"She was short, and, though well-proportioned, broad, and deep-chested. Her hands were muscular and almost coarse, but her writing was, even in her eightieth year, exquisitely beautiful; and one day, while conversing with her on the subject of education, she observed that 'All misses now-a-days write so like each other, that it is provoking;' adding, 'I love to see individuality of character, and abhor sameness, especially in what is feeble and flimsy.' Then spreading her hand, she said, 'I believe I owe what yon are pleased to call my good writing to the shape of this hand, for my uncle. Sir Robert Cotton, thought it too manly to be employed in writing like a boarding-school girl; and so I came by my vigorous, black manuscript.'"
"Mrs. Piozzi's nature was one of kindness," observes her friend; "she derived pleasure from endeavouring to please; and if she perceived a moderate good quality in another, she generally magnified it into an excellence; whilst she appeared blind to faults and foibles which could not have escaped the scrutiny of one possessing only half her penetration. But, as I have said, her disposition was friendly. It was so; and to such an extent, that during several years of familiar acquaintance with her, although I can recite many instances, I might say hundreds, of her having spoken of the characters of others, I never heard one word of vituperation from her lips, of any person who was the subject of discussion, except once when Baretti's name was mentioned. Of him, she said that he was a bad man; but on my hinting a wish for particulars, after so heavy a charge, she seemed unwilling to explain herself, and spoke of him no more."
She preserved, unimpaired to the last, her strength and her faculties of body and mind. When past eighty, she would describe minute features in a distant landscape, or touches in a painting, which even short-sighted young persons failed to discover till pointed out to them.
When her friends were fearful of her over-exciting herself, she would say, "This sort of thing is greatly in the mind, and I am almost tempted to say the same of growing old at all, especially as it regards those of the usual concomitants of age, viz., laziness, defective sight, and ill-temper: sluggishness of soul and acrimony of disposition, conmionly begin before the encroachments of infirmity; they creep upon us insidiously, and it is the business of a rational being to watch these beginnings, and counteract them."
On the 27th. of January, 1820, Mrs. Piozzi gave a sumptuous entertainment at the Town Assembly Rooms, Bath, to between seven and eight hundred friends, whom, assisted by Sir John and Lady Salusbury, she received with a degree of ease, cheerfulness, and polite hospitality, peculiarly her own. This filte, given upon the completion of her eightieth year, was opened by herself in person, dancing with Sir John Salusbury, with extraordinary elasticity and dignity, and she subsequently presided at a sumptuous banquet, supported by a British Admiral of the highest rank on each side, "with her usual gracious and queen-like deportment."
Mrs. Piozzi died May 2nd., 1821, aged eighty-one years. Her last words were, "I die in the trust and in the fear of God," Her remains were conveyed to North Wales, and interred in the burial-place of the Salusbury family. The following are her published works:—"Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's Life;" "Travels," two volumes; "Retrospection, or Review of the Most Striking and Important Event
