home with him one hundred thousand; and left in the house at Lisbon twelve hundred thousand.
August 9, at Mr. Windham’s.—The company, Sir William Scott, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Laurence, Sir Henry Englefield, and myself. A very pleasant day.
Sir Joshua and Sir W. Scott, in talking concerning that despicable woman Mrs. Piozzi, mentioned the letter which she wrote to Johnson in answer to his objurgatory one relative to her proposed marriage with an Italian singer.[1] She has suppressed both letters in her book, and hers to Johnson happened by some accident not to be returned to her with the rest of her letters. She said in it among other things, as both Sir W. Scott and Sir Joshua agreed, that however she might have disgraced Miss Salisbury by marrying the brewer, she could not disgrace Mrs. Thrale by marrying Piozzi—that his profession was a liberal one which could not be said of the other; and she was told he excelled very much in his own way.
Of this kind of excellence however she all her life affected to be so little of a judge, as always to join with Dr. Johnson in inattention to musick; and soon after her present caro sposo came to England, she said once to Dr. Burney, as he told me, “We are all mightily pleasant and happy; but there is no bearing that fellow squaring his elbows at the harpsichord.” This was at Dr. Burney’s house; and the fellow was Piozzi.
