Choose my own food, and see what climes I please.
I suffer only—if I'm in the wrong:
So, now, you prating puppy, hold your tongue."
[1] This evidently referred to the "adumbration" of Johnson's letter (No. 4), antè, p. 239.
Walpole's opinion of the book itself had been expressed in a preceding letter, dated March 28th, 1786:
"Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed—in her, I mean: not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago. . . The Signora talks of her doctor's expanded mind and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor woman is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out[1], but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humour. Judge! The Piozzi relates that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied: 'In Ireland: it was a bog planted with palm trees.'"
[1] See antè, p. 202 and 270.
Walpole's statement, that the whole first impression was sold the first day, is confirmed by one of her letters, and may be placed alongside of a statement of Johnson's reported in the book. Clarissa being mentioned as a perfect character, "on the contrary (said he) you may observe that there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances; but that vile broken nose never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which, being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night."
When the king sent for a copy of the "Anecdotes" on the evening of the publication, there was none to be had.
In April, 1786, Hannah More writes: