A single couplet of Gifford's was more damaging than all Walpole's petulance:
"See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam,
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home."[1]
[1] "She, one evening, asked me abruptly if I did not remember the scurrilous lines in which she had been depicted by Gifford in his 'Baviad and Moeviad.' And, not waiting for my answer, for I was indeed too much embarrassed to give one quickly, she recited the verses in question, and added, 'how do you think "Thrale's grey widow" revenged herself? I contrived to get myself invited to meet him at supper at a friend's house, (I think she said in Pall Mall), soon after the publication of his poem, sate opposite to him, saw that he was "perplexed in the extreme;" and smiling, proposed a glass of wine as a libation to our future good fellowship. Gifford was sufficiently a man of the world to understand me, and nothing could be more courteous and entertaining than he was while we remained together.'"—Piozziana.
This condemnatory verse is every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The Preface commences thus:
"I was made to observe at Rome some vestiges of an ancient custom very proper in those days. It was the parading of the street by a set of people called Preciæ, who went some minutes before the Flamen Dialis, to bid the inhabitants leave work or play, and attend wholly to the procession; but if ill-omens prevented the pageants from passing, or if the occasion of the show was scarce deemed worthy its celebration, these Precise stood a chance of being ill-treated by the spectators. A prefatory introduction to a work like this can hope little better usage from the public than they had. It proclaims the approach of what has often passed by before; adorned most certainly with greater splendour, perhaps conducted with greater regularity and skill. Yet will I not despair of giving at least a momentary amusement to my countrymen in general; while their entertainment shall serve as a vehicle for conveying expressions of particular kindness to those foreign individuals, whose tenderness softened the sorrows of absence, and who eagerly endeavoured by unmerited attentions to supply the loss of their company, on whom nature and habit had given me stronger claims."
The Preface concludes with the happy remark that—"the labours of the press resemble those of the toilette: both should be attended to and finished with care; but once completed, should take up no more of our attention, unless we are disposed at evening to destroy all effect of our morning's study."
It would be difficult to name a book of travels in which anecdotes, observations, and reflections are more agreeably mingled, or one from which a clearer bird's-eye view of the external state of countries visited in rapid succession may be caught. I can only spare room for a few short extracts:
"The contradictions one meets with every moment at Paris likewise strike even a cursory observer,—a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a femme publique, dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with a not very small crucifix hanging at her bosom;—and the Virgin Mary's sign at an ale-house door, with these words,
"'Je suis la mère de mon Dieu,