style she adhered. Her principal works are in the different churches of her native city. She died there, in 1640.
PIOZZI, or THRALE, ESTHER LYNCH,
Distinguished for her intimacy with Dr. Johnson, was the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq., of Bodvel, in Carnarvonshire, where she was born, in 1739. In 1763, she married Henry Thrale, an opulent brewer in Southwark. Her beauty, vivacity, and intelligence made her house the resort of nearly all the literati of her time, and Dr. Samuel Johnson was almost domesticated with them, and appears to have enacted the mentor as well as the friend at Streatham, perhaps rather oftener than was quite agreeable to his lively hostess, who has, however, with perfect candour, mentioned some instances of his reproofs, in her amusing anecdotes of his life, even when the story told against herself. On one occasion, on her observing to a friend that she did not like goose,—"One smells it so while it is roasting," said she.
"But you, madam," replied the doctor, "have been at all times a fortunate woman, having always had your hunger so forestalled by indulgence, that you never experienced the delight of smelling your dinner beforehand."
On another occasion, during a very hot and dry summer, when she was naturally but thoughtlessly wishing for rain, to lay the dust, as they drove along the Surrey roads. "I cannot bear," replied he, with some asperity, and an altered look, "when I know how many poor families will perish next winter for want of that bread which the present drought will deny them, to hear ladies sighing for rain, only that their complexions may not suffer from the heat, or their clothes be incommoded by the dust. For shame! leave off such foppish lamentations, and study to relieve those whose distresses are real."
Mr. Thrale died in 1781, and his widow retired with her four daughters to Bath. In 1784, she married Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian music-master; and this caused a complete rupture between her and Johnson, who had tried in vain to dissuade her from this step. After Johnson's death, Mrs. Piozzi published, in 1786, a volume, entitled "Anecdotes of Dr. Samuel Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life." Many things in this work gave great offence to Boswell and other friends of Johnson. But Mrs. Piozzi, notwithstanding, soon published another work, called "Letters to and from Johnson."
But though seemingly devoted to literature and society, she never neglected her children. In a letter to Miss Burney she says, "I have read to them the Bible from beginning to end, the Roman and English histories, Milton, Shakspere, Pope, and Young's works from head to heel; Warton and Johnson's Criticisms on the Poets; besides a complete system of dramatic writing; and classical—I mean the English classics—they are most perfectly acquainted with. Such works of Voltaire, too, as were not dangerous, we have worked at; Rollin des Belles Lettres, and a hundred more."
A friend, who, in an agreeable little work, called "Piozziana," has recorded several interesting anecdotes of the latter days of this celebrated lady, has given the following account of Mrs. Piozzi, quite late in life:—
