by the redoubted Beau Nash, and spent the day pleasantly among the pump assemblies, the walks, the chocolate-houses, raffling-shops, plays, and medleys. He even thought the appearance of the ladies in the bath, encased in buckram, and moving about, in common with the men, between swimming and walking, a spectacle worthy the applause and imitation of Teresa Blount. The barbarity of the practice shocked Dr. Johnson and the cynical Matthew Bramble

2

and it affords a curious illustration of the taste and manners of the period. But Pope wished to be esteemed a man of vivacity and spirit, or as he has himself said,

The gayest valetudinaire,
Most thinking rake alive!

2 Bath had become a very fashionable resort after the visit of Queen Anne to the city. Goldsmith describes the amusements of the day. "The

And whether in town or country his company was courted. Without fortune, without the advantages of high birth or connections, without personal graces or fashionable accomplishments, he had by his genius and management raised himself to social eminence and unrivalled literary celebrity. Dryden, better descended, and with good family alliances, failed to accomplish as much. There was no inferiority of

hours for bathing are commonly between six and nine in the morning. The lady is brought in a chair, dressed in her bathing clothes, to the bath, and being in the water, the woman who attends presents her with a little floating dish like a basin; into which the lady puts a handkerchief, a snuff-box, and a nosegay. She then traverses the bath; if a novice with a guide, if otherwise by herself; and having amused herself thus while she thinks proper, calls for her chair, and returns to her lodgings. The amusement of bathing is succeeded by a general assembly of the people at the pumproom, some for pleasure, and some to drink the hot waters. Three glasses at three different times is the usual portion, and the intervals between every glass are enlivened by the small band of music, as well as by the conversation of the gay, the witty, or the forward. From the pump-room the ladies from time to time' withdraw to a female coffee-house, and from thence return to their lodgings to breakfast. The gentlemen withdraw to their coffee-houses, to read the papers or converse on the news of the day." And with equal minuteness Goldsmith goes over the whole day, till the round is closed by evening prayers in the pump-room, and by nightly balls, plays, or visits. When Frederick Prince of Wales visited Bath in 1738, Beau Nash commemorated the event by erecting an obelisk, and he wrote to Pope requesting an inscription. Pope replied that he had received so few favours from the great, that he was utterly unacquainted with what kind of thanks they liked best. "Whether," he said, "the Prince most loves poetry or prose I protest I do not know; but this I dare venture to affirm, that you can give him as much satisfaction in either as I can." Nash persevered in his request, and Pope sent a brief prose inscription: "In memory of honours bestowed, and in gratitude for benefits conferred on this city by his Royal Highness Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his royal consort, in the year 1738, this obelisk is erected by Richard Nash, Esq." Goldsmith's comment on this affair is the most amusing part of the business: "I dare venture to say there was scarce a common council-man in the corporation of Bath but could have done this as well. Nothing can be more frigid, though the subject was worthy of the utmost exertions of genius!” -See Goldsmith's Works by Prior, Vol. III.

DESCRIPTION OF A JOURNEY TO OXFORD.

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talent or of moral worth-and of these, in his latter days, the world made cheerful recognition-but the elder bard, diffident and retiring-"not a genteel man," as Pope saidcould not command the arts which permanently please and attract in high society. He could flatter the great, but wanted skill to court them.

Shortly after the delivery of the first volume of his Homer, Pope made a journey to Oxford on horseback, having borrowed his steed from the Earl of Burlington. When in Windsor Forest, on his way, he was overtaken by Bernard Lintot, who had heard that the poet designed to go to Oxford, "the seat of the Muses," and who, as his bookseller, would by all means accompany him. Pope, on arriving at Oxford, wrote to Lord Burlington an account of his journey and adventures on the road, in which Lintot figures largely, describing both himself and the "eminent hands who worked for him, as translators and critics. The letter is one of Pope's most humorous prose sketches. Smollett in his Humphrey Clinker describes a meeting of Grub Street authors, in his house at Chelsea, which bears some resemblance to Pope's lively caricature, and shows that fifty years had wrought little alteration in this class.

I asked him where he got his horse? He answered, he got it of his publisher: "For that rogue my printer (said he) disappointed me: I hoped to put him in good humour by a treat at the tavern, of a brown fricassee of rabbits, which cost two shillings, with two quarts of wine, besides my conversation. I thought myself cocksure of his horse, which he readily promised me, but said, that Mr. Tonson had just such another design of going to Cambridge, expecting there the copy of a new kind of Horace from Dr. and if Mr. Tonson went, he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to have the printing of the said copy.

"So in short I borrowed this horse of my publisher, which he had of Mr. Oldmixon for a debt; he lent me too the pretty boy you see after me. He was a smutty dog yesterday, and cost me near two hours to wash the ink off his face; but the devil is a fair-conditioned devil, and very forward in his catechise: if you have any more bags, he shall carry them."

I thought Mr. Lintot's civility not to be neglected, so gave the boy a small bag, containing three shirts, and an Elzevir Virgil; and mounting in