'If such a one be fit to write
on Synonimes, speak.' Pignotti himself laughs in his sleeve; and his
countrymen, long since undeceived, prize the lady's talents at their
true worth,
"Et centum Tales[1] curto centusse licentur."
[Footnote 1: Quere Thrales?--_Printer's Devil_."]
Other critics have been more lenient or more just. Enough
philosophical knowledge and acuteness were discovered in the work to
originate a rumour that she had retained some of the great
lexicographer's manuscripts, or derived a posthumous advantage, in
some shape, from her former intimacy with him. In "Thraliana,"
Denbigh, 2nd January, 1795, she writes:
"My 'Synonimes' have been reviewed at last. The critics are all civil
for aught I see, and nearly just, except when they say that Johnson
left some fragments of a work upon Synonymy: of which God knows I
never heard till now one syllable; never had he and I, in all the
time we lived together, any conversation upon the subject."
Even Walpole admits that it has some marked and peculiar merits,
although its value consists rather in the illustrative matter, than
in the definitions and etymologies. Thus, in distinguishing between
_lavish_, _profuse_ and _prodigal_, she relates:
"Two gentlemen were walking leisurely up the Hay-Market some time in
the year 1749, lamenting the fate of the famous Cuzzona, an actress
who some time before had been in high vogue, but was then as they
heard in a very pitiable situation. 'Let us go and visit her,' said
one of them, 'she lives but over the way.
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