unconsciously, ‘Oh! it’s a very genteel place, I go there myself sometimes!’ Dr. Goodman was descended by the mother’s side from the poet Jago, was a private gentleman in town, and a medical dilettanti in the country, dividing his time equally between business and pleasure; had an inexhaustible flow of words, and an imperturbable vanity, and held ‘stout notions on the metaphysical score.’ He maintained the free agency of man, with the spirit of a martyr and the gaiety of a man of wit and pleasure about town—told me he had a curious tract on that subject by A. C. (Anthony Collins) which he carefully locked up in his box, lest any one should see it but himself, to the detriment of their character and morals, and put it to me whether it was not hard, on the principles of _philosophical necessity_, for a man to come to be hanged? To which I replied, ‘I thought it hard on any terms!’ A knavish _marker_, who had listened to the dispute, laughed at this retort, and seemed to assent to the truth of it, supposing it might one day be his own case. Mr. Smith and the Brangtons, in ‘Evelina,’ are the finest possible examples of the spirit of _Cockneyism_. I once knew a linen-draper in the City, who owned to me he did not quite like this part of Miss Burney’s novel. He said, ‘I myself lodge in a first floor, where there are young ladies in the house: they sometimes have company, and if I am out, they ask me to lend them the use of my apartment, which I readily do out of politeness, or if it is an agreeable party, I perhaps join them. All this is so like what passes in the novel, that I fancy myself a sort of second Mr. Smith, and am not quite easy at it!’ This was mentioned to the fair Authoress, and she was delighted to find that her characters were so true, that an actual person fancied himself to be one of them. The resemblance, however, was only in the externals; and the real modesty of the individual stumbled on the likeness to a city coxcomb!