Goldsmith treats Nash with very much the
same sort of indulgent and apologetic sympathy
with which M. Barbey d'Aurevilly treats Brum-
mell. He does not affect to think that the world
calls for a full-length statue of such a fantastic
hero ; but he seems to claim leave to execute a



232 Gossip in a Library-

statuette in terra-cotta for a cabinet of curio-
sities. From that point of view, as a queer
object of vertu, as a specimen of the bric-a-brac
of manners, both the one and the other, the
King of Beaux and the Emperor of Dandies, are
welcome to amateurs of the odd and the enter-
taining. At the head of Goldsmith's book stands
a fine portrait of Nash, engraved by Anthony
Walker, one of the best and rarest of early
English line-engravers, after an oil-picture by
William Hoare, presently to be one of the foun-
dation-members of the Royal Academy, and now
and throughout his long life the principal repre-
sentative of the fine arts at Bath. Nash is here
represented in his famous white hat — galero albo,
as his epitaph has it ; the ensign of his rule at
Bath, the more than coronet of his social sway.
The breast of his handsome coat is copiously
trimmed with rich lace, and his old, old eyes,
with their wrinkles and their crow's feet, look
demurely out from under an incredible wig, an
umbrageous, deep-coloured ramilie of early
youth. It is a wonderfully hard-featured,
serious, fatuous face, and it lives for us under



Beau Nash 233

the delicate strokes of Anthony Walker's graver.
