OLIVEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. rBo"KL
and dancing a pas seul impromptu about the room, where-
upon, seizing the opportunity of the lad's ungainly look and
grotesque figure, the jocose fiddler promptly exclaimed
JEaopf A hurst of laughter rewarded him, which however
was rapidly turned the other way by Noll stopping his horn-
pipe, looking round at his assailant, and giving forth,^ in
audible voice and without hesitation, the couplet which
was thought worth preserving as the first formal effort of his
genius, by Percy, Malone, Campbell, and the rest, who com.
piled that biographical preface * to the Miscellaneous Works
on which the subsequent biographies have been founded,
but who nevertheless appear to have missed the correct
version of the lines they thought so clever.
Heralds ! proclaim aloud! all saying,
See JEsop dancing, and Ms Monkey playing, f
Yet these things may stand for more than quickness of
* The biographical preface, or Memoir, for which the materials had been collected
by Percy, Malone, and other friends, was drawn up in the first instance by Peroy'H
friend, Dr. Campbell; it then received ample correction fromPeroy, whose remarks
and interlineations were engrafted into the text; hut circumstances led to a very angry
dispute on its being handed to the publishers of the Miscellaneous Works* Other
causes of disagreement afterwards sprang up with Mr. Rose (Qowper'a friend),
employed as their editor, and Percy ultimately declined to sanction the publication.
His correspondence with. Steevens, Malone, and other friends, shows ample traces of
this quarrel, and of Ms dissatisfaction with Mr. Eose, whom he accuses of imperti-
nently tampering with the Memoir. "I never," writes Malone to Percy, m oor-
roboration of such complaints, '' observed any of those grimaces or fooleries that the
" interpolator talks of!" "In going over Goldsmith's life," writes Dr, Anderson to
Percy, " I will thank you to point out the particular passages which •were thnwt
"into your narrative." Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 213. Substantially, however,
the narrative no doubt remained in its leading details what it is stated to lie in the
advertisement, " composed from the information of persons who were intimate with
"the poet at an early period, and who were honoured with a oontimiane© of hfa
'' friendship till the time " of his death. Por proof of Percy's unceasing reference to
the Memoir as the authentic account of Goldsmith, even after its interpolation by
Eose, see Nichols's Illustrations, vii, 102, where he recommends it to Dr. Anderson's
f I quote the couplet (of which the first line is tamely given in the Per«/
Memoir, 5, '«/%',
Our herald hath proclaimed this saying")
from Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account, iii. 359.