288. 35.-Tom Davies. Thomas Davies (1712?-1785), was a book-seller. For some time he was a strolling actor. According to Johnson, he was driven from the stage by a line of Churchill's:

"He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone."

The best thing Davies ever did was to introduce Boswell to Johnson, which introduction is graphically described by the former in his great Life. See Hill's edition, I, 453.

289. 8.-Ranelagh. This vied with Vauxhall Gardens in being the great pleasure resort of Londoners in the eighteenth century. It stood on the south side of Hans Place, Chelsea. Toward the end of the reign of William III, Viscount Ranelagh had a villa built at Chelsea, and gardens laid out there. He died in 1712. Later the estate was leased by two partners, and a company of shareholders formed, who converted it into a place of amusement. In May, 1742, Ranelagh was opened with a big celebration. It was frequented by dandies, high livers, and women whose reputation could not be doubted. There is a good description of Ranelagh in Smollett's Humphry Clinker.

289. 8.-The Pantheon. The Pantheon was a splendid building, meant chiefly for a fashionable resort in winter. It was finished in January, 1772, at a cost of sixty thousand pounds. Masquerade balls were generally given in the Pantheon, and George III and the nobility freely patronised the place. reputation, however, became a little shady. On a fearfully cold night in 1792 it was destroyed by fire.

Its

289. 9.-Madame Cornelys. Theresa Cornelys (1723-1797), was born at Venice, and was the daughter of an actor. At the age of seventeen she became the mistress of an Italian senator, and later was famous as a singer. She took the name of Cornelys from a gentleman at Amsterdam. In 1760 she bought Carlisle House in Soho Square, London, and became a manager of public Assemblies. She advertised on a large scale, and the leading men and women in society subscribed to her balls. But the opening of the Pantheon ruined her business, and in that year (1772) she was a bankrupt. After this misfortune she had a varied career, and finally died in the Fleet Prison, on the 19th of August, 1797. "Sir John Hawkins, when writing his 'Life of

Dr. Johnson,' about ten years before she died, paid the following tribute to her memory, evidently in ignorance of the fact that she was then alive: For most of the refinements in our public diversions we are indebted to the late Mrs. Cornelys, to whose elegant taste for pleasure the magistrates of Turin and Brussels were so blind, and of her worth so insensible, that . . . they severally drove her out of both those cities. This hospitable country, however, afforded her an asylum, and in Westminster she was permitted to improve our manners.'"-Sydney's England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, I, 148.

289. 10.-The Jessamy Bride. Mary Horneck, an intimate friend of Goldsmith, at whose mother's house he was a frequent visitor. There were two daughters in the family, Catherine and Mary, who were nineteen and seventeen years of age respectively, when Goldsmith became intimately acquainted with them. They were exceedingly beautiful girls, and Goldsmith called them by the pet names "Little Comedy" and "The Jessamy Bride.” The friendship of the poet for Mary was commented on in his own day, and one of his enemies pretended that Goldsmith was hopelessly in love with her, which led to a fierce quarrel; and some of his later biographers who delight in romantic adventures have maintained that there was much more than mere friendship; but in the absence of evidence, it seems best to believe that the mature and impossible Goldsmith and the lovely and affectionate girl were the best of comrades and nothing more. She would doubtless be amused and delighted with Goldsmith's conversation, and their frank camaraderie was probably better understood by them than by their biographers. She afterwards became Mrs. Gwyn, and died in 1840. She gave her recollections of Goldsmith to Prior, who wrote the Life of Goldsmith, and these recollections contain some of the best-known anecdotes of the poet's later life. If one wishes to view the relations between Mary Horneck and Goldsmith from the extreme romantic point of view, and at the same time to get an anti-Boswellian conception of the poet's personal character, one cannot do better than read the pleasantly written novel, The Jessamy Bride (1897), by Frankfort Moore.

289. 15.—Bunbury. Henry William Bunbury (1750–1811),

was an artist and caricaturist. He was married to Catherine Horneck, the beautiful older sister of the "Jessamy Bride,' " in 1771. He published a series of burlesque illustrations to Tristram Shandy. Personally he was very attractive, and was on the best terms with the most famous men of his day.

289. 16.—Gilray. Thackeray misspells the name. James Gillray (1757-1815), a famous caricaturist. His satirical powers, which, unlike Bunbury, he chose to cultivate, were very great; and his skill in ridicule, together with his daring freedom in using it, became the terror of his victims. He was enormously popular; but unfortunately he took to drink, and finally lost his mind.

289. 29.-Something must be allowed. Boswell's portrait of Goldsmith, though exceedingly irritating to the passionate lovers of the poet, is probably in the main correct. The peculiarities that Boswell describes so graphically were Goldsmith's own; and because a picture is unsympathetic, it does not follow that it is untrue. The word "talent" applied to Boswell in line 35 is not the right word. Boswell was a genius, and one of the great Eng

lish writers.

290. 7.—He asked for a loan from Garrick. For a begging letter to the great actor, and the acknowledgment of the money received, see Forster's Life of Goldsmith, pages 447, 448.

290. 9.-Barton. Great Barton, in the county of Suffolk, England, was Bunbury's house, where Goldsmith frequently saw his friends.

290. 14.—Hazlitt. William Hazlitt (1778-1830), the famous essayist.

290. 15.-Northcote's painting-room. James Northcote (1746– 1831), a well-known painter and member of the Royal Academy. He excelled principally in the painting of portraits. He had literary aspirations as well, and in 1813 published a memoir of Reynolds, which is the source of the later biographies of that artist. Hazlitt knew Northcote intimately, and delighted in his con. versation, of which he kept full notes.

See

290. 17.-The Younger Colman. George Colman the Younger (1762-1836) was the son of the dramatist of the same name. note to page 283, line 1. His best play, the Heir at Law, still holds the boards. The quotation given here is from Colman's

Random Records, published in 1831; and in that edition the passage occurs in Vol. I, pages 110-12, and not where Thackeray gives it. Furthermore, Thackeray has garbled and inaccurately quoted the passage, though not to change its significance.

295. 22.- -Grand homme incompris. The great man not

understood.

296. 17.-Who shall say that our country. Thackeray had no sympathy with writers who turned sour because their books would not sell, and blamed the public for not appreciating their genius. He saw clearly enough that a writer who really has genius will sooner or later take his proper place in the annals of literature. A high place and a permanent one is occupied by the lecturer himself, and if some one were to write a book on the English Humourists of the Nineteenth Century, the name of Thackeray would be found among the foremost, as well as the most honoured and respected, which cannot be said of all the men whom he discussed in his lectures.