'For the son of Alcnoomak shall never complain.'
"When a little remission comes, however, then comes the torpor too;—he cannot then be waked by pain or moderate pleasure: and such was my case, when your talents roused, your offered friendship opened my heart to enjoyment Oh! never say hereafter that the obligations are on your side. Without you, dulness, darkness, stagnation of every faculty would have enveloped and extinguished all the powers of hapless
"H.L.P."
The picture that Mrs. Piozzi paints of herself in these last words is a sad one. She herself was unconscious, however, of its real sadness. In its unintentional revelations it shows us the feebleness without the dignity of old age, vivacity without freshness of intellect, the pretence without the reality of sentiment. "Hapless H.L.P."—to have lived to eighty years, and to close the record of so long a life with such words!
A little more than a year after this "Abridgment" was written, in May, 1821, Mrs. Piozzi died. Her children, from whom she had lived separated, were around her death-bed.[C]
[Footnote C: It is but four years ago that the Viscountess Keith, Mrs. Piozzi's eldest daughter, died. She was ninety-five years old. Her long life connected our generation with that of Johnson and Burke. She was the last survivor of the Streatham "set,"—for, as "Queeney," she had held a not unimportant place in it. She was at Johnson's death-bed. At their last interview he said,—"My dear child, we part forever in this world; let us part as Christian friends should; let us pray together."
It was in 1808 that Miss Thrale married Lord Keith, a distinguished naval officer.
In The Gentleman's Magazine, for May, 1657, is an interesting notice of Lady Keith. "During many years," it is there said, "Viscountess Keith held a distinguished position in the highest circles of the fashionable world in London; but during the latter portion of her life…. her time was almost entirely devoted to works of charity and to the performance of religious duties. No one ever did more for the good of others, and few ever did so much in so unostentatious a manner.">[
In judging her, it is to be borne in mind that the earlier and the later portions of her life are widely different from each other. As we have before said, Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Piozzi are two distinct persons. Mrs. Thrale, whom the world smiled upon, whom the wits liked and society courted, who had the best men in England for her friends, is a woman who will always be pleasant in memory. Her unaffected grace, her kindliness, her good-humor, her talents, make her perpetually charming. She was helped by her surroundings to be good, pleasant, and clever; and she will always keep her place as one of the most attractive figures in the circle which was formed by Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Fanny Burney, and others scarcely less conspicuous. But Mrs. Piozzi, whom the world frowned upon, whom the wits jeered at, and society neglected, whose friends nobody now knows, will be best remembered and best liked as having once been Mrs. Thrale. There is no great charge against her; she was more sinned against than sinning; she was only weak and foolish, only degenerated from her first excellence. And even in her old age some traits of her youthful charms remain, and, seeing these, we regard her with a tender compassion, and remember of her only the bright helpfulness and freshness of her younger days, when Johnson "loved her, esteemed her, reverenced her, and thought her the first of womankind."
* * * * *