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 nick-name 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 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 years ago (she survived Little Comedy upwards of forty years, and died little more than seven years since!), she was still talking of her favourite Doctor Goldsmith, with recollection and affection unabated by time. Still, too, she was beautiful, beautiful even in years. The Graces had triumphed over age. '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 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 two,

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 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 said) not unmoved by tenderer thoughts than of friendship; 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.

In the same number of that journal was 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 he 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 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 imagina'tion.' 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.' Hume he had never read, because of his infidelity; but Robertson, he protested, might have put twice as much into his book as he had done, whereas Goldsmith had put into his as much as the book would hold. This, he affirmed, was the great art: for the man who tells the world shortly what it wants to know, will,

with his plain full narrative, please again and again; while the more cumbrous writer, still interposing himself before what you wish to know, is crushed with his own weight, and buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith's abridge'ment,' he added, 'is better than that of Lucius Florus or 'Eutropius; and I will venture to say that if you compare 'him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman His'tory, 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 His'tory, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.'

For this Natural History the first agreement dates as early as the close of February in the present year, five years before it was completed and published. It is made between Griffin and Goldsmith: and stipulates that the history is to be in eight volumes, each containing upwards of four hundred pages in pica; that for each, a hundred guineas are to be paid on its delivery in manuscript; that 'Doctor Goldsmith is to set about the work immediately, ' and to finish the whole as soon as he conveniently can;' and that if the work makes less than eight volumes the 'Doctor is to be paid in proportion.' Soon after the agreement the book was begun, but it was worked at in occasional intervals only; for when the first month's sale of the Roman History had established its success, Davies tempted him with an offer of five hundred pounds for a four volume History of England (to be written and com'piled in the space of two years;' but not to be paid for

till delivered, and 'the printer has given his opinion that 'the proper quantity is written '), and this later labour superseded the earlier. There is no reason to believe that any money was advanced on the English History; and the discovery of the specific agreement enables us to test the truth of one of Miss Hawkins's most delicate anecdotes. She says that soon after Goldsmith had contracted with the booksellers for this particular compilation, for which he was to be paid five hundred guineas, he went to Mr. Cadell and told him he was in imminent danger of being arrested; that Cadell immediately called a meeting of the proprietors, and prevailed on them to advance him a considerable part of the sum, which, by the original agreement, he was not entitled to till a twelvemonth after the publication of his work; and that on a day which Mr. Cadell had named for giving the needy author an answer, Goldsmith came and received the money, under pretence of instantly satisfying his creditors; whereupon Cadell, to discover the truth of his pretext, watched whither he went, and after following him to Hyde Park Corner, saw him get into a postchaise, ' in which a woman of the town was waiting for him, with 'whom, it afterwards appeared, he went to Bath to dissipate 'what he had thus fraudulently obtained.' It has been seen that Cadell had nothing to do with the matter; and it may be presumed that the good-natured lady's other facts rest on as slender a foundation.

Nevertheless, it would be idle to deny the charge of dissipation altogether. It is clear that with the present