotti from her thoughts, though she does profess her determination to live and die an old maid. "Should you have any letter from Vienna,—and I know not why, but am disposed to believe you have had the last,—pray be so good as to ask in your answer whether he knows anything of the fate of Gen. de Paoli, and if he is really dead. You may, if you please, add that I begg'd you to make the enquiry."

Just at this time Mrs. Pennington fell ill, and Mrs. Piozzi writes an anxious letter of enquiry, but of no particular interest, to her husband on 14th January; but by the time it reached him, the invalid was sufficiently recovered to answer for herself.

Streatham Park, 17 Jan. 1793.

Oh what pleasure did the sight of your handwriting give us all, my ever kind, my ever partial friend! Poor Mr. Piozzi really suffered for you in the midst of his own pains, and they have been great and serious. He is now just trying to crawl, and that very miserably indeed, and his hands, etc., so entirely useless for a whole week he could not even use the pocket handkerchief for himself. Are not you very sorry? 'Tis my fear that it will be long before he can ever play the Pastorale, etc.

Here is bitter weather too, and that retards both his and your recovery, and sweet Siddons has relapsed, and Sally is with her, as bad as bad can be, and Pepys attending them both. I'm told London has a violent Influenza in it, and will keep my Miss out while I can, but one's arms do so ache with pulling at an unbroken Filly that longs to hurt herself by skipping into some mischief or other, that, like the old Vicar in Goldsmith's Novel, I get weary of being wise, and resolve to see people once happy in almost any way.

Meantime Harriet Lee quits London, after making me only one pityful visit or two. I gave her the elegant verses called a Ballad for Church and King, she may copy them for you; I fancy them written by Bishop Porteous, without knowing very well why. Poor Louis' fate was decided on last Monday, but we know not yet what that fate is. Your anecdote is very interesting, I shall read it to all the Democrates. Meantime 'tis supposed that a plague is begun in Austria. Long live the Turnep Cart, say you. If things go on so rapidly I shall become a list'ner. The King of Naples has really behaved very paltrily, and poor Pius Sextus is forced to solicit help from his excluded and excommunicated brother Martin at last. I suppose we shall send a fleet into the Mediterranean for protection of Italy; they will all be contented to see us pay the expence of a war they have not spirit to fight for themselves. Fye on 'em all! Tutti Compagni, says yours,

H. L. P.

Dr. Beilby Porteous was now Bishop of London, to which see he had been translated from Chester in 1787. He had a greater reputation as a preacher than as an author, but was said to have had some share in Hannah More's Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.

Hugues Basseville, an envoy of the French Republic, having been murdered at the foot of Trajan's Column in Rome on 13th January, Pius VI was charged with complicity, and so was driven in self-defence to join the League of the Germanic States against France. Martin, as typifying the Lutherans, is as old as Dryden's Hind and Panther, and stands for Luther himself in Swift's Tale of a Tub, but Mrs. Piozzi probably had in her mind its use by Dr. Arbuthnot in his History of John Bull.

Ferdinand I, King of Naples, was at first disposed to sympathise with the Revolution, but the execution of Louis drove him to join the league of Austria and England against the Republic.