during which a crisis was taking place, without his knowledge, in her
relations to Piozzi. After vehement altercations with her daughters,
whom she criticizes with great bitterness for their utter want of heart,
she resolved to break with Piozzi for at least a time. Her plan was to
go to Bath, and there to retrench her expenses, in the hopes of being
able to recall her lover at some future period. Meanwhile he left her
and returned to Italy. After another winter in London, during which
Johnson was still a frequent inmate of her house, she went to Bath with
her daughters in April, 1783. A melancholy period followed for both the
friends. Mrs. Thrale lost a younger daughter, and Johnson had a
paralytic stroke in June. Death was sending preliminary warnings. A
correspondence 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