' 'What for, Ma'am?' cried he. 'A friend to suppress them,' I
answered. And, indeed, this is all I ever said about the business."
Hannah More's opinion of the Letters is thus expressed in her
Memoirs:
"They are such as ought to have been written but ought not to have
been printed: a few of them are very good: sometimes he is moral, and
sometimes he is kind. The imprudence of editors and executors is an
additional reason why men of parts should be afraid to die.[1] Burke
said to me the other day, in allusion to the innumerable lives,
anecdotes, remains, &c. of this great man, 'How many maggots have
crawled out of that great body!'"
[Footnote 1: In reference to the late Lord Campbell's "Lives of the
Lord Chancellors," it was remarked, that, as regards persons who had
attained the dignity, the threatened continuation of the work had
added a new pang to death. I am assured by the Ex-Chancellor to whom
I attributed this joke, that it was made by Sir Charles Wetherell at
a dinner at Lincoln's-Inn.]
Miss Seward writes to Mrs. Knowles, April, 1788:
"And now what say you to the last publication of your sister wit,
Mrs. Piozzi? It is well that she has had the good nature to extract
almost all the corrosive particles from the old growler's letters. By
means of her benevolent chemistry, these effusions of that expansive
but gloomy spirit taste more oily and sweet than one could have
imagined possible."
The letters contained two or three passages relating to Baretti,
which exasperated him to the highest pitch.
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