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A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen
A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen Author:Robert Williams Subtitle: From the Earliest Times to the Present, and Including Every Name Connected With the Ancient History of Wales ... General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1852 Original Publisher: William Rees Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missin... more »g text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PIOZZI, (hesther Lynch,) was the daughter and heiress of John Salusbury, Esq. of Bachegraig, near Denbigh, and was born at Bodvel, in Caernarvonshire, in 1739. Being a lady of lively talents, improved by education, as well as beauty, she early acquired distinction in the London world of fashion, which ended in her marriage, in 1763, to Mr. H. Thrale, an opulent brewer in Southwark, and then one of the members for that borough. About two years after her marriage, her acquaintance with Dr. Johnson commenced, and the way it was carried on for so many years to their mutual satisfaction, will ever give her a distinguished position in the annals of literature. When Mr. Thrale died in 1781, his widow retired with her four daughters to Bath, and there, having met with an Italian music-master of the name of Gabriel Piozzi, she fell in love with, and married him in 1784. That circumstance, from which her old friend earnestly endeavoured to dissuade her, produced a complete rupture between them a short tune before Dr. Johnson's death. This nevertheless did not prevent Mrs. Piozzi from publishing in 1786, an 8vo. volume of gossip, entitled "Anecdotes of Dr. Samuel Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life." Many things in this publication gave great offence to Boswcll and Johnson's other friends, who professed to regard it, as having been prompted mainly by feminine spite and revenge; but although they might not be far wrong in this conclusion, there wa...« less