o "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.

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