of age; and an only son, Charles, the Captain in Lace, as his sisters playfully and somewhat proudly called him, he having lately entered the Guards. The daughters are described as uncommonly beautiful, intelligent, sprightly, and agreeable. Catharine, the eldest, went among her friends by the name of Little Comedy, indicative, very probably, of her disposition. She was engaged to Henry William Bunbury, second son of a Suffolk baronet. The hand and heart of her sister Mary were yet unengaged, although she bore the by-name among her friends of the Jessamy Bride. This family was prepared, by 10 their intimacy with Reynolds and his sister, to appreciate the merits of Goldsmith. The poet had always been a chosen friend of the eminent painter; and Miss Reynolds, as we have shown, ever since she had heard his poem of The Traveller read aloud, had ceased to consider him ugly. The Hornecks were 15 equally capable of forgetting his person in admiring his works. On becoming acquainted with him, too, they were delighted with his guileless simplicity, his buoyant good-nature, and his innate benevolence; and an enduring intimacy soon sprang up between them. For once poor Goldsmith had met with 20 polite society, with which he was perfectly at home, and by which he was fully appreciated; for once he had met with lovely women, to whom his ugly features were not repulsive. A proof of the easy and playful terms in which he was with them, remains in a whimsical epistle in verse, of which the 25 following was the occasion. A dinner was to be given to their family by a Dr. Baker, a friend of their mother's, at which Reynolds and Angelica Kauffman° were to be present. young ladies were eager to have Goldsmith of the party, and their intimacy with Dr. Baker allowing them to take the 30 liberty, they wrote a joint invitation to the poet at the last moment. It came too late, and drew from him the following reply; on the top of which was scrawled, "This is a poem! This is a copy of verses!"

"Your mandate I got,

You may all go to pot;
Had your senses been right,
You'd have sent before night:
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt,

And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffman beside,
And the Jessamy Bride,
With the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses too,

The

35

5

Little Comedy's face,

And the Captain in Lace, —
Tell each other to rue
Your Devonshire crew,

For sending so late

To one of my state.
But 'tis Reynolds's way
From wisdom to stray,
And Angelica's whim
To befrolic like him;

But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser,
When both have been spoil'd in to-day's Advertiser ? "1

It has been intimated that the intimacy of poor Goldsmith with the Miss Hornecks, which began in so sprightly a vein, 10 gradually assumed something of a more tender nature, and that he was not insensible to the fascinations of the younger sister. This may account for some of the phenomena which about this time appeared in his wardrobe and toilet. During the first year of his acquaintance with these lovely girls, the tell-tale 15 book of his tailor, Mr. William Filby, displays entries of four or five full suits, besides separate articles of dress. Among the items we find a green half-trimmed frock and breeches, lined with silk; a queen's-blue dress suit; a half-dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin; a pair of silk stocking-breeches, and 20 another pair of a bloom-color. Alas! poor Goldsmith! how much of this silken finery was dictated, not by vanity, but humble consciousness of thy defects; how much of it was to atone for the uncouthness of thy person, and to win favor in the eyes of the Jessamy Bride!

1 The following lines had appeared in that day's Advertiser, on the portrait of Sir Joshua by Angelica Kauffman:

"While fair Angelica, with matchless grace,

Paints Conway's burly form and Stanhope's face;
Our hearts to beauty willing homage pay,
We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away.
But when the likeness she hath done for thee,
O Reynolds! with astonishment we see,
Forced to submit, with all our pride we own,
Such strength, such harmony excelled by none,
And thou art rivalled by thyself alone."

CHAPTER XXVI

Goldsmith in the Temple. - Judge Day and Grattan. - Labor and Dissipation.- Publication of the Roman History; Opinions of it. History of Animated Nature. - Temple Rookery. - Anecdotes of a Spider.

In the winter of 1768-69 Goldsmith occupied himself at his quarters in the Temple, slowly "building up "his Roman History. We have pleasant views of him in this learned and halfcloistered retreat of wits and lawyers and legal students, in the reminiscences of Judge Day of the Irish Bench, who in his ad-5 vanced age delighted to recall the days of his youth, when he was a templar, and to speak of the kindness with which he and his fellow-student, Grattan, were treated by the poet. "I was just arrived from college," said he, "full freighted with academic gleanings, and our author did not disdain to receive 10 from me some opinions and hints towards his Greek and Roman histories. Being then a young man, I felt much flattered by the notice of so celebrated a person. He took great delight in the conversation of Grattan, whose brilliancy in the morning of life furnished full earnest of the unrivalled splendor which awaited 15 his meridian; and finding us dwelling together in Essex Court, near himself, where he frequently visited my immortal friend, his warm heart became naturally prepossessed towards the associate of one whom he so much admired."

The Judge goes on, in his reminiscences, to give a picture of 20 Goldsmith's social habits, similar in style to those already furnished. He frequented much the Grecian Coffee-House, then the favorite resort of the Irish and Lancashire Templars. He delighted in collecting his friends around him at evening parties at his chambers, where he entertained them with a cordial and 25 unostentatious hospitality. "Occasionally," adds the Judge, "he amused them with his flute, or with whist, neither of which he played well, particularly the latter, but, on losing his money, he never lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he would fling his cards upon the floor and exclaim, Byefore George, 30 I ought forever to renounce thee, fickle, faithless fortune.'

The Judge was aware, at the time, that all the learned labor of poor Goldsmith upon his Roman History was mere hackwork to recruit his exhausted finances. 66 His purse replenished," adds he, "by labors of this kind, the season of relaxation 5 and pleasure took its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and other scenes of gayety and amusement, Whenever his funds were dissipated, and they fled more rapidly from being the dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who practised upon his benevolence, he returned to his liter10 ary labors, and shut himself up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and fresh supplies for himself."

How completely had the young student discerned the characteristics of poor, genial, generous, drudging, holiday-loving Goldsmith; toiling, that he might play; earning his bread by 15 the sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the window.

The Roman History was published in the middle of May, in two volumes of five hundred pages each. It was brought out without parade or pretension, and was announced as for the use of schools and colleges; but, though a work written for bread, 20 not fame, such is its ease, perspicuity, good sense, and the delightful simplicity of its style, that it was well received by the critics, commanded a prompt and extensive sale, and has ever since remained in the hands of young and old.

Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or 25 dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy of the author and the work in a conversation with Boswell, to the great astonishment of the latter. "Whether we take Goldsmith," said he, "as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. -"An historian! My 30 dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age." Johnson. "Why, who are before him?” Boswell. "Hume. Robertson- Lord Lyttelton." Johnson (his antipathy against the Scotch beginning to rise).—“I have not read Hume; but 35 doubtless Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. -"Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose history we find such penetration, such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are

employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces, in a history-piece; he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is 5 not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his History. Now Robertson might have put twice as much in his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool; the wool takes up more room than the 10 gold. No, sir, I always thought Robertson would be crushed with his own weight - would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know; Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's 15 plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils, Read over your compositions, and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out!' Goldsmith's abridgment is better than that of Lucius 20 Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that, if you compare him with Vertot° in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying everything he has to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and 25 will make it as entertaining as a Persian tale."

The Natural History to which Johnson alluded was the History of Animated Nature, which Goldsmith commenced in 1769, under an engagement with Griffin, the bookseller, to complete it as soon as possible in eight volumes, each containing 30 upwards of four hundred pages, in pica; a hundred guineas to be paid to the author on the delivery of each volume in manuscript.

He was induced to engage in this work by the urgent solicitations of the booksellers, who had been struck by the sterling merits and captivating style of an introduction which he wrote to 35 Brookes's Natural History. It was Goldsmith's intention originally to make a translation of Pliny, with a popular commentary; but the appearance of Buffon's work induced him to change his plan, and make use of that author for a guide and model.