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but it was neither criminal nor disgraceful.  Piozzi was incontestably a respectable man and a constant lover ; but that an Italian musician, who depended upon his talents for his livelihood, should become the husband of the celebrated Mrs. Thrale, and the stepfather of four young ladies of fashion, the daughters of a brewer, and the heiresses to his large fortune,- -there was the rub!  The dislike of Dr. Johnson and his friends to the marriage was, from a worldly point of view, justifiable enough, but it argues ill for their generosity of mind that they should have attached such overwhelming importance to such petty considerations.  Mrs. Piozzi has been blamed for deserting her three elder daughters; but the fact is, it was her daughters who deserted her, and refused to recognise her husband.  Her only fault, if fault it can be called, was in declining to sacrifice the whole happiness of her life to the supposed requirements of their rank in society.  In condemning her friends for their severity and illiberality, we must, however, make an exception in favour of Fanny.  She, like the rest, had been averse to the match, but her cordiality to Mrs. Piozzi remained undiminished; and when, soon after the marriage, their correspondence was discontinued, to be renewed only after the lapse of many years, it was not Fanny, but Mrs. Piozzi, who broke it off, instigated, Fanny always believed, by her husband.

Her separation from Mrs. Thrale was not the only event which brought sorrow to Fanny during the years to which the following section of the Diary relates.  Mr. Crisp, the person dearest to her of all human beings outside her own family, died at Chesington, of an attack of his old malady, the gout, on the 24th of April, 1783, aged seventy-five.  Fanny and Susan were with him at the last, and Fanny’s love was rewarded, her anguish soothed yet deepened, when, almost with his dying breath, her Daddy Crisp called her “the dearest thing to him on earth.”

Towards the end of 1784 another heavy blow fell upon Fanny, in the loss of Dr. Johnson, who died on the 13th of December.  The touching references in the Diary to his last illness form an interesting supplement to Boswell’s narrative.

But the picture of Fanny’s life during these years is not without bright touches.  As such we may reckon the great, and deserved success of her novel, “Cecilia”; the commencement of her acquaintance with two ladies who were hereafter to be numbered among her dearest friends—­the venerable Mrs. Delany, and Mrs. Locke, of Norbury Park, Surrey; and last, not least, the growing intimacy between Edmund Burke and the family of Dr. Burney.-Ed.]

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At Brighton again, the “FAmous Miss Burney.”

Brighthelmstone, Oct. 26.

My journey was incidentless — but the Moment I came into Brighthelmstone I was met by Mrs. Thrale, who had most eagerly been waiting for me a long while, and therefore I dismounted, and walked home with her.  It would be very superfluous to tell you how she received me, for you cannot but know, from her impatient letters, what I had reason to expect of kindness and welcome.