[203] Old Cole, i.e. William Cole (1714-1782), was pronounced by Horace Walpole an “oracle in any antique difficulties.” The two travelled France together. Cole, who for many years was in Holy Orders, had filled forty folio volumes with notes on Cambridgeshire, concerning which he wrote to Walpole: “They are my only delight—they are my wife and children.” He earned such nicknames as Old Cole, Cole of Milton (where he lived), and Cardinal Cole (from his leanings to Romanism). Cole’s “wife and children” are now in the British Museum MSS. Department.
[204] The Rev. Dr. Isaac Gossett was proud of his long series of priced catalogues. Every bookseller knew his fad for milk-white vellum. So keen a bibliophile was Gossett, that an illness which kept him from the sale of the Pinelli collection vanished when he was given permission to inspect one of the volumes of the first Complutensian Polyglot Bible of Cardinal Ximenes, on vellum, and in the original binding. Dr. Gossett died in Newman Street, December 16, 1812, and was buried in Old Marylebone cemetery.
[205] Edward Cocker (1631-7?), writing master and arithmetician, is referred to in the phrase “according to Cocker.” The Dictionary of National Biography gives 1675 as the date of his death, but Mr. Wheatley (London Past and Present) quotes the Register of Burials at St. George the Martyr’s, Southwark: “Mr. Edward Cocker, Writing Mr. Aug. 26, 1676.”
[206] The wine and wit of Caleb Whitefoord (1734-1810) were both good. Smith reports Mrs. Nollekens as saying: “My dear Mrs. Pardice, you may safely take a glass of it, for it is the last of twelve which Mr. Caleb Whitefoord sent us as a present; and everybody who talks about wine should know his house has ever been famous for claret.” Smith, who often acidulates his ink, suggests that Whitefoord’s little presents and constant attendance on the Nollekens’ household showed the covetous collector rather than the kindly man. Burke, who thought meanly of Whitefoord’s services as secretary of the Commission for concluding peace with America, described him as a “diseur de bons mots.” Goldsmith mourns his wasted abilities in his “Retaliation”—
“Here Whitefoord reclines, deny it who can;
Tho’ he merrily lived, he is now a grave man.
What pity, alas! that so lib’ral a mind
Should so long be to Newspaper Essays confin’d!
…
Whose talents to fit any station were fit,