Detraction, however, has insinuated that Mallet, his step-son’s tutor, was Nugent’s penholder in this instance. ‘Mr. Nugent sure did not write his own Ode,’ says Gray to Walpole (Gray’s _Works_, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 220). Earl Nugent died in Dublin in October, 1788, and was buried at Gosfield in Essex, a property he had acquired with his second wife. A _ Memoir_ of him was written in 1898 by Mr. Claud Nugent. He is described by Cunningham as ‘a big, jovial, voluptuous Irishman, with a loud voice, a strong Irish accent, and a ready though coarse wit.’ According to Percy (_Memoir_, 1801, p. 66), he had been attracted to Goldsmith by the publication of _The Traveller_ in 1764, and he mentioned him favourably to the Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A note in Forster’s _Life_, 1871, ii. 329–30, speaks of Goldsmith as a frequent visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent’s house in Great George Street, Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host’s daughter, Mary, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham. Scott and others regarded _The Haunch of Venison_ as autobiographical. To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say. That it represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an actual present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to Reynolds, is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is also clear that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some of its details from Boileau’s third satire; and that, in certain of the lines, he had in memory Swift’s _Grand Question Debated_, the measure of which he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth of the whole. ‘His genius’ (as Hazlitt says) ‘was a mixture of originality and imitation’; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably in his work. The author of the bailiff scene in the _Good Natur’d Man_ was quite capable of inventing for the nonce the tragedy of the unbaked pasty, or of selecting from the Pilkingtons and Purdons of his acquaintance such appropriate guests for his Mile End Amphitryon as the writers of the _Snarler_ and the _Scourge_. It may indeed even be doubted whether, if _The Haunch of Venison_ had been absolute personal history, Goldsmith would ever have retailed it to his noble patron at Gosfield, although it may include enough of real experience to serve as the basis for a _jeu d’esprit_. The fat was so white, etc. The first version reads—‘The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy.’ Though my stomach was sharp, etc. This couplet is not in the first version.