INTRODUCTION.

IN 1785, a few English of both sexes,* whom
chance had jumbled together at Florence, took a
fancy to while away their time in scribbling high-
flown panegyrics on themselves, and complimentary
"canzonĥettas" on two or three Italians,† who un-

Among whom I find the names of Mrs. Piozzi,
Mr. Greathead, Mr. Merry, Mr. Parsons, &c.

+ Mrs. Piozzi has since published a work on what
she is pleased to call BRITISH SYNONIMES; the bet-
ter, I suppose, to enable these gentlemen to compre-
hend her multifarious erudition.

Though "no one better knows his own house" than I the vanity of this woman; yet the idea of her undertaking such a work had never entered my head;

a 2

Satyr, when carried too far, is apt to love sight of the strictures of the witic & the frowns of the censor exgender spind of.

derstood too little of the language in which they
were written, to be disgusted with them. In this
there was not much harm; nor, indeed, much
good: but, as folly is progressive, they soon wrought
themselves into an opinion that they really deserved
the fine things which were mutually said and sung
of each other.

and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it an-
nounced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of
success, required a rare combination of talents, among
the least of which may be numbered neatness of style,
acuteness of perception, and a more than common
accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought
to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for
its vulgarity, an utter incapability of defining a single
term in the language, and just as much Latin from a
child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance she
so anxiously labours to conceal. "If such a one be fit
"to write on SYNONIMES, speak." Pignotti himself
laughs in his sleeve; and his countrymen, long since
undeceived, prize the lady's talents at their true
worth,

Et centum Tales* curto centusse licentur.

* Quere Thrales?

: nity & of abuse, by

PRINTER'S DEVIL.

with

reading haste & exiticising with Kriju. : dice & Femerity. Buch oatyrde: the more than exalts

важен тол

Thus persuaded, they were unwilling their inimitable productions should be confined to the little circle that produced them; they therefore transmitted them hither; and, as their friends were enjoined not to shew them, they were first handed about the town with great assiduity, and then sent to the press.

A short time before the period we speak of, a knot of fantastic coxcombs had set up a daily paper called the WORLD. It was perfectly unintelligible, and therefore much read: it was equally lavish of praise and abuse, (praise of what appeared in its own columns, and abuse of every thing that ap-. peared elsewhere,) and as its conductors were at once ignorant and conceited, they took upon them to direct the taste of the town, by prefixing a

* In this paper were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified, and audacious attacks on all private character; which the town first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated for their absurdity; and now-that other papers equally wicked, and more intelligible, have ventured to imitate it,-will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty.

writer, disguste rather than pleased the reader, provokes rather than re : forms the object of its attack. This note is partial, illiberal 40 ::ttemanlike...

short panegyric to every trifle which came before them.

It is scarcely necessary to observe, that Yendas, and Laura Marias, and Tony Pasquins, have long claimed a prescriptive right to infest most periodical publications: but as the Editors of them never pretended to criticise their harmless productions, they were merely read, laughed at, and forgotten. A paper, therefore, that introduced their trash with hyperbolical encomiums, and called on the town to admire it, was an acquisition of the utmost importance to these poor people, and naturally became the grand depository of their lucubrations.

At this auspicious period the first cargo of poetry arrived from Florence, and was given to the public through the medium of this favoured paper. There was a specious brilliancy in these exotics, which dazzled the native grubs, who had scarce ever ventured beyond a sheep, and a crook, and a rose-tree grove, with an ostentatious display of "blue hills,” and "crashing torrents," and "petrifying suns !"*

* Here Mr. Parsons is pleased to advance his far-

From admiration to imitation is but a step. Honest Yenda tried his hand at a descriptive ode, and succeeded beyond his hopes; Anna Matilda followed; in a word,

contagio labem

Hanc dedit in plures, sicut grex totus in agris
Unius scabie cadit, et porrigine porci.

thing rush-light. "Crashing torrents and petrifying "suns are extremely ridiculous"— habes confitentem! "but they are not to be found in the Florence Mis"cellany." Who said they were? But à propos of the Florence Miscellany. Mr. Parsons says I obtained a copy of it by a breach of confidence; and seems to fancy, good man! that I derived some prodigious advantage from it: yet I had written both the poems, and all the notes save one, before I knew there was such a treasure in existence. He might have seen, if passion had not rendered him as blind as a millhorse, that I constantly allude to poems published separately in the periodical sheets of the day, and afterwards collected with great parade by Bell and others. I never looked into the Florence Miscellany but once; and the only use I then made of it, was to extract a sounding passage from the odes of that deep-mouthed Theban, Bertie Greathead, Esq.