Opposite Boswell's account
of this incident she has written, "Was he not right in hating to be
so treated? and would he not have been right to have loved me better
than any of them, because I never did make a Lyon of him?"
One great charm of her companionship to cultivated men was her
familiarity with the learned languages, as well as with French,
Italian, and Spanish. The author of "Piozziana" says: "She not only
read and wrote Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but had for sixty years
constantly and ardently studied the Scriptures and the works of
commentators in the original languages." She did not know Greek, and
he probably over-estimated her other acquirements, which Boswell
certainly underestimates when he speaks slightingly of them on the
strength of Johnson's having said: "It is a great mistake to suppose
that she is above him (Thrale) in literary attainments. She is more
flippant, but he has ten times her learning: he is a regular scholar;
but her learning is that of a school-boy in one of the lower forms."
If this were so, it is strange that Thrale should cut so poor a
figure, should seem little better than a nonentity, whilst every
imaginable topic was under animated discussion at his table; for
Boswell was more ready to report the husband's sayings than the
wife's. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters she says:
"Mr. Thrale was a very merry talking man in 1760; but the distress of
1772, which affected his health, his hopes, and his whole soul,
affected his temper too.
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