236 Anecdotes.
��by friendship 1 . When Mr. Thrale's perplexities disturbed his peace, dear Dr. Johnson left him scarce a moment, and tried every artifice to amuse as well as every argument to console him : nor is it more possible to describe than to forget his pru dent, his pious attentions towards the man who had some years before certainly saved his valuable life, perhaps his reason, by half obliging him to change the foul air of Fleet-street for the wholesome breezes of the Sussex downs 2 .
The epitaph engraved on my mother's monument 3 shews how deserving she was of general applause. I asked Johnson why he named her person before her mind : he said it was, ' because every body could judge of the one, and but few of the other.'
Juxta sepulta est HESTERA MARIA
Thomce Cotton de Combermere baronetti Cestrien sis filia, Johannis Salusbury armigeri Flintiensis uxor*.
Forma fell X) felix ingenio ;
Omnibus jucunda, suorum amantissima.
Linguis artibusque ita exculta
Ut loquenti nunquam deessent
Sermonis nitor> sententiarum flosculi,
SapienticB gravitas, leporum gratia :.
Modum servandi adeo perita,
Ut dcmestica inter negotia literis oblectaretur,
Literarum inter delicias, rem familiarem sedulo curaret.
Multis illi multos annos precantibus
dirt carcinomatis veneno contabuit,
nexibusque vita paulatim resolutis,
e terrismeliora sperans emigramt.
Nata 1707. Nupta 1739. Obiit 1773.
Mr. Murphy, who admired her talents and delighted in her company, did me the favour to paraphrase this elegant inscrip tion in verses which I fancy have never yet been published. His
1 He wrote to Mrs. Thrale shortly indifference, and far happier still
before Mrs. Salusbury's death : than with counterfeited sympathy.'
'Is it a good or an evil to me that Letter -s, i. 216.
she now loves me? It is surely a 2 It was to Brighton that the
good ; for you will love me better, Thrales frequently took him.
and we shall have a new principle 3 In Streatharn Church,
of concord ; and I shall be happier 4 For Mrs. Piozzi's pedigree see
with honest sorrow than with sullen Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 6.
fame
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