But her facility was a fatal gift, as it has proved to most
female aspirants to poetic fame, who rarely stoop to the labour of
the file. Although the first rule laid down by Goldsmith's
connoisseur[1] is far from universally applicable to productions of
the pencil or the pen, all fruitful writers would do well to act upon
it, and what Mrs. Piozzi could do when she took pains is decisively
proved by her "Streatham Portraits."
[Footnote 1: "Upon my asking him how he had acquired the art of a
conoscente so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more
easy. The whole secret consisted in an adherence to two rules: the
one always to observe that the picture might have been better if the
painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of
Pietro Perugino."--_The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx.]
She was wanting in refinement, which very few of the eighteenth
century wits and authors possessed according to more modern notions;
and she abounded in vanity, which, if not necessarily a baneful or
unamiable quality, is a fruitful source of folly and peculiarly
calculated to provoke censure or ridicule. In her, fortunately, its
effects were a good deal modified by the frankness of its avowal and
display, by her habits of self-examination, by her impulsive
generosity of character, and by her readiness to admit the claims and
consult the feelings of others. To seek out and appreciate merit as
she appreciated it, is a high merit in itself.
Her piety was genuine; and old-fashioned politicians, whose watchword
is Church and King, will be delighted with her politics.
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