I am a contradiction, yet very naturally so; I wish you not to write yourself, and yet am delighted when I receive a letter in your own hand: however, I don't desire it should be of four pages, like this last of the 11th. When I have had the gout, I have always written by proxy. You will make me ashamed, if you don't use the precedent. Your account of yourself is quite to my satisfaction. I approve, too, of your not dining with your company. Since I must be old and have the gout, I have long turned those disadvantages to my own account, and plead them to the utmost when they will save me from doing anything I dislike. I am so lame, or have such a sudden pain, when I do not care to do what is proposed to me! Nobody can tell how rapidly the gout may be come, or be gone again; and then it is so pleasant to have had the benefit, and none of the anguish!
I did send you a line last week in the cover of a letter to Lady Craven,[1] which I knew would sufficiently tell your quickness how much I shall be obliged to you for any attentions to her. I thought her at Paris, and was surprised to hear of her at Florence. She has, I fear, been infinitamente indiscreet; but what is that to you or me? She is very pretty, has parts, and is good-natured to the greatest degree; has not a grain of malice or mischief (almost always the associates, in women, of tender hearts), and never has been an enemy but to herself. For that ridiculous woman Madame Piozzi,[2] and t'other more impertinent one, of whom I never heard before, they are like the absurd English dames with whom we used to divert ourselves when I was at Florence. As to your little knot of poets, I do not hold the cocks higher than the hens; nor would I advise them to repatriate. We have at present here a most incomparable set, not exactly known by their names, but who, till the dead of summer, kept the town in a roar, and, I suppose, will revive by the meeting of Parliament. They have poured forth a torrent of odes, epigrams, and part of an imaginary epic poem, called the "Rolliad,"[3] with a commentary and notes, that is as good as the "Dispensary"[4] and "Dunciad," with more ease. These poems are all anti-ministerial, and the authors very young men, and little known or heard of before. I would send them, but you would want too many keys: and indeed I want some myself; for, as there are continually allusions to Parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirised heroes even by sight: however, the poetry and wit make amends, for they are superlative.
[Footnote 1: Lady Craven, née Berkeley, had given abundant cause for scandal during her husband's life, which did not abate when, a month after his death, she married the Margrave of Anspach.]
[Footnote 2: Mme. Piozzi, the Mrs. Thrale of Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Mr. Thrale was a brewer, the founder of the great firm now known as Barclay and Perkins. She was many years younger than he; and, after his death, she married Signor Piozzi, a professional musician of eminence. Johnson, who had been an habitual guest of her husband and her at their villa at Streatham, set the fashion of condemning this second marriage as a disgraceful mésalliance; but it is not very easy to see in what respect it was so. In social position she had certainly had the advantage over Mr. Thrale, being the daughter of a Carnarvonshire baronet of ancient family. But a first-rate musician was surely the equal of a brewer. After Johnson's death she published a volume of her reminiscences of him, which may be allowed to have been worthy neither of him nor of her, and which was ridiculed by Peter Pindar in "A Town Eclogue," in which the rivals Bozzy and Piozzi, on Virgil's principle—Alternis dicetis, amant alterna Camaenae—relate in turn anecdotes of Johnson's way of life, his witty sayings, &c., &c. Sir John Hawkins, as judge of the contest, gives neither a prize; tells the lady, "Sam's Life, dear ma'am, will only damn your own;" calls the gentleman "a chattering magpie;" and—
Then to their pens and paper rush'd the twain,
To kill the mangled RAMBLER o'er again.]
[Footnote 3: In 1785 the wits of Brooks's, being much disappointed at the result of the political conflict of 1784, gave some vent to their spleen in verse. For their subject they selected an imaginary epic, of which they gave fictitious extracts, and for their hero they took the Member for Devonshire, John Rolle, invoking him—
Illustrious Rolle! oh may thy honoured name
Roll down distinguished on the rolls of fame.
It is a little odd that they abstained from similar puns on Pitt and pit; but their indignation was chiefly directed at his youth as ill-suited to his powers—
A sight to make surrounding nations stare,
A kingdom trusted to a schoolboy's care.
The chief contributors were Burke's friend, Dr. Lawrence; Sheridan's brother-in-law, Tickell; General Fitzpatrick, Mr. G. Ellis, Lord G. Townshend, and General Burgoyne.]