However, if you could wade through two octavos of Dame
Piozzi's _though's_ and _so's_ and _I trows_, and cannot listen to
seven volumes of Scheherezade's narratives, I will sue for a divorce
in foro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor."
A single couplet of Gifford's was more damaging than all Walpole's
petulance:
"See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam,
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home."[1]
[Footnote 1: "She, one evening, asked me abruptly if I did not
remember the scurrilous lines in which she had been depicted by
Gifford in his 'Baviad and Moeviad.' And, not waiting for my answer,
for I was indeed too much embarrassed to give one quickly, she
recited the verses in question, and added, 'how do you think
"Thrale's grey widow" revenged herself? I contrived to get myself
invited to meet him at supper at a friend's house, (I think she said
in Pall Mall), soon after the publication of his poem, sate opposite
to him, saw that he was "perplexed in the extreme;" and smiling,
proposed a glass of wine as a libation to our future good fellowship.
Gifford was sufficiently a man of the world to understand me, and
nothing could be more courteous and entertaining than he was while we
remained together.'"--_Piozziana_.]
This condemnatory verse is every way unjust. The nothings, or
somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and
they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The
Preface commences thus:
"I was made to observe at Rome some vestiges of an ancient custom
very proper in those days.
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