It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain at Northumberland House. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the poet waiting for an audience in an outer room. At his own audience Hawkins mentioned that the doctor was waiting. On their way home together, Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the _Traveller_ with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness. Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man’s graciousness. But Goldsmith had mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help. “As for myself,” he added, bitterly, “I have no dependence on the promises of great men. I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others.” “Thus,” says Hawkins, “did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.” The earl told Percy, after Goldsmith’s death, that had he known how to help the poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel. Let men of the world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow 15s. 6d. to meet his own wants. This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland were staying. As he took no notice of them, but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it. The poet, hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to dinner. This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in _She Stoops to Conquer_, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy. It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to give the following account:--