telling--'six, seven,
eight, nine, ten.' Here the duchess called again, and seemed
angry. 'Pray compose yourself, madam,' cried Nash, 'and
don't interrupt the work of charity,--eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the duchess stormed, and
caught hold of his hand. 'Peace, madam,' says Nash, 'you
shall have your name written in letters of gold, madam, and
upon the front of the building, madam,--sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' 'I won't pay a farthing more,'
says the duchess. 'Charity hides a multitude of sins,'
replies Nash,--'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,
twenty-four, twenty-five.' 'Nash,' says she, 'I protest you
frighten me out of my wits. L--d, I shall die!' 'Madam, you
will never die with doing good; and if you do, it will be
the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about to
proceed; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a
parley ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to
stop his hand and compound with her grace for thirty
guineas. The duchess, however, seemed displeased the whole
evening, and when he came to the table where she was
playing, bid him, 'Stand farther, an ugly devil, for she
hated the sight of him.' But her grace afterwards having a
run of good luck, called Nash to her. 'Come,' says she, 'I
will be friends with you, though you are a fool; and to let
you see I am not angry, there is ten guineas more for your
charity. But this I insist on, that neither my name nor the
sum shall be mentioned.'"

At the ripe age of eighty-seven the "beau of three generations"
breathed his last (1761); and, though he had fallen into poor ways,
there were those alive who remembered his former greatness, and who
chronicled it in a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. "One
thing is common almost with all of them," says Goldsmith, "and that is
that Venus, Cupid, and the Graces are commanded to weep, and that Bath
shall never find such another." These effusions are forgotten now; and
so would Beau Nash be also, but for this biography, which, no doubt
meant merely for the book-market of the day, lives and is of permanent
value by reason of the charm of its style, its pervading humour, and
the vivacity of its descriptions of the fashionable follies of the
eighteenth century. _Nullum fere genus scribendi non tetigit. Nullum
quod teti