T HE greater number of the papers in this series, dealing with some well-known persons and incidents of the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, are the practical result of a long conversation which the writer had with the late Professor J. Churton Collins upon a very memorable occasion. The writer ventured to contend that the existing views respecting the personality of Oliver Goldsmith, of Henry Thrale, of James Boswell, of Samuel Johnson, and of some others whom he named, were grossly erron

O n the morning of February 2nd, 1789, a lady was taking a solitary stroll in Kew Gardens. She was a small person, of dainty features, with a dimple on each side of her mouth that suggested a smile, varying, perhaps out of compliment to the variations of the people with whom she came in contact in her daily life, and shifting doubtless with the movements of the folk of her fancy through her quick brain, but remaining a smile all the time. There was about her a good deal of that doll-like primnes

D R BURNEY was giving a “command” party at his house in St. Martin's Street, Leicester Fields—the house which Sir Isaac Newton did once inhabit, and which was still crowned with the most celebrated observatory in Europe. In the early years of his musical career he had had a patron, Mr. Fulk Greville, who had done a great deal for him, and in later days he had never quite forgotten this fact, although Dr. Burney had climbed high on the professional as well as the social ladder, and was better kno

A BOUT half-past nine o'clock on the night of October 6th, 1769, a tall, middle-aged gentleman named Joseph Baretti was walking up the Hay-market. The street was probably as well lighted as any other in London, and this is equivalent to saying that a foot passenger, by keeping close to the windows of the shops and taking cross bearings of the economically distributed oil lamps hung out at the corners of the many lanes, might be able to avoid the deep channel of filth that slunk along the margin

W HEN Mr. Boswell had been snubbed, and very soundly snubbed too, by a Duchess, one might fancy that his ambition was fully satisfied. But he was possibly the most persevering of the order of Pachydermata at that time extant; and in the matter of snubs he had the appetite of a leviathan. He was fired with the desire to be snubbed once more by Her Grace—and he was. Without waiting to catch her eye, he raised his glass and, bowing in her direction, said: “My Lady Duchess, I have the honour to drin

N O one knows to-day with whom the idea of having an English fête-champêtre at The Oaks upon the occasion of the marriage of the young Lord Stanley to Lady Betty Hamilton originated. The secret was well kept; and it can be easily understood that in case of this innovation proving a fiasco, no one would show any particular desire to accept the responsibility of having started the idea. But turning out as it did, a great success, it might have been expected that many notable persons would lay clai

I N the year 1790-1 there was played in real life a singularly poor adaptation of an unwritten novel by one of the Minifie sisters—those sentimental ladies who, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, provided the circulating libraries with several volumes of high-flown fiction. The adaptation of this unwritten novel possessed a good many of the most prominent features of the original, so that when it was brought to light there could be very little doubt as to the brain out of which i

I N the summer of 1770 there arrived at the town of Lisle a coach containing three ladies and one man, followed by a travelling chaise with servants and luggage. Of the ladies, one was approaching middle age, handsome and elegant; the other two were her daughters, and both were extremely beautiful and graceful girls, under twenty years of age. The man was a small, middle-aged person, with a face which one would have called plain if it had not been that the protruding of his upper lip and the twi

H E occupied one room in the farmhouse—the guest-chamber it had probably been called when the farm was young. It was a pretty spacious apartment up one pair of stairs and to the right of the landing, and from its window there was a pleasing prospect of a paddock with wheat-fields beyond; there was a drop in the landscape in the direction of Hendon, and here was a little wood. The farmer's name was Selby, a married man with a son of sixteen, and younger children, and the farmhouse was the nearest

F OR some time after the publication of my novel The Jessamy Bride my time was fully occupied by replying to correspondents—strangers to me—who were good enough to take an interest in Mary Horneck, the younger of the two charming sisters with whom Goldsmith associated for several years of his life on terms of the warmest affection. The majority of these communications were of a very interesting character. Only one correspondent told me I should not have allowed Oliver Goldsmith to die so young,

O N a certain evening in March, 1772, the fashionable folk of Bath were as earnestly on pleasure bent as they were wont to be at this season—and every other. The Assembly Rooms were open, a performance was going on at the theatre, the Cave of Harmony was as musical as Pyrrha's Grotto, a high-class concert was taking place under the conductorship of the well-known Mr. Linley, and the Countess of Huntingdon was holding a prayer meeting. For people who took their diversions à la carte , there was a

W HEN young Mr. Sheridan returned to Bath after his happy little journey to France with Miss Linley and back with Mr. Linley, he may have believed that the incident was closed. He had done all that—and perhaps a little more than—the most chivalrous man of experience and means could be expected to do for the young woman toward whom he had stood in the position of a protecting brother. He had conducted her to the convent at Lille, on which she had set her heart, and he had been able to explain sat

O N an evening in April, 1779, the play, “ Love in a Village ” was being performed at Covent Garden Theatre before a large audience. In the front row of the boxes sat two ladies, one of them young and handsome, the other not so young and not so beautiful—a dark-faced, dark-eyed woman whom no one could mistake for any nationality except Italian. Three gentlemen who sat behind them were plainly of their party—elegant gentlemen of fashion, one of them an Irish peer. Every person of quality in the t