against a cheat in consideration of a handsome bonus; and, in fact, there is no saying what amount of dirty work Nash would not have done for a hundred or so, especially when the game of the table was shut up to him.  The man was immensely fond of money; he liked to show his gold-laced coat and superb new waistcoat in the Grove, the Abbey Ground, and Bond Street, and to be known as Le Grand Nash.  But, on the other hand, he did not love money for itself, and never hoarded it.  It is, indeed, something to Nash’s honour, that he died poor.  He delighted, in the poverty of his mind, to display his great thick-set person to the most advantage; he was as vain as any fop, without the affectation of that character, for he was always blunt and free-spoken, but, as long as he had enough to satisfy his vanity, he cared nothing for mere wealth.  He had generosity, though he neglected the precept about the right hand and the left, and showed some ostentation in his charities.  When a poor ruined fellow at his elbow saw him win at a throw L200, and murmured ’How happy that would make me!’ Nash tossed the money to him, and said, ’Go and be happy then.’  Probably the witless beau did not see the delicate satire implied in his speech.  It was only the triumph of a gamester.  On other occasions he collected subscriptions for poor curates, and so forth, in the same spirit, and did his best towards founding an hospital, which has since proved of great value to those afflicted with rheumatic gout.  In the same spirit, though himself a gamester, he often attempted to win young and inexperienced boys, who came to toss away their money at the rooms, from seeking their own ruin; and, on the whole, there was some goodness of heart in this gold-laced bear.

That he was a bear there are anecdotes enough to show, and whether true or not, they sufficiently prove what the reputation of the man must have been.  Thus, when a lady, afflicted with a curvature of the spine, told him that ‘She had come straight from London that day,’ Nash replied with utter heartlessness, ’Then, ma’am, you’ve been damnably warpt on the road.’  The lady had her revenge, however, for meeting the beau one day in the Grove, as she toddled along with her dog, and being impudently asked by him if she knew the name of Tobit’s dog, she answered quickly, ’Yes, sir, his name was Nash, and a most impudent dog he was too.’

It is due to Nash to state that he made many attempts to put an end to the perpetual system of scandal, which from some hidden cause seems always to be connected with mineral springs; but as he did not banish the old maids, of course he failed.  Of the young ladies and their reputation he took a kind of paternal care, and in that day they seem to have needed it, for even at nineteen, those who had any money to lose, staked it at the tables with as much gusto as the wrinkled, puckered, greedy-eyed ‘single woman,’ of a certain or uncertain age.  Nash protected and cautioned them, and even gave them the advantage