CHAP, v.j FELLOWSHIP WITH JOH2TSOK.

" guineas, which is in Ml for the copy of the Life of 1762.
" Mr. Nash. Oliver Goldsmith." The recent death of the Mi.U.
celebrated Beau had suggested a suhject, which, with
incidents in its comedy of manners that recommended it to
a man of wit in our own day, had some to recommend it to
Goldsmith. The king of fashion had at least the oddity of a
hero ; and sufficient harmlessness, not to say usefulness, to
make him original among heroes and kings. It is a clever
hook; and as one examines the original edition with its 234
goodly pages, still not uncommon on the book-stalls, it
appears quite a surprising perforrn.aD.ce for fourteen guineas.
No name was on the title page; * but the writer, whose powers
were so various and performance so felicitous, "that he
" always seemed to do best that which he was doing," finds
it difficult not to reveal his name. The preface was dis-
cerningly written. That a man who had diffused society
and made manners more cheerful and refined, should have
claims to attention from, his own age, while his pains in
pursuing pleasure, and his solemnity in adjusting trifles,
were a claim to even a smile from posterity, was so set forth
as to reassure the stateliest reader; and if somewhat thrown
back by the biographer's bolder announcement in the open-
ing of his book, that a page of Montaigne or Colley Gibber
was worth more than the most grandiose memoirs of " ini-
" mortal statesmen already forgotten," he had but to remem-
ber after how many years of uninterrupted power the old
Duke of Newcastle had just resigned, to think that as grave

* Davies and others speak of the book as Goldsmith's, which it was generally
known to be at the time ; Percy of course assigns it to him in the Memoir (63) ;
and the cleverness of its treatment, with its touches of '' knavish subtleties and
*' compunctious visitings"' in the letter of the highway rogue, Poulter alias Baxter,
suggested Mr. Jerrold's pleasant comedy of The Sing of Bath. It contains also
(149-154) some specimens of Nash's stories, and of his manner of telling them,
given in the very best manner of Goldsmith himself. the Public Ledger was first sold,