About fourteen years after Johnson's first acquaintance with the Thrales--
when Johnson was seventy years old and Mrs. Thrale near forty--the little
lady, who had also lost several children, was unhappy in the thought that
she had ceased to be appreciated by her husband. Her husband's temper
became affected by the commercial troubles of 1762, and Mrs. Thrale became
jealous of the regard between him and Sophy Streatfield, a rich widow's
daughter. Under January, 1779, she wrote in her "Thraliana," "Mr. Thrale
has fallen in love, really and seriously, with Sophy Streatfield; but there
is no wonder in that; she is very pretty, very gentle, soft, and
insinuating; hangs about him, dances round him, cries when she parts from
him, squeezes his hand slily, and with her sweet eyes full of tears looks
so fondly in his face--and all for love of me, as she pretends, that I can
hardly sometimes help laughing in her face. A man must not be a MAN but an
IT to resist such artillery." Mrs. Thrale goes on to record conquests made
by this irresistible Sophy in other directions, showing the same temper of
jealousy. Thrale died on the 4th of April, 1781.

Mrs. Thrale had entered in her "Thraliana" under July, 178O, being then at
Brighton, "I have picked up Piozzi here, the great Italian singer. He is
amazingly like my father. He shall teach Hesther." On the 25th of July,
1784, being at Bath, her entry was, "I am returned from church the happy
wife of my lovely, faithful Piozzi. . . . subject of my prayers, object of
my wishes, my sighs, my reverence, my esteem." Her age then was
forty-four, and on the 13th of December in the same year Johnson died. The
newspapers of the day dealt hardly with her. They called her an amorous
widow, and Piozzi a fortune-hunter. Her eldest daughter (afterwards
Viscountess Keith) refused to recognise the new father, and shut herself up
in a house at Brighton with a nurse, Tib, where she lived upon two hundred
a year. Two younger sisters, who were at school, lived afterwards with the