‘But, surely,’ added she, ’they must have been asleep, both of them, when they wrote their Letters; for the Bath was extremely full,’ ‘Full!’ cries the Count, interrupting her; “Oh, Madam, that is very possible, and yet there might be no Company—­that is, none of us; Nobody that one knows.  For as to all the Tramontanes that come by the cross Post, we never reckon them as anything but Monsters in human Shape, that serve to fill up the Stage of Life, like Cyphers in a play.  For Instance, you often see an awkward Girl, who has sewed a Tail to a Gown, and pinned two Lappits to a Night-cap, come running headlong into the Rooms with a wild, frosty Face, as if she was just come from feeding Poultry in her Father’s Chicken-Yard.  Or you see a Booby Squire, with a Head resembling a Stone ball over a Gate-post.  Now, it would be the most ridiculous Thing in Life to call such People Company.  ’Tis the Want of Titles, and not the Want of Faces, that makes a Place empty.’”

There are indications, which I think have escaped the notice of Goldsmith’s editors, that the author of the Citizen of the World condescended to take some of his ideas from Pompey the Little.  In Count Tag, the impoverished little fop who fancies himself a man of quality, and who begs pardon of people who accost him in the Park—­“but really, Lady Betty or Lady Mary is just entering the Mall,”—­we have the direct prototype of Beau Tibbs; while Mr. Rhymer, the starving poet, whose furniture consists of “the first Act of a Comedy, a Pair of yellow Stays, two political Pamphlets, a plate of Bread-and-butter, three dirty Night-caps, and a Volume of Miscellany Poems,” is a figure wonderfully like that of Goldsmith himself, as Dr. Percy found him eight years later, in that “wretched, dirty room,” at the top of Breakneck Steps, Green Arbour Court.  The whole conception of that Dickens-like scene, in which it is described how Lady Frippery had a drum in spite of all local difficulties, is much more in the humour of Goldsmith than in that of any of Coventry’s immediate contemporaries.

Strangely enough, in spite of the great success of his one book, the author of Pompey the Little never tried to repeat it.  He became perpetual curate of Edgware, and died in the neighbouring village of Stanmore Parva a few years after the publication of his solitary book; I have, however, searched the registers of that parish in vain for any record of the fact.  Francis Coventry had gifts of wit and picturesqueness which deserved a better fate than to amuse a few dissipated women over their citron-waters, and then to be forgotten.

THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNCLE

THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNCLE, ESQ., containing various observations and reflections made in several parts of the world; and many extraordinary relations.  London:  Printed for J. Noon, at the White Hart in Cheapside, near the Poultry, MDCCLVI.