* Published by Macmillan in 1890. The sketch forms the tail-
piece to the Preface, p. xxi.
Neither chair nor cane is in the Good Catalogue, nor does it make any mention of the worn old wooden writing-desk which was presented to Sir Henry Cole's museum by Lady Hawes. Her husband, Sir Benjamin Hawes, once Under Secretary at War, was the grandson of William Hawes, the 'surgeon apothecary' in the Strand, who was called in, late on that Friday night in March, when the poor Doctor was first stricken down with the illness which a few days later terminated fatally. William Hawes, a worthy and an able man, who subsequently obtained a physician's degree, and helped to found the Humane Society, was the author of the little pamphlet, now daily growing rarer, entitled 'An Account of the late Dr. Goldsmith's Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr. James's Powders, etc., 1774' [April]. He dedicated it to Burke and Reynolds; and he published it (he says) partly to satisfy curiosity as to the circumstances of Goldsmith's death, partly to vindicate his own professional conduct in the matter. His narrative, in which discussion of the popular nostrum upon which Goldsmith so obstinately relied not unnaturally occupies a considerable part, is too familiar for repetition; and his remarks on Goldsmith as a writer are of the sign-post order. But his personal testimony to the character of 'his late respected and ingenious friend' may fitly close this paper: 'His [Goldsmith's] humanity and generosity greatly exceeded the narrow limits of his fortune; and those who were no judges of the literary merit of the Author, could not but love the Man for that benevolence by which he was so strongly characterized.'
XVI. IN COWPER'S ARBOUR.
AMONG its many drawbacks controversy has this in particular, that it sometimes embroils us with our closest friends. Writing recently of Lord Chesterfield, * we found occasion to comment upon certain couplets which the poet of the 'Progress of Error' addressed to his Lordship concerning his celebrated 'Letters.'
* See ante, p. 192.
What was said amounted to no more than that Cowper, in this instance at least, had not proved himself a Juvenal,—a sentiment which, seeing that his accredited biographer, Mr. Goldwin Smith, accuses him, as a satirist, of brandishing a whip without a lash, could scarcely be regarded as extravagant condemnation. Not the less, it has lain sorely upon our conscience. Of all the lettered figures of the eighteenth century, none is more dear to us than the gentle recluse of the sleepy little town by the Ouse. What!—the captivating letter-writer, the inventor of the immortal 'John Gilpin,' the delightful 'diva-gator' of the 'Task' and the tea-urn, the kindly proprietor of those 'canonized pets of literature,' Puss and Bess and Tiney—how, upon such a theme, could one excusably utter things harsh or censorious! It is impossible to picture him, when the curtains had fallen over those two windows, that looked upon the three-cornered market-place at Olney,—his head decorated (it may be) with the gaily ribboned cap which had been worked for him by his cousin Lady Hesketh, * his eyes milder than they seem in Romney's famous portrait, and placidly reading the 'Public Advertiser' to the click-click of Mrs. Unwin's stocking-needles,—without being smitten by a feeling of remorse. And opportunity for the expression of such remorse arrives pleasantly with an old-fashioned octavo which supplies the pretexts for a palinode in prose.
* A writing-cap worn by Cowper, his watch, a seal-ring given
to him by his eousin Theodora (his first love), and a ball
of worsted which he wound for Mrs. Unwin, were among the
relics exhibited in the South Gallery of the Guelph
Exhibition of 1891. The exhibitors were the Rev. W. Cowper
Johnson, and the Rev. W. Cowper Johnson, jun.
Its title, 'writ large,' is 'Cowper, illustrated by a Series of Views, in, or near, the Park of Weston-Underwood, Bucks;' and it is lavishly 4 embellished' with those mellow old plates which denote that steel had not yet supplanted copper. The artists and engravers were James Storer and John Greig, topographical chalcographers of some repute in the days of conventional foregrounds, and trees that look like pressed-out patterns in seaweed. But the 'picturesque' designs give us a good idea of the landscape that Cowper saw when he walked from Silver End at Olney to his friends the Throckmortons (the 'Mr. and Mrs. Frog' of his letters) at Weston House. Here is the long bridge of 'The Task,'