00000017.htm

PBBFAOB.

could have written no such letter j and Mr. Prior had, in
truth, simply copied the fact from Northcotu's Life of
Reynolds (L 332-333), An original letter is given fit pp.
246-251, full of interest and character, without anything to
inform the reader that he might have found it at pp. 4(1-45
of the Percy Memoir; nor would it be very clear to him,
even though Bishop Percy is mentioned in a note, tlint th«
letter at pp. 259-262 had been copied from the name
source (50-52) ; still less that the long and charactorotic
fragment of a letter at pp, 275-278 is also but a verbatim
copy from pp. 40-49 of the same ill-treated authority, nntl
that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epistolary writing,
for the varied interest of its contents, has been bodily
transferred without acknowledgment from pp, 58-59 of the
one book to pp, 297-808 of the other.
. A.t pp. 370-872, an anecdote is related as having been
told by Goldsmith himself " with considerable humour;"
but the story is ill-told, and with no mention of the printed
authority from which it was derived (in the fittfapean
Magazine, xxiv, 259-200). Precisely the sama remark
I have to repeat of the stories at pp. 42*2-424, and of tiu<
statement at p. 495 for which, an erroneous authority in
given. These will be found in the Jtitropffaa Mtt/jasin^
xxiv. 92, 98, and 94. " The remembrance of Bishop
"Percy" is invoked for another whimsical anecdoto at
p, .877,-when the exact page of the memoir ((11-11,1)
which contains it might with equal ease and mow pro-
priety have been named.

Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which 1 have
indicated scarcely any facts, for the uie of which t»v«n



	PBBFAOB. could have written no such letter j and Mr. Prior had, in truth, simply copied the fact from Northcotu's Life of Reynolds (L 332-333), An original letter is given fit pp. 246-251, full of interest and character, without anything to inform the reader that he might have found it at pp. 4(1-45 of the Percy Memoir; nor would it be very clear to him, even though Bishop Percy is mentioned in a note, tlint th« letter at pp. 259-262 had been copied from the name source (50-52) ; still less that the long and charactorotic fragment of a letter at pp, 275-278 is also but a verbatim copy from pp. 40-49 of the same ill-treated authority, nntl that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epistolary writing, for the varied interest of its contents, has been bodily transferred without acknowledgment from pp, 58-59 of the one book to pp, 297-808 of the other. . A.t pp. 370-872, an anecdote is related as having been told by Goldsmith himself " with considerable humour;" but the story is ill-told, and with no mention of the printed authority from which it was derived (in the fittfapean Magazine, xxiv, 259-200). Precisely the sama remark I have to repeat of the stories at pp. 422-424, and of tiu< statement at p. 495 for which, an erroneous authority in given. These will be found in the Jtitropffaa Mtt/jasin^* xxiv. 92, 98, and 94. " The remembrance of Bishop "Percy" is invoked for another whimsical anecdoto at p, .877,-when the exact page of the memoir ((11-11,1) which contains it might with equal ease and mow pro- priety have been named. Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which 1 have indicated scarcely any facts, for the uie of which t»v«n