The life of Richard Nash, Esq. is deservedly Oliver Goldsmith's best-known biography. It deals—very largely by the method of anecdote—with a man whose personality and career were intrinsically fascinating, and it exhibits throughout not only Goldsmith's inimitable easy style but also an attitude toward its subject perfectly balanced between irony and compassion. Apart from praising the work in general terms, however, scholars have paid relatively little attention to the Life of Nash and have provided only a cursory account of its sources and of the circumstances surrounding its composition and publication. In this article, I offer more specific information about the biography's sources—what Goldsmith called the materials of history—as well as some new details concerning Nash's affairs during the last years of his life. I have found a substantial amount of this new information through an effort to discover the identity of a man who played a vital part in the Life, George Scott.