by resentment for his conduct at this and a later period.  They have an apologetic character which shows itself in a statement as to the origin of the quarrel, curiously different from the contemporary accounts in the diary.  She says substantially, and the whole book is written so as to give probability to the assertion, that Johnson’s bearishness and demands upon her indulgence had become intolerable, when he was no longer under restraint from her husband’s presence.  She therefore “took advantage” of her lost lawsuit and other troubles to leave London, and thus escape from his domestic tyranny.  He no longer, as she adds, suffered from anything but “old age and general infirmity” (a tolerably wide exception!), and did not require her nursing.  She therefore withdrew from the yoke to which she had contentedly submitted during her husband’s life, but which was intolerable when her “coadjutor was no more.”

Johnson’s society was, we may easily believe, very trying to a widow in such a position; and it seems to be true that Thrale was better able than Mrs. Thrale to restrain his oddities, little as the lady shrunk at times from reasonable plain-speaking.  But the later account involves something more than a bare suppression of the truth.  The excuse about his health is, perhaps, the worst part of her case, because obviously insincere.  Nobody could be more fully aware than Mrs. Thrale that Johnson’s infirmities were rapidly gathering, and that another winter or two must in all probability be fatal to him.  She knew, therefore, that he was never more in want of the care which, as she seems to imply, had saved him from the specific tendency to something like madness.  She knew, in fact, that she was throwing him upon the care of his other friends, zealous and affectionate enough, it is true, but yet unable to supply him with the domestic comforts of Streatham.  She clearly felt that this was a real injury, inevitable it might be under the circumstances, but certainly not to be extenuated by the paltry evasion as to his improved health.  So far from Johnson’s health being now established, she had not dared to speak until his temporary recovery from a dangerous illness, which had provoked her at the time to the strongest expressions of anxious regret.  She had (according to the diary) regarded a possible breaking of the yoke in the early part of 1782 as a terrible evil, which would “more than ruin her.”  Even when resolved to leave Streatham, her one great difficulty is the dread of parting with Johnson, and the pecuniary troubles are the solid and conclusive reason.  In the later account the money question is the mere pretext; the desire to leave Johnson the true motive; and the long-cherished desire to see Italy with Piozzi is judiciously dropped out of notice altogether.