1769. Et. 41. up to the elbows,-both thought themselves entitled to make the most of poor Goldsmith's "bragging;" and Garrick, however good the humour he might be in, had always his laugh in equal readiness. "Come, come," he said, “talk no 66 66 more of that. You are perhaps the worst. eh, eh!" Goldsmith eagerly attempted to interrupt him. Nay,” continued Garrick, laughing ironically, "nay, you will always look like a gentleman; but I am talking of being "well or ill drest." "Well," answered Goldsmith, with an amusing simplicity which makes the anecdote very pleasant to us, "let me tell you, when my tailor brought home my "bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg "of you. When any body asks you who made your clothes, "be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow in 66 6 'Water-lane.' "Why, sir," remarked Johnson, “that was because he knew the strange colour would attract "crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and "see how well he could make a coat, even of so absurd a "colour." Crowds have been attracted to gaze at it, and Mr. Filby's bloom-coloured coat defies the ravages of time! How the party talked after dinner may be read in Boswell; in all whose reports, however, the confessed object is to give merely the talk of one speaker, with only such limited fragments of remark from others as may be necessary in elucidation of the one. Thus, there are but two sentences preserved of Goldsmith's; both sensible enough, though both of them indicating that he was not disposed to accept all Johnson's criticism for gospel. He put in a word for Pope's character of Addison, as showing a deep knowledge of the human "heart," while Johnson was declaring (quite justly) that in Dryden's poetry were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach; and he quietly interposed, 66 when Johnson took to praising Lord Kames's Elements of 1769. Criticism, that it must have been easier to write that book Et. 41. "than it was to read it." A very interesting dinner to have been present at, one feels on the whole this must have been. Goldsmith's new coat one would like to have seen, with the first freshness of its bloom upon it. Something it must have been to hear Johnson repeat, "in his forcible melodious manner," those magnificent closing lines of the Dunciad which Pope himself could not repeat without a voice that faltered with emotion. Nor could the eager encounter of Garrick with Johnson on the respective merits of Shakspeare and Congreve fail to have had its entertainment for us; and, beyond and before all, who would not have laughed to see the very giver as well as describer of the feast, plucking up courage to "venture" a remark at it, and bluntly called a dunce for his pains! 666 66 666 * * "Johnson said that the description of the temple, in The Mourning Bride, was "the finest poetical passage he had ever read: he recollected none in Shakspeare "equal to it. 'But,' said Garrick, all alarmed for the God of his idolatry, we know not the extent and variety of his powers. We are to suppose there "' are such passages in his works. Shakspeare must not suffer from the badness "of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastic jealousy, went on "with great ardour: 'No, sir; Congreve has nature' (smiling on the tragic ' eagerness of Garrick); but composing himself, he added, 'Sir, this is not com"paring Congreve on the whole with Shakspeare on the whole; but only main"taining that Congreve has one finer passage than any that can be found in "Shakspeare. Sir, a man may have no more than ten guineas in the world, but "he may have those ten guineas in one piece; and so may have a finer piece than "a man who has ten thousand pound: but then he has only one ten-guinea "piece."" Boswell, iii. 87. If Johnson really believed what he said of Congreve, there is no more to be added than that his own mind could not reach to a finer passage, and did not know it when it lay before him. But, notwithstanding that Congreve's lines really do make an appeal to that superstitious side of Johnson's nature which gave always so ready a response, it is also very evident that he was fond of this kind of paradoxical teasing of Garrick. "He told me," says Mrs. Thrale, "how he used to tease Garrick by commendations of the Tomb 66 scene in Congreve's Mourning Bride" [evidently the same thing quoted at Boswell's dinner table] "protesting that Shakspeare had, in the same line of excellence, nothing so good; 'All which is strictly true,' said he" [a pity he did !] "'but that is no reason for supposing Congreve is to stand in competition with 66 6 'Shakspeare: these fellows know not how to blame, nor how to commend."" Anecdotes, 58. VOL. II. 1769. Poor Boswell appears to have been the only one who came Et. 41. off ill at this dinner, as he did at several other meetings before he returned to Scotland,-being compared to Pope's dunces,* having his head called his peccant part, and receiving other as unequivocal compliments,-so that he was fain to console himself with what he now heard Goldsmith, happily adapting an expression in one of Cibber's comedies, say of his hero's conversation: "There is no arguing with Johnson; for "when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the "butt-end of it." t The nature of Goldsmith's employments at the close of 1769, are indicated in the advertising columns of the papers of the day. His English History occupied him chiefly, his History of Animated Nature occasionally; he had undertaken to write a life of his countryman, Parnell, for a new edition of his poems, this being a subject in which, as he remarks in the biography itself, what he remembered having collected in boyhood "from my father and uncle, who knew him," had doubtless given him a personal interest,—and the speedy publication of the Deserted Village was twice announced in the Public While Johnson was talking loudly in praise of the closing lines of the Dunciad, one of the company ventured to say (so Boswell tenderly introduces a remark from himself, the host and entertainer), "Too fine for such a poem :-a poem on what?" JOHNSON (with a disdainful look), "Why, on Dunces. "It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, sir, hadst thou lived in those "days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Northcote, in his Life of Reynolds (ii. 189) has mistold this same incident, evidently taking it out of Boswell's book; and yet, as I have elsewhere frequent occasion to remark, the copyist gets himself quoted afterwards to corroborate or invalidate the only real authority. See Croker's Boswell, 203, note 6. Boswell, iii. 104. Cooke reports another saying of Goldsmith's to the same effect. "There's no chance for you in arguing with Johnson. Like the Tartar "horse, if he does not conquer you in front, his kick from behind is sure to be "fatal." Cooke adds that Goldsmith never had any scruple in venting his pleasantries before Johnson, with whom he might say and do many things cum privilegio; for, says Cooke very truly, Doctor Johnson knew Goldsmith early and whilst he was struggling with his poverty, and always thought as respectfully of his heart as of his talents. Advertiser. But it was not published speedily. was paused over, altered, polished, and refined. * Percy has mentioned the delightful facility with which his prose flowed forth unblotted with erasure, as a contrast to the labour and pains of his verse interlined with countless alterations; but in prose, as in poetry, he aimed at the like effects, and obtained them. He knew that no picture will stand, if the colours are bad, ill-chosen, or indiscreetly combined; and that not chaos, but order, is creation. It is a pity that men, though of perhaps greater genius, who have lived since his time, should not more deeply have pondered such lessons as his writings bequeath to us. It is a pity that the disposition to rush into print should be so general; for few men have ever repented of publishing too late. Goldsmith, alas! never found himself without the excuse which the successful poet, supreme in his power and mastery over the town, threw out for the instant needs and pressing necessities of less fortunate men. "Nine years 'Keep your piece nine years." !" cries he, who, high in Drury Lane, Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, Yet neither at the request of friends, nor at the more urgent * Memoir, 113. "His elegant and enchanting style in prose flowed from him "with such facility, that in whole quires of his Histories, Animated Nature, &c., "he had seldom occasion to correct or alter a single word; but in his verses, "especially his two great ethic poems, nothing could exceed the patient and "incessant revisal, which he bestowed upon them. To save himself the trouble of "transcription, he wrote the lines in his first copy very wide, and would so fill up "the intermediate space with reiterated corrections, that scarcely a word of his "first effusions was left unaltered." + Prol. to Satires, 40-44. 1769. Æt. 41. 1770. Æt. 42. of sending forth a part of a poem one winter, and promising its completion for the winter following, would be laughed at now a days yet extremely few are the thoughts" conceived "with rapture and with fire begot," compared with those that may be carefully brought forth, becomingly and charmingly habited, and introduced by the Graces. Men of the more brilliant order of fancy and imagination should be always distrustful of their powers. Spar and stalactite are bad materials for the foundation of solid edifices. The year 1770 opens with a glimpse into the old fireside at Kilmore. The Lawders do not seem to have communicated with him since his uncle Contarine's death; and a legacy of £15, left him by that generous friend, remained unappropriated in their hands. His brother Maurice, still without calling or employment, and apparently living on such of his relatives as from time to time were willing to afford him a home, probably heard this legacy, mentioned while he made one of his self-supporting visits, for he straightway wrote to Oliver. The money would help him to an outfit, if his famous brother could help him to an appointment; and to express his earnest hopes in this direction, was the drift of the letter. His sister Johnson wrote soon after, for her husband, in a precisely similar strain; and to these letters Goldsmith's reply has been kept. It shows little change since earlier days. His Irish friends and family are as they then were. They do not seem to have answered many recent communications sent to them; he now learns for the first time that Charles is no longer in Ireland; his brother-in-law, Hodson, has been as silent as the rest; his sister Hodson he never mentions, some early disagreement remaining still unsettled; and he sends cousin Jenny his |