PREFACE.

"Esq, to whom'Mr. Cooke told It more than once;"
the story being nothing more than a transcript from
Taylor's 'Records of Us Life (i. 107-110), published four
years before Mr. Prior wrote.

At p. 140-141, one of Cooke's most amusing stories is
ill-told without a mention of its printed source (IHurop.
Mag. xxiv. 260). At p. 167 an incident is given from
Mrs. Piozzi's relation, though with no; mention of her
book (Anecdotes, 244-246); and connected with it is a
formal confirmation of her mistake as to the club's night of
meeting, which the very slight diligence of turning to
p. 72 of the Percy Memoir would have enabled Mr. Prior
to correct. And at pp. 175, 178 (where certain lines are
quoted without allusion to an anecdote current at the time
that had given them their only point), 181, 182, and
197, circumstances and traits of character are set forth
without the least acknowledgment from Cooke's printed
papers (.European Magazine, xxiv. 170, 422, xxv. 184,
xxiv. 172, 261, and 429), with only such occasional
mystification of the reader as that " a jest of the poet
"was repeated by Mr. Cooko" (197), or that "Bishop
" Percy in conversation frequently alluded to these
"habits" (182).

At pp. 194-196, a long passage is given from dolman's
"Random Records (i. 110-118) ; at p. 207 a business-
agreement of Goldsmith's as "drawn up by himself" is given
from the Percy Memoir (78); and at pp. 220-228 a letter
from Oliver to Maurice Goldsmith is copied from the same
source (86-89),—without a clue in any of these cases to
the book which contains the original.

At p. 237-288 we are informed that Mr. Percivalm the relation of this Mr. Cooke,