OLIVEK GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
1762. a lesson might really await him in the reign of an old
^t. 34. minister of fashion.
In truth the book is neither uninstructive nor unamusing;
and it is difficult not to connect some points of the biogra-
pher's own history with its oddly mixed anecdotes of silliness
and shrewdness, taste and tawdriness, blossom-coloured
coats and gambling debts, vanity, carelessness, and good-
heartedness. The latter quality in its hero was foiled by a
want of prudence which deprived it of half its value : and
the extenuation is so frequently and so earnestly set forth in
connexion with the fault, as, with what we now know of
• the writer, to convey a sort of uneasy personal reference.
Remembering, indeed, that what we know now was not only
unknown then, but even waiting for what remained of G-old-
smith's life to develop and call it forth, this Life of Beau
Nash is in some respects a curious, and was probably an
unconscious, revelation of character. Hitherto careless in
Ms wardrobe, and unknown to the sartorial books of Mr.
William Filby, he gravely discusses the mechanical and
moral influence of dress, in the exaction of respect and
esteem. Quite ignorant, as yet, of his own position among
the remarkable men of his time, he dwells strongly on that
class of impulsive virtues, which, in a man otherwise dis-
tinguished, are more adapted to win friends than admirers,
and more capable of raising love than esteem. A. stranger
still to the London whist table, even to the moderate extent
in which he subsequently sought its excitement and relief,
he sets forth with singular pains the temptation of a man
who has " led a life of expedients and thanked chance for
" his support," to become a stranger to prudence, and fly
back to chance for those "vicissitudes of rapture and
" anguish" in which his character had been formed* With
* Life, 20—22, and see 50—64.