[Footnote 2:  Mme. Piozzi, the Mrs. Thrale of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.”  Mr. Thrale was a brewer, the founder of the great firm now known as Barclay and Perkins.  She was many years younger than he; and, after his death, she married Signor Piozzi, a professional musician of eminence.  Johnson, who had been an habitual guest of her husband and her at their villa at Streatham, set the fashion of condemning this second marriage as a disgraceful mesalliance; but it is not very easy to see in what respect it was so.  In social position she had certainly had the advantage over Mr. Thrale, being the daughter of a Carnarvonshire baronet of ancient family.  But a first-rate musician was surely the equal of a brewer.  After Johnson’s death she published a volume of her reminiscences of him, which may be allowed to have been worthy neither of him nor of her, and which was ridiculed by Peter Pindar in “A Town Eclogue,” in which the rivals Bozzy and Piozzi, on Virgil’s principle—­Alternis dicetis, amant alterna Camaenae—­relate in turn anecdotes of Johnson’s way of life, his witty sayings, &c., &c.  Sir John Hawkins, as judge of the contest, gives neither a prize; tells the lady, “Sam’s Life, dear ma’am, will only damn your own;” calls the gentleman “a chattering magpie;” and—­

    Then to their pens and paper rush’d the twain,
    To kill the mangled RAMBLER o’er again.]

[Footnote 3:  In 1785 the wits of Brooks’s, being much disappointed at the result of the political conflict of 1784, gave some vent to their spleen in verse.  For their subject they selected an imaginary epic, of which they gave fictitious extracts, and for their hero they took the Member for Devonshire, John Rolle, invoking him—­

    Illustrious Rolle! oh may thy honoured name
    Roll down distinguished on the rolls of fame.

It is a little odd that they abstained from similar puns on Pitt and pit; but their indignation was chiefly directed at his youth as ill-suited to his powers—­

    A sight to make surrounding nations stare,
    A kingdom trusted to a schoolboy’s care.

The chief contributors were Burke’s friend, Dr. Lawrence; Sheridan’s brother-in-law, Tickell; General Fitzpatrick, Mr. G. Ellis, Lord G. Townshend, and General Burgoyne.]

[Footnote 4:  “The Dispensary” was a poem by a physician named Garth, to advocate the cause of the physicians in a quarrel between them and the apothecaries about the price to be charged for medicines.  Johnson, in his “Lives of the Poets,” allows it the credit of smooth and free versification, but denies it that of elegance.  “No passage falls below mediocrity, and few rise above it.”  It may be doubted whether Byron himself could have risen high “above it” on subjects so unpoetical as pills and black-doses.]

News I have none, wet or dry, to send you:  politics are stagnated, and pleasure is not come to town.  You may be sure I am glad that Caesar is baffled; I neither honour nor esteem him.  If he is preferring his nephew to his brother, it is using the latter as ill as the rest of the world.