Barnard (Bishop of Killaloe,
better known as Dean of Derry), Hinchcliffe (Bishop of Peterborough),
Mrs. Lambert, the Staffords, Lord Huntingdon, Lady Betty Cobb and her
daughter Mrs. Gould, Lord Dudley, Lord Cowper, Lord Pembroke, Marquis
Araciel, Count Marteningo, Count Meltze, Mrs. Drummond Smith, Mr.
Chappelow, Mrs. Hobart, Miss Nicholson, Mrs. Locke, Lord Deerhurst.
Resentment for her imputed unkindness to Johnson might have been
expected to last longest at his birthplace. But Miss Seward writes
from Lichfield, October 6th, 1787:
"Mrs. Piozzi completely answers your description: her conversation is
indeed that bright wine of the intellects which has no lees.... I
shall always feel indebted to him (Mr. Perkins) for eight or nine
hours of Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi's society. They passed one evening here,
and I the next with them at their inn."
Again to Miss Helen Williams, Lichfield, December, 25th, 1787:
"Yes, it is very true, on the evening he (Colonel Barry) mentioned to
you, when Mrs. Piozzi honoured this roof, his conversation greatly
contributed to its Attic spirit. Till that day I had never conversed
with her. There has been no exaggeration, there could be none, in the
description given you of Mrs. Piozzi's talents for conversation; at
least in the powers of classic allusion and brilliant wit."
Mrs. Piozzi's next publication was "Letters To and From the late
Samuel Johnson, LL.D., &c." In the Preface she speaks of the
"Anecdotes" having been received with a degree of approbation she
hardly dared to hope, and exclaims, "May these Letters in some
measure pay my debt of gratitude! they will not surely be the
_first_, the _only_ thing written by Johnson, with which our nation
has not been pleased.
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