was kept up, which implies that the old terms were not ostensibly broken.  Mrs. Thrale speaks tartly more than once; and Johnson’s letters go into medical details with his customary plainness of speech, and he occasionally indulges in laments over the supposed change in her feelings.  The gloom is thickening, and the old playful gallantry has died out.  The old man evidently felt himself deserted, and suffered from the breaking-up of the asylum he had loved so well.  The final catastrophe came in 1784, less than six months before Johnson’s death.

After much suffering in mind and body, Mrs. Thrale had at last induced her daughters to consent to her marriage with Piozzi.  She sent for him at once, and they were married in June, 1784.  A painful correspondence followed.  Mrs. Thrale announced her marriage in a friendly letter to Johnson, excusing her previous silence on the ground that discussion could only have caused them pain.  The revelation, though Johnson could not have been quite unprepared, produced one of his bursts of fury.  “Madam, if I interpret your letter rightly,” wrote the old man, “you are ignominiously married.  If it is yet undone, let us once more talk together.  If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive your wickedness!  If you have forfeited your fame and your country, may your folly do no further mischief!  If the last act is yet to do, I, who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you—­I, who long thought you the first of womankind—­entreat that before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you!  I was, I once was, madam, most truly yours, Sam.  Johnson.”

Mrs. Thrale replied with spirit and dignity to this cry of blind indignation, speaking of her husband with becoming pride, and resenting the unfortunate phrase about her loss of “fame.”  She ended by declining further intercourse till Johnson could change his opinion of Piozzi.  Johnson admitted in his reply that he had no right to resent her conduct; expressed his gratitude for the kindness which had “soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched,” and implored her ("superfluously,” as she says) to induce Piozzi to settle in England.  He then took leave of her with an expression of sad forebodings.  Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs. Piozzi, says that she replied affectionately; but the letter is missing.  The friendship was broken off, and during the brief remainder of Johnson’s life, the Piozzis were absent from England.

Of her there is little more to be said.  After passing some time in Italy, where she became a light of that wretched little Della Cruscan society of which some faint memory is preserved by Gifford’s ridicule, now pretty nearly forgotten with its objects, she returned with her husband to England.  Her anecdotes of Johnson, published soon after his death, had a success which, in spite of much ridicule, encouraged her to some further literary efforts of a sprightly but ephemeral kind.  She lived happily with Piozzi, and never