'Dearest Being on Earth,—Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock; having met a school-fellow from India, by whom I am to be informed in things this night which immediately concern your obedient husband.'
'My dear dear Wife,—I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband.'
'Dear Prue,—I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and I inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish after your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more.
'Your faithful husband.'
These are natural and real; but let us look into 'The Enemy of Idleness,' 1621, and see there what the author thought a lover should write to his mistress:—
'A Lover writeth unto his Lady.
'To expresse unto thee (my deere) the inward griefes, the secret sorrowes, the pinching paines, that my poore oppressed heart pitifully endureth, my pen is altogether unable. For even as thy excellent vertue, beautie, comelines, and curtesie farre surmounteth in my conceipt that of all other humane creatures, so my pitious passions both day and night are no whit inferiour, but farre above all those of any other worldly wight. So excell not thy giftes, but as much exceede my griefes. Therefore (my sweete) vouchsafe of thy soveraigne clemencie to graunt some speedie remedie unto the grievous anguishes of my heavie heart; detract no time, but wey with thy selfe, the sicker that the patient is—the more deadly that his disease is deemed—so much the more speede ought the physitian to make—so much the sooner ought he to provide and minister the medicine, least comming too late his labour be lost. But what painefull patient is hee that sustaineth so troublesome a state as I, poore soule, doe, except thou vouchsafe to pittie me? For the partie patient being discomforted at thy handes can have recourse unto none, but still languishing must looke for a lothsome death. Consider, therefore, my deare, the extremitie of my case, and let not cancred cruelty corrupt so many golden gifts, but as thy beauty and comelinesse of body is, so set thy humanity also and clemency of minde. Draw not (as the proverb saith) a leaden sword out of a golden scabberd. And thus hoping to have some speedy comfort at thy handes, upon that hope I repose mee till further opportunity.'
The fair fame of Mrs. Piozzi (Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale) has been injured by an attempt to represent her as in love with a young actor in her old age and some letters of hers to William Augustus Conway were published a few years ago as the 'Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi.' In 1862 the original correspondence was placed in the hands of the editor of the Athenæum, and in an article in that journal her character is vindicated, and the letters are proved to have been garbled in order to infer a sexual love. Mrs. Piozzi formed an intimate friendship with Mrs. Rudd, Conway's mother, and the two ladies passed much of their time together, consulting how to help the young actor. Conway was in love with a young lady who jilted him, and Mrs. Piozzi tried to comfort him. In consideration of all her kindness he calls her 'his more than mother,' and she calls him 'her youngest adopted child.' The following is one of Mrs. Piozzi's letters to Conway:—
'You have been a luckless wight, my admirable friend, but amends will one day be made to you, even in this world; I know, I feel it will. Dear Piozzi considered himself as cruelly treated, and so he was by his own friends, as the world perversely calls our relations, who shut their door in his face because his love of music led him to face the public eye and ear. He was brought up to the Church; but, 'Ah! Gabriel,' said his uncle, 'thou wilt never get nearer the altar than the organ-loft.' His disinclination to celibacy, however, kept him from the black gown, and their ill-humour drove him to Paris and London, where he was the first tenor singer who had £50 a night for two songs. And Queen Marie Antoinette gave him a hundred louis-d'or with her own fair hand for singing a buffo song over and over again one evening, till she learned it. Her cruel death half broke his tender heart. You will not wait, as he did, for fortune and for fame. We were both of us past thirty-five years old when we first met in society at Dr. Burney's (grandfather to Mrs. Bourdois and her sisters), where I coldly confessed his uncommon beauty and talents; but my heart was not at home. Mr. Thrale's broken health and complicated affairs demanded and possessed all my attention, and vainly did my future husband endeavour to attract my attention. So runs the world away.'
Among the letters quoted in the Athenæum is the following amusing one:—