Well, Nash could afford to defy royalty, for he was to be himself a monarch of all he surveyed, and a good deal more; but before we follow him to Bath, let us give the devil his due—­which, by the way, he generally gets—­and tell a pair of tales in the Beau’s favour.

Imprimis, his accounts at the Temple were L10 deficient.  Now I don’t mean that Nash was not as great a liar as most of his craft, but the truth of this tale rests on the authority of the ‘Spectator,’ though Nash took delight in repeating it.

‘Come hither, young man,’ said the Benchers, coolly:  ’Whereunto this deficit?’

‘Pri’thee, good masters,’ quoth Nash, ’that L10 was spent on making a man happy.’

‘A man happy, young sir, pri’thee explain.’

‘Odds donners,’ quoth Nash, ’the fellow said in my hearing that his wife and bairns were starving, and L10 would make him the happiest man sub sole, and on such an occasion as His Majesty’s accession, could I refuse it him?’

Nash was, proverbially more generous than just.  He would not pay a debt if he could help it, but would give the very amount to the first friend that begged it.  There was much ostentation in this, but then my friend Nash was ostentatious.  One friend bothered him day and night for L20 that was owing to him, and he could not get it.  Knowing his debtor’s character, he hit, at last, on a happy expedient, and sent a friend to borrow the money, ‘to relieve his urgent necessities.’  Out came the bank note, before the story of distress was finished.  The friend carried it to the creditor, and when the latter again met Nash, he ought to have made him a pretty compliment on his honesty.

Perhaps the King of Bath would not have tolerated in any one else the juvenile frolics he delighted in after-years to relate of his own early days.  When at a loss for cash, he would do anything, but work, for a fifty pound note, and having, in one of his trips, lost all his money at York, the Beau undertook to ‘do penance’ at the minster door for that sum.  He accordingly arrayed himself—­not in sackcloth and ashes—­but in an able-bodied blanket, and nothing else, and took his stand at the porch, just at the hour when the dean would be going in to read service.  ‘He, ho,’ cried that dignitary, who knew him, ’Mr. Nash in masquerade?’—­’Only a Yorkshire penance, Mr. Dean,’ quoth the reprobate; ‘for keeping bad company, too,’ pointing therewith to the friends who had come to see the sport.

This might be tolerated, but when in the eighteenth century a young man emulates the hardiness of Godiva, without her merciful heart, we may not think quite so well of him.  Mr. Richard Nash, Beau Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Bath, once rode through a village in that costume of which even our first parent was rather ashamed, and that, too, on the back of a cow!  The wager was, I believe, considerable.  A young Englishman did something more respectable, yet quite