Percy was a little in doubt about the second of these Epilogues (which in the edition of 1801 he cut down from 58 lines to 42), for he invited George Steevens on 10 September, 1797, to ask Mrs. Bulkley if she remembered for what play it was intended: “He [Goldsmith] gave it me among a parcel of letters and papers, some written by himself, and some addressed to him, but with not much explanation” (_Literary Illustrations_, VII, 31). Steevens’ reply of 14 September, 1797, was in his usual caustic vein: “The lady you would have interrogated ceased to be at least seven years ago: and what would the public say could it be known that your Lordship, a Protestant Bishop, was desirous to send your sober correspondents into the other world a harlot-hunting?” (_Ibid_, 32). It is a little surprising that the Bishop should not have at once recognised its obvious associations with “She Stoops to Conquer,” in view of the two lines at the end of the Epilogue: “No high-life scenes, no sentiment: the creature “Still stoops among the low to copy nature.” But all these points, in their way interesting and even absorbing, are rather beyond the object with which I embarked upon this paper, viz.: to do justice to the affectionate side of Goldsmith’s warm Irish nature by bringing into relief the letters which, despite his repugnance to correspondence, he from time to time addressed to members of his own family with ardent and even pitiful appeals for news from Ireland. These appeals, it is to be feared, had no satisfactory response from the recipients of the letters which after their many adventures I have now had the privilege of exhibiting to you, and which I think serve to illustrate the truth of Dr. Johnson’s dictum: “Goldsmith was a man of such variety of powers and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing: a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint and easy without weakness.” APPENDIX. _Biographical particulars as to the members of Oliver Goldsmith’s family, partly from unpublished sources._ Oliver Goldsmith died on 4 April, 1774. Although there was some talk of a biography of him being undertaken by Johnson, it appears to have become a common understanding, soon after the death, amongst the members of The Club and their associates that the work of collecting and preparing the materials for the biography would be done by Thomas Percy. At that time Percy had achieved a certain reputation in literary circles, but was by no means the important person in the ecclesiastical sense that he afterwards became. He was then mainly resident in London as Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland and as one of the Chaplains of the King. It was not until 1778 that he was made Dean of Carlisle, from which position he was promoted in 1782 to the Bishopric of Dromore in Ireland.