There having listened carefully for
half-an-hour, 'Ah, but dear Sir,' exclaimed the admiring parasite,
'if I am to make all this eloquent ado about Athens and Rome, where
shall we find place, do you think, for Richmond, or Aix La
Chapelle?'"
Writing from Bath, December 15th, 1802, she says:
"The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for July 1801 contained my answer to such
critics as confined themselves to faults I could have helped
committing--had they been faults. Those who merely told disagreeable
truths concerning my person, or dress, or age, or such stuff,
expected, of course, no reply. There are innumerable press errors in
the book, from my being obliged to print on new year's day--during an
insurrection of the printers. These the 'Critical Review' laid hold
of with an acuteness sharpened by malignity."
Moore, who was staying at Bowood, sets down in his diary for April,
1823: "Lord L. in the evening, quoted a ridiculous passage from the
Preface to Mrs. Piozzi's 'Retrospections,' in which, anticipating the
ultimate perfection of the human race, she says she does not despair
of the time arriving when 'Vice will take refuge in the arms of
impossibility.' Mentioned also an ode of hers to Posterity,
beginning, 'Posterity, gregarious dame,' the only meaning of which
must be, a lady _chez qui_ numbers assemble--a lady at _home_."[1]
[Footnote 1: Memoirs, &c., vol. iv. p. 38.]
There is no such passage in the Preface to "Retrospection," and the
ode is her "Ode to Society," who is not improperly addressed as
"gregarious.
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