close is more characteristic than his, of the writer's spirit in those boyish days.

At p. 169-170 there is much parade about certain discoveries in connection with Dr. Ellis, and we are told that "from "accounts given by this gentleman in conversation in various "societies in Dublin, it appears that, &c.;" but what appears is literally no more than had been told far more characteristically at p. 33-34 of the Percy Memoir, to which no allusion is made, either here or a few pages on (174), when one of the prettiest of all the stories of Goldsmith's improvidence is given on Dr. Ellis's authority, without a hint of the book (Percy Memoir, 33-34) in which it first appeared.

At p. 176, the same sort of parade is made about a lost letter of Goldsmith's descriptive of his travels " communicated to the "writer by &c. &c. &c. to whose father &c. &c."-the fact of the letter, as well as of the accident that destroyed it, having been published nearly half a century before by Dr. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of Ireland (286-289), and referred to not only at p. 37 of the Percy Memoir, but in a previous biographical sketch by Isaac Reed (xi-xii.).

At p. 209 an interesting notice of Goldsmith's obscurest days in London is set forth as "in the words put into his "mouth by a gentleman who knew him for several years,” and the gentleman is elaborately described in a note as a "barrister and author of &c. &c.;" but the circumstance is carefully suppressed that "the words " are really quoted from a narrative printed nearly fifty years before in the European Magazine (xxiv. 91). In like manner, at p. 212-213, by far the most valuable and curious anecdote of those dark days, is reprinted verbatim from p. 39-40 of the Percy Memoir, without the most distant allusion to its having already appeared there. At p. 217-218 mention is made of one of Miss Milner's recollections of Goldsmith while an usher with her father, but no one could infer that this had been already quoted by

b

Mr. Mitford from Watkins's Literary Anecdotes (515), though certainly it was more pardonable in Mr. Prior thus to borrow without leave from one source, than to utterly omit, as he does, all mention of the most interesting details of those curious recollections to be found in other sources (in the European Magazine, liii. 373-375; and in the Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvii. 277-278). At p. 220 the origin of Goldsmith's first connection with literature, and the peculiar engagement he entered into, are related without a hint of having been derived from p. 60 of the Percy Memoir.

At p. 244, the sudden and disconcerting visit of Charles Goldsmith to London is referred to his having heard of Oliver's great friends through a letter to Mrs. Lawder, although there is proof, but a few pages on (268), that Oliver could have written no such letter; and Mr. Prior had, in truth, simply copied the fact from Northcote's Life of Reynolds (i. 332-333). An original letter is given at pp. 246-251, full of interest and character, without anything to inform the reader that he might have found it at pp. 40-45 of the Percy Memoir; nor would it be very clear to him, even though Bishop Percy is mentioned in a note, that the letter at pp. 259-262 had been copied from the same source (50-52); still less that the long and characteristic fragment of a letter at pp. 275-278 is also but a verbatim copy from pp. 46-49 of the same ill-treated authority, and that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epis tolary writing, for the varied interest of its contents, has been bodily transferred without acknowledgment from pp. 53-59 of the one book to pp. 297-303 of the other.

At pp. 370-372, an anecdote is related as having been told by Goldsmith himself "with considerable humour; but the story is ill-told, and with no mention of the printed authority from which it was derived (in the European Magazine, xxiv. 259-260). Precisely the same remark I have to repeat of the stories at pp. 422-424, and of the statement at p. 495 for

which an erroneous authority is given. These will be found in the European Magazine, xxiv. 92, 93, and 94. "The remem"brance of Bishop Percy" is invoked for another whimsical anecdote at p. 377, when the exact page of the memoir (62-63) which contains it, might with equal ease and more propriety have been named.

Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which I have indicated scarcely any facts, for the use of which even as he had borrowed them himself, except that I never sought to put them forth as my own discoveries, I was not assailed and insulted by him. I now proceed in the same way, with all possible brevity, through the second volume of his book: merely premising, as a help to those who would have some clue to this perpetual and strange desire to represent as from oral or written communication facts derived from printed sources, that Mr. Prior took occasion in the course of his attack upon me expressly to lay down the doctrine, that what has been printed for any given number of years can no longer be held new, or regarded in the light of a discovery; and as, in his own esteem, he is nothing if not a discoverer, and by consequence a proprietor, of facts, there ought perhaps to be little to surprise the reader in the foregoing and following examples.

At pp. 1-11 of the second volume there is a vast deal about Goldsmith's Oratorio of the Captivity, about the fact of two copies being still extant in his handwriting, and about Mr. Prior being enabled to print for the first time "from that "which appears the most correct transcript;" the reader being kept quite ignorant that already this poem had been printed, from a copy in Goldsmith's handwriting at the least as curious as Mr. Prior's, and certainly as correct (the one having been made for Newbery, and the other for Dodsley, and the latest

in transcription presenting only a few changes of text from the other), in the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works published by the London "trade" in 1820.

At p. 55 a story is repeated from the recollections of Miss Reynolds, communicated to Mr. Croker, which had already been far better told in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1797. In pp. 80-94 a great clutter is made about the ballad of Edwin and Angelina, as to which all that was really essential is told in pp. 74-76 of the Memoir by Percy, whose personal connection with the dispute arising out of it gives peculiar authority to his statement.

At p. 130 the assertion about Goldsmith's having got a large sum for what might seem a small labour, put forth as an exaggeration reported by others which "he took no pains to "contradict," but to which he would "in substance reply " &c. is all taken without acknowledgment from Cooke's narrative in the European Magazine (xxiv. 94); in which the exaggeration, such as it is, is most emphatically assigned to Goldsmith himself. At p. 135 the whimsical anecdote described to have been told to Dr. Percy, "with some humour by the Duchess "of Northumberland," might more correctly have been quoted from p. 68-69 of the Percy Memoir.

At p. 139 there occurs, at last, formal mention of a person "admitted to considerable intimacy with him, Mr. William "Cooke, a barrister, known as the writer of a work on dramatic "genius, and of a poem, &c"; of whom it is added that "he "related many amusing anecdotes of the poet from personal "knowledge;" but where the anecdotes are to be found is carefully suppressed, nor indeed could any one imagine that they had ever found their way into print. At p. 139-140 a highly characteristic story of Goldsmith is given as from the relation of this Mr. Cooke, "corroborated to the writer by the late "Richard Sharpe, Esq., to whom Mr. Cooke told it more than the story being nothing more than a transcript from

"once ;

Taylor's Records of his Life (i. 107-110), published four before Mr. Prior wrote.

years

At p. 140-141, one of Cooke's most amusing stories is ill-told without a mention of its printed source (Europ. 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 which 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. Cooke" (197), or that "Bishop Percy in "conversation frequently alluded to these habits" (182). At pp. 194-196, a long passage is given from Colman's Random Records (i. 110-113); at p. 207 a business-agreement of Goldsmith's as 66 drawn up by himself" is given from the Percy Memoir (78); and at pp. 220-223 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. 237-238 we are informed that Mr. Percival Stockdale's Memoirs "furnishes scarcely an allusion to Goldsmith. His "papers, however, supply an anecdote communicated by a "lady eminent for her writings in fiction, his friend, and whom "the writer has likewise the honour, &c. &c. &c." And then the anecdote, professing to be transcribed by Miss Jane Porter from the manuscripts of Mr. Stockdale, turns out to be a literal transcription from that very Memoirs of the worthy gentleman (ii. 136-137), which had been published nearly thirty years