Goldsmith and his First Biography

Abstract

It will be remembered that Dr Goldsmith had entrusted Percy with many of his papers, and had begged him to undertake to write his biography; but the Bishop either found no time to discharge the trust committed to him by his friend, or he was deterred through fear of associating himself with anything that might appear inconsistent with his episcopal position. In his day a bishop was expected, above all things, to be pompous. Sir William Pepys wrote of a newly chosen Bishop of Durham that he was ‘as proper a person as could have been appointed, as his coldness and distance of manner will be less imputed to him as a fault in that very elevated station to which he is raised’.

In Percy: Prelate and Poet (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1908) pp. 210–16. Editor’s title.