must abstract, absorb, and bury it in an abyss.' 'Bring the brain to act upon the heart.'

.. 'When

some one sorrow gets hold of your heart like a monomania-when you think, because Heaven has denied you that on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank, diet yourself on the biography of good and great men. See how little space-scarce a page perhaps is given to some grief similar to your own; and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it! You thought the wing was broken: it was but a bruised feather. See what life leaves behind when all is done! a summary of positive facts far out of the region of sorrow and suffering, linking themselves with the being of the world.'

On this principle, in order to take off his mind from meditating only on its severe misfortunes, Percy recommended his cousin to take up the study of heraldry and genealogy. For the honour of your family,' he wrote, 'it will be a pity if Dr. Nash's Book of Worcestershire should come out without all the information that can

be procured.' Of a common ancestress, Elizabeth Pembrudge, Percy wrote triumphantly:

The family of Pembruge was one of the most respectable in your part of England, being descended from a brother of Sir Richard Pembruge, K.G. in the reign of King Edward III. But now you will ask, how do I know this to be true? Upon the best authority possible: upon the Testimony of her own son, given upon oath in 1682, at the Herald's Visitation at Worcester. To comfort you for our not being able to ascertain the exact mode of your descent from the Walsh family, I here send you a table of your descent from the ancient Princes of Wales and Kings of England, every article of which can be proved from

6

undoubted Records. It is to old Elizabeth Pembruge that you are indebted for this fine piece of Genealogy.' But, as Gray said: Some spirit of genius more than common is required to teach a man how to employ himself. To find oneself business is the great art of life,' and even in the midst of all his engrossing labours, Sir Walter Scott could only say that his broken heart had been handsomely pieced again; the crack would remain to his dying day.'

From William Cleveland's subsequent career we gather that these studies did not prove so beneficial, as the strict course of geology with which Mr. Caxton cured a disconsolate widower. He dipped him deep into Gneiss and mica schist. Amidst the first strata he suffered the watery action to expend itself upon cooling crystallized masses, and by the time he had got him into the tertiary period, amongst the transition chalks of Maestricht and the conchiferous marls of Gosau, he was ready for a new wife.'

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CHAPTER VIII

1758-1779

THUS far we have seen Dr. Percy among his family and at his work, and now we must follow him into the world in which he delighted to spend those moments of leisure and recreation, the disposal of which most clearly reveals a man's character.

Percy loved society, and from it, as Dr. Johnson declared, only those who find themselves the worse, without making the world better, may be permitted to retire. His name, either as Dr. Percy or Bishop of Dromore, is constantly mentioned by Fanny Burney, Boswell, and others, among those present at the small dinners and assemblies of the inner circle of the literati. He was assiduous in his attendance at Court and at the Royal birthdays, and could not resist the curiosity of seeing all the 'reigning topics of the day.' If, on his arrival in London, he found everyone talking of the King of Denmark, Percy sat the whole night in the pit at the opera, just under the Royal box, in order to observe him. This pretty, slender youth of nineteen, fair and delicate as a girl, who with polite good humour took great pains in pleasing others, would, he thought, have looked as well in petticoats. Unwilling to mortify ' even the very performers at the opera,' His Majesty joined in expressing applause whenever it seemed proper. The easy looks of his attendants, as well as his own constant smiles, showed his benevolence, and gave promise of his proving a blessing to his subjects.

But Percy showed himself a poor judge of character, for this ruler of ladylike appearance' was the man who imprisoned and cruelly ill-treated his wife, Princess Caroline Matilda, the sister of George III., boasting that he only refrained from putting her to death out of regard for his Royal brother-in-law. Dr. Percy's chief delight, however, was not in these brilliant circles, where, as Johnson said when he visited Ranelagh, it went to his heart to reflect that there probably was not a single being around him who would not be ‘afraid to go home and think.' He was constantly to be seen among the literary society in London, and, like Gray, he loved those who 'leave behind them some traces of their journey through the world.' Such people are often destitute of that wealth which should insure almost every good thing, for without money 'a man can neither live as he pleases, nor where he pleases, nor with whom he pleases,' yet the poet felt almost comforted for the loss of his fortune when he saw how many rich people enjoy none of these blessings.

Thomas Percy's friendship for Oliver Goldsmith was of the kind that makes each meeting an event, therefore we are able to follow its course by means of his private notes. They first met on Wednesday, February 21, 1759, as the guests of Dr. Grainger at the Temple Exchange Coffee House, which was used for purposes of social intercourse by many who, like Goldsmith, lived in a garret writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk score.' 'The gates of the Muses,' like the Kingdom of Heaven, are hard but not impossible for the rich to enter into, though nothing is more apt to introduce a man to them than poverty.' At the coffee house, those who, like Goldsmith, also practised the art of medicine, could be consulted by

their patients, and letters might be received and written by such as were unwilling to reveal their humble dwellings. Percy met Goldsmith again at Dodsley's on February 26, and on Saturday, March 3, before returning to Easton Maudit, he sat all the morning with him at his rooms in Green Arbour Court, near the Old Bailey. He found him miserably lodged in a wretched, dirty room, revising the proofs of his Enquiry into Polite Learning in Europe,' which was at that time being printed for Dodsley and was published on April 3. He possessed but one chair, which he offered to his visitor, and sat himself in the window.

Goldsmith was at this time almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Eight years of disappointment, anguish and study had worn him down, and he describes his own pale, melancholy visage, with great wrinkles between the brows, an eye disgustingly severe and a big wig. He had no doubt, as he declared, contracted the suspicious manner, as well as the hesitating speech of the parcel of designing beings among whom he found himself, but we cannot believe that a man who found more pleasure in doing good-natured things than uneasiness in the doing of them was possessed of a countenance that looked like ill-nature itself.'

Dr. Percy found that he could not spend a morning in the company of one who loved his fellow-men without witnessing some call for help. The conversation was interrupted by a poor, ragged little girl, who rapped gently at the door, and, dropping a curtsey, begged for the loan of a few coals. This visit took place a month before Dr. Percy's marriage, and it is probable that his new interests diverted his mind for a while from his literary friends, for it is not until