Goldsmith treats Nash with very much the same sort of indulgent and apologetic sympathy with which the late M. Barbey d’Aurevilly treats Brummell.  He does not affect to think that the world calls for a full-length statue of such a fantastic hero; but he seems to claim leave to execute a statuette in terracotta for a cabinet of curiosities.  From that point of view, as a queer object of vertu, as a specimen of the bric-a-brac of manners, both the one and the other, the King of Beaux and the Emperor of Dandies, are welcome to amateurs of the odd and the entertaining.  At the head of Goldsmith’s book stands a fine portrait of Nash, engraved by Anthony Walker, one of the best and rarest of early English line-engravers, after an oil-picture by William Hoare, presently to be one of the foundation-members of the Royal Academy, and now and throughout his long life the principal representative of the fine arts at Bath.  Nash is here represented in his famous white hat—­galero albo, as his epitaph has it; the ensign of his rule at Bath, the more than coronet of his social sway.

The breast of his handsome coat is copiously trimmed with rich lace, and his old, old eyes, with their wrinkles and their crow’s feet, look demurely out from under an incredible wig, an umbrageous, deep-coloured ramilie of early youth.  It is a wonderfully hard-featured, serious, fatuous face, and it lives for us under the delicate strokes of Anthony Walker’s graver.  The great Beau looks as he must have looked when the Duchess of Queensberry dared to appear at the Assembly House on a ball night with a white apron on.  It is a pleasant story, and only told properly in our second edition.  King Nash had issued an edict forbidding the wearing of aprons.  The Duchess dared to disobey.  Nash walked up to her and deftly snatched her apron from her, throwing it on to the back benches where the ladies’ women sat.  What a splendid moment!  Imagine the excitement of all that fashionable company—­the drawn battle between the Majesty of Etiquette and the Majesty of Beauty!  The Beau remarked, with sublime calm, that “none but Abigails appeared in white aprons.”  The Duchess hesitated, felt that her ground had slipped from under her, gave way with the most admirable tact, and “with great good sense and humour, begged his Majesty’s pardon,”

Aprons were not the only red rags to the bull of ceremony.  He was quite as unflinching an enemy to top-boots.  He had already banished swords from the assembly-room, because their clash frightened the ladies, and their scabbards tore people’s dresses.  But boots were not so easily banished.  The country squires liked to ride into the city, and, leaving their horses at a stable, walk straight into the dignity of the minuet.  Nash, who had a genius for propriety, saw how hateful this was, and determined to put a stop to it.  He slew top-boots and aprons at the same time, and with the shaft of Apollo.  He indited a poem on the occasion, and a very good example of satire by irony it is.  It is short enough to quote entire: