assured the Scotchman.  Amory was a fervid admirer of womankind, and he favoured a rare type, the learned lady who bears her learning lightly and can discuss “the quadrations of curvilinear spaces” without ceasing to be “a bouncing, dear, delightful girl,” and adroit in the preparation of toast and chocolate.  The style of the book is very careless and irregular, but rises in its best pages to an admirable picturesqueness.

BEAU NASH

THE LIFE OF RICHARD NASH, ESQ.; late Master of the Ceremonies at Bath.  Extracted principally from his Original Papers.  The Second Edition.  London:  J. Newbery. 1762.

There are cases, not known to every collector of books, where it is not the first which is the really desirable edition of a work, but the second.  One of these rare examples of the exception which proves the rule is the second edition of Goldsmith’s Life of Beau Nash.  Disappointment awaits him who possesses only the first; it is in the second that the best things originally appeared.  The story is rather to be divined than told as history, but we can see pretty plainly how the lines of it must have run.  In the early part of 1762, Oliver Goldsmith, at that time still undistinguished, but in the very act of blossoming into fame, received a commission of fourteen guineas to write for Newbery a life of the strange old beau, Mr. Nash, who had died in 1761.  On the same day, which was March 5th, he gave a receipt to the publisher for three other publications, written or to be written, so that very probably it was not expected that he should immediately supply all the matter sold.  In the summer he seems to have gone down to Bath on a short visit, and to have made friends with the Beau’s executor, Mr. George Scott.  It has even been said that he cultivated the Mayor and Aldermen of Bath with such success that they presented him with yet another fifteen guineas.  But of this, in itself highly improbable, instance of municipal benefaction, the archives of the city yield no proof.  At least Mr. Scott gave him access to Nash’s papers, and with these he seems to have betaken himself back to London.

It is a heart-rending delusion and a cruel snare to be paid for your work before you accomplish it.  As soon as once your work is finished you ought to be promptly paid; but to receive your lucre one minute before it is due, is to tempt Providence to make a Micawber of you.  Goldsmith, of course, without any temptation being needed, was the very ideal Micawber of letters, and the result of paying him beforehand was that he had, simply, to be popped into the mill by force, and the copy ground out of him.  It is evident that in the case of the first edition of the Life of Beau Nash, the grinding process was too mercifully applied, and the book when it appeared was short measure.  It has no dedication, no “advertisement,” and very few notes, while it actually omits many of the best stories.  The wise bibliophile, therefore, will eschew it, and will try to get the second edition issued a few weeks later in the same year, which Newbery evidently insisted that Goldsmith should send out to the public in proper order.