FOR A RAINY DAY.* JOHN THOMAS Slum was a foolish

man, who once stumbled' into the writing of a very good book. Nollekens and his Times

is a masterpiece of its kind, and it proves that the author had qualities of observation and perception which more than

balanced his folly. His sense of detail is as conspicuously shown in that work as his malicious humour, and he has. succeeded in putting the old sculptor and his parsimonious wife before us with perfect fidelity. And yet his Book for a Rainy Day is more highly characteristic of its author than the' biography of Nollekens. For Smith was by nature and habit a gossip. He loved nothing so much as an irrelevant story, and though his taste may have made him something of a bore to his contemporaries, it has given this book of his a rare and obvious value.

To read A Book for a Rainy Day is, in fact, like conversing- with a very old man. The inconsequence of the work suggests a vague, haphazard talk. Open the pages where you will, and you will surprise an odd piece of information or an inconse- quent reminiscence of the distant past. And Smith set out upon his task in the proper spirit. He quotes Lord Orrery in his preface with excellent propriety. "I look upon anec- dotes," said his Lordship, "as debts due to the public, which every man, when he has that kind of cash by him, ought to pay." That is just the kind of cash which Smith had by him in great abundance, and he has paid it with a lavish band..

Moreover, he bad so keen an appreciation of anecdotes that they all seem to him worthy of remembrance. Good or bad,. blunt or pointed, he treasures them with an equal care ; and it

is this absence of selection which gives an air of reality to his. book.

And it must be admitted that for a lover of anecdotes he had extraordinarily good luck. He was born in a hackney coach, and that chance alone would keep a man in small talk for many a year. Then he was kissed when a boy by the- beautiful Perdita Robinson; he was patted on the head by Dr. Johnson; he saved Lady Hamilton from falling when she received the news of Nelson's death ; and he conversed thrice

with George III. That is not a bad equipment for a gossip; and as Smith did not die until 1833, he must have appeared a-

strange hero of the past to those long-suffering friends who heard his favourite anecdotes for the hundredth time. His book corresponds accurately to his temperament. It follows- one scent after another, and, having started a hare, leaves it suddenly when the pursuit is hottest. But it generally gives us good sport, and we need not complain at the irregular conduct of the chase.

Smith had all the pomposity of his time and class. He • gives you a sense of "amiable friends" and " generous. .

patrons." Though he practised all the arts, he achieved no great success in any of them, and perhaps he was more • intimately at home bidding at auctions than in teaching,

drawing or in "profiling, three-quartering, full-facing, and buttoning up the retired embroidery weavers, their crummy wives, and tight-laced daughters." But, if his talent was- small, he had at least the air and converse of the studio. For instance, it is thus that he prefaces his account of David Garrick's funeral :—

" On Monday, February 1st, Taylor, the facetious pupil of Frank Hayman, and the old friend of Jonathan Tyers, lifted Nollekens' studio door-latch, put in his head, and announced, 'For the information of some of the sons of Phidias, I beg to observe, that David Garrick is now on his way to pay his respects to Poets' Corner. I left him just as he was quitting the boards of the- -

Ad.elphi.' I begged of my father, who then carved for Mr. Nollekens, to allow me to go to Charing Cross to see the funeral pass, which he did with some reluctance. I was there in• a few minutes, followed him to the Abbey, heard the service, and. saw him buried."

That passage will serve as well as another to suggest the style s. and accent of Smith. A kind of boisterousness, mingled with a satisfaction that he was always on the spot, is characteristic of this picker up of trifles, who certainly contrives in his art- less way to put many a scene vividly before us. Nevertheless,. . he is at his best when he leaves anecdote for biography. He - had a quick eye for character, and he could draw those whom

he had seen far more vividly in words than on canvas. There - is nothing livelier in the book than his picture of the auction

• A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1708- - 1833. By John Thomas Smith. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Wilfred Whitten. London: Methuen and Co. [12.. 6d. net.]

sales and their frequenters. He knew them all, and he sketched them from the life with an ease and breadth which remind us—at a distance—of Hazlitt. Here, for instance, is a portrait of Gough, the editor of Camden's Britannia :—

" This antiquary," says Smith, "was about the same height as the auctioneer, but in a wig very different, as he wore, when I knew him, a short shiny curled one. His coat was of `formal out,' but he had no round belly ; and his waistcoat and smallelothes were from the same piece. He was mostly in boots, and carried a swish-whip when he walked. His temper I know was.not good, and he seldom forgave those persons who dared to bid stoutly against him for a lot at an auction."

And here is a curiously vivid picture of Mr. Woodhull, the -translator of Euripides :- " He was very thin, with a long nose and thick lips ; of manners perfectly gentlemanly. The great singularity of his appearance arose, perhaps, from his closing his coat from the first button, immediately under his chin, to the last, nearly extending to the bottom of his deep-flap waistcoat pockets. He seldom spoke, nor would he exceed one sixpence beyond the sum which he had put down in his catalogue to give for the articles he intended to bid for ; and though he frequently went away without purchasing a single lot, or even speaking to any one during the whole evening, he always took off his hat and bowed low to the company before he left the auction room."

But Smith, besides being a good hand at a portrait, had a quick eye for the interest of immaterial things. Where else

will you find, for instance, an account of Jeremiah Sago and his pagoda at Islington P Or of Sir Harry Dimsdale and Sir Jeffery Dunston, the mock-Mayors of Garrat ? Or of the dolphin knockers which were once the pride of Dean Street, Fetter Lane ? On May 17th, 1829, Smith " visited this street to see how many of his bronze-faced acquaintances exposed themselves, and found that Dean Street was nearly as deficient in its dolphin knockers as a churchyard is of its earliest tombstones, for out of seventeen only three remained." In 1892, as the present writer can testify, one dolphin alone remained, and this solitary specimen has now disappeared, as Mr. Whitten tells us in a note, doubtless to decorate a more dignified door. However, these instances will show the character of Smith's work, and will explain the value which it possesses to-day. History in a palatial sense may always be recovered. It is the odds and ends of life which are most easily forgotten, and it is the odds and ends of life which for the most part engaged the curiosity of John Thomas Smith. The book, then, was well worth reprinting ; it is aptly illustrated ; and of Mr. Whitten's notes the worst that can be said is that they are a trifle over-elaborate, and that now and again they suggest too great a seriousness in the annotator.