OLIYER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.

1765. and had attached himself to the party of the Prince of Wales,
mTsV. whom he largely assisted with money. In the imaginary
Leicester-house administrations commemorated by Bubb
Dodington, he was always appointed to office; and had held
appointments more substantial as comptroller of the prince's
household, a lord of the treasury, and vice-treasurer of
Ireland. He tallied well, though coarsely, " with a vivacity
"of expression often bordering on the Irish bull," and was a
great favourite with women. His first wife, Lord Fingal's*
daughter, brought him a good fortune, and bore him a son;
by Ins second wife, to whom he was the third husband, the
sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs (Pope's friend), and
described as " a good-humoured, pleasant, fat woman,f " he
had no issue, but obtained large landed estates, one of the
finest domains in Essex, and the mansion of Gosfield Hall ;|
and from a third less lucky marriage, with Elizabeth Drax
the Countess Dowager of Berkeley, sprang the daughter (its

* Plunket, the attainted earl. j" Gent. Mat/, lix. 406.

J '' Returning to England in the summer of 1776," says Wraxall, in his Historical
Memoirs (i. 126), "I went clown soon afterwards on a visit to Lord Nugent, at
" Gosfield in Essex; a seat which has since, in the revolutionary events of the
"present times, afforded a temporary asylum to the august representative of the
"Oapetian line, when expelled from a country over which his ancestors had
"reigned, in uninterrupted male succession, for above eight hundred years."
In another passage Sir Nathaniel calls the "house and estate" at Gosfield "one
"of the finest domains in Essex;" yet the present condition of the iuclosure,
or paddock, before the mansion, would rather seem, to confirm the origin of the name
as derived from Goosefield. Lord Nugent appears so pleasantly in Goldsmith's
life, and Wraxall's sketch of him is so characteristic, that I subjoin one or two
passages. "Of an athletic frame, and a vigorous constitution, though very far
"advanced in years," [Wraxall is writing two years after Goldsmith's death]
"he was exempt from infirmity; possessing a stentorian voice, with great animal
"spirits, and vast powers of conversation. He was indeed a man of very con-
"siderable natural abilities, thoiTgh not of a very cultivated mind. . . To a perfect
"knowledge of the world, he joined a coarse, and often licentious, but naturally
"strong and ready wit, which no place, nor company, prevented him from
"indulging ; and the effect of which was augmented by an Irish accent that never
"forsook him. When a bill was introduced into the House of Commons for better
"watching the metropolis, in order to contribute towards effecting which objecte Journey.