1769.

intimacy. It takes but the touch of nature to please highest Et. 41. and lowest alike; and whether he thanked Lord Clare or the manager of Ranelagh, answered an invitation to the charming Miss Hornecks, or supplied author or actor with an epilogue,-the same exquisite tact, the same natural art, the same finished beauty of humour and refinement, recommended themselves to all.

The Miss Hornecks, girls of nineteen and seventeen, were acquaintances made during this year; and they soon ripened into friends. They were the daughters of Mrs. Horneck, Captain Kane Horneck's widow; whose Devonshire family connected her with Reynolds, and so introduced her to Goldsmith. Her only son Charles, the "Captain in Lace" as they now fondly called him, had entered the Guards in the preceding year, and seems to have been as cordial and good-natured, as her daughters were handsome and young. The eldest, Catherine," Little Comedy" as she was called, was already engaged to Henry William Bunbury (second son of a baronet of old family in Suffolk, whose elder son Charles had lately succeeded to the title), who is still remembered as "Geoffrey Gambado," and one of the cleverest amateur artists and social caricaturists of his day. The youngest, Mary, had no declared lover till a year after Goldsmith's death, nor was married till three years after that engagement to Colonel Gwyn; but already she had the loving nickname of the "Jessamy Bride," and exerted strange fascination over Goldsmith. Heaven knows what impossible dreams may at times have visited the awkward, unattractive man of letters! * But, whether at any time aspiring to other

This hint was first thrown out by me; but Mr. Washington Irving, who has done me the honour to copy it and many other things from the first edition of this biography, goes somewhat too far in accepting the suggestion as if it were an ascertained fact, and proceeding to instal the "Jessamy Bride" in all the honours

regard than his genius and simplicity might claim, at least for these the sisters heartily liked him; and perhaps the happiest hours of the later years of his life were passed in their society. Burke, who was their guardian, tenderly remembered in his premature old age the delight they had given him from their childhood; * their social as well as personal charms are uniformly spoken of by all; and when Hazlitt met the younger sister in Northcote's painting-room some twenty-five years ago (she survived Little Comedy upwards of forty years, and died little more than twelve years since), she was still talking of her favourite Doctor Goldsmith, with recollection and affection unabated by age. Still, too, she was beautiful, beautiful even in years. The Graces had

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of a complete conquest of Goldsmith, which, as he tells his readers (Life of Goldsmith, 370), "has hung a poetical wreath above her grave." In Mr. Irving's little book, the "Jessamy Bride" becomes the very centre of all Goldsmith's hopes and thoughts in latter life. If there is a dance, the Jessamy Bride must of course be his "partner" (308); if there is an expensive suit of clothes, it is to "win "favour in the eyes of the Jessamy Bride" (228); if there is an additional extravagance of wardrobe, "the bright eyes of the Jessamy Bride" are made responsible for it (255); if he cannot resist an invitation of Mr. Bunbury's, it is especially as the Jessamy Bride would of course be among the guests" (275); if a blue velvet suit" makes sudden appearance in Mr. Filby's bills, "again we "hold the Jessamy Bride responsible for this splendour of wardrobe" (304); as death approaches, "the Jessamy Bride has beamed her last smiles upon the poor "poet" (360); and when all is over, a simple request of Mrs. Bunbury and her sister for a memorial of their pleasant friend, hereafter to be recorded, is turned into "the enthusiasm" of " one mourner "for his memory-"the Jessamy "Bride's "-which "might have soothed the bitterness of death" (369). This is running down a suggestion indeed!—and, with whatever success for romance-loving readers, less pleasantly, it must be admitted, for sober seekers after truth.

From Beaconsfield on the 1st of Feb. 1792, we thus find Burke writing to Mrs. Gwyn: “Your approbation of anything I do is a satisfaction I feel very "sensibly. From your childhood I have admired your heart, and had a very good "opinion of your judgment; and wished you all manner of happiness with an "affection which might without violence be called paternal." In the same letter he speaks of the "very declining way" of "our old friend, that great ornament "of his country and delight of society, Sir Joshua Reynolds." Hanbury Correspondence, 400-1. Burke (with his cousin William) was trustee under the will of Capt. Kane Horneck, the father of the young ladies, and seems to have become involved in disputes respecting the administration of the trust.

1769.

Et. 41.

1769.

Æt. 41.

triumphed over Time. "I could almost fancy the shade of "Goldsmith in the room," says Hazlitt, "looking round "with complacency.

Soon had the acquaintance become a friendship. To a dinner-party given this year by their mother's friend and Reynolds's physician, Doctor (afterwards Sir George) Baker, the sisters appear at the last moment to have taken on themselves to write a joint invitation to Goldsmith, to which he replied with some score of humorous couplets, at the top of which was scrawled, "This is a poem! This is a copy of 66 verses!"

Had your senses been right,
You'd have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,

I put off being shaved;
For I could not make bold,
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,

Or to put on my duds;
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 two,

Little Comedy's face,

And the Captain in Lace-
(By the bye you may tell him,
I have something to sell him;

Of use I insist,

When he comes to enlist.

Your worships must know

That a few days ago,

Conversations of Northcote, 95. Mrs. Gwyn died in 1840, within a few days

of the completion of her 88th year.

An order went out,

For the foot guards so stout

To wear tails in high taste,
Twelve inches at least:
Now I've got him a scale
To measure each tail,
To lengthen a short tail,
And a long one to curtail.)—
Yet how can I when vext,
Thus stray from my text?
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 be frolick like him;

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

*

Does not this life-like humour re-furnish the hospitable table, re-animate the pleasant circle around it, and set us down again with Reynolds and his Angelica? The most celebrated of the woman painters had found no jealousy in the leading artist of England. His was the first portrait that made Angelica Kauffman famous here; to him she owed her introduction to the Conways and Stanhopes; he befriended her in the misery of her first thoughtless marriage, now not many months dissolved, though himself (it was

*Miscellaneous Works, iv. 132-3. The Advertiser's compliment ran thus :
"While fair Angelica, with matchless grace,

"Paints Conway's lovely 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 excell'd by none,
"And thou art rivall'd by thyself alone."

1769. Æt. 41.

1769.

said) not unmoved by tenderer thoughts than of friendship; Et. 41. and he placed her in the list of the members of the new Academy. It was little wonder that their names should have passed together into print, and become a theme for the poet's corner of the Advertiser.

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In the same number of that journal appeared an advertisement of the Roman History, which had been first announced in the preceding August, and was issued in the May of the present year. It was in two octavo volumes of five hundred pages each, was described as for the use of schools and colleges, and obtained at once a very large sale. What Goldsmith has given as his reason for writing it, that other histories of the period were either too voluminous for common use, or too 'meanly written to please," will suffice also to explain its success. It was a compact and not a big book, and it was charmingly written. The critics received it well; and one of them had the grace to regret that "the author of one of the "best poems that has appeared since those of Mr. Pope, "should not apply wholly to works of imagination." Johnson thought, on the other hand, that the writer's time had been occupied worthily; and when, a year or two after this, in a dinner conversation at Topham Beauclerc's, he was putting Goldsmith in the first class, not only as poet and comic writer but also as historian, and Boswell exploded a protest in behalf of the Scotch writers of history, Johnson more decisively roared out his preference for his friend over "the verbiage of Robertson and the foppery of Dalrymple.” *

BOSWELL: "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History 46 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 a romance, and try it