nothing. With a greater show of justice than he cared generally to afford him in this matter, Johnson laid his failure, on other occasions, rather to the want of temper than the want of power. "Goldsmith should not," he said, “be for "ever attempting to shine in conversation; he has not temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails. Sir, a game "of jokes is composed partly of skill, partly of chance; a man may be beat at times by one who has not the tenth part of his wit. Now, Goldsmith putting himself against "another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot spare the hundred. It is not worth a man's while... When "Goldsmith contends, if he gets the better it is a very little " addition to a man of his literary reputation; if he does not get the better, he is miserably vexed."+

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It should be added that there were other causes than these for Goldsmith's frequent vexation. Miss Reynolds relates that she overheard a gentleman at her brother's table, to whom he was talking his best, suddenly stop him in the middle of a sentence with "Hush! Hush! Doctor Johnson is going "to say something." The like was overheard-unless this be the original story adapted to her purpose by Miss Reynolds-at the first Academy dinner; when a Swiss named Moser, the first keeper appointed, interrupted him "when talking with fluent vivacity" to claim silence for

* Lady Pomfret's Letters, ii. 161. "I fired at them all, and did not make a "hit; I angled all night, but I caught nothing!" was his own candid remark to Cradock on one occasion. Memoirs, i. 231; iv. 280. + Bos. iii. 273.

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"Dr. Johnson seemed to have much more kindness for Goldsmith, than Gold"smith had for him. He always appeared to be overawed by Johnson, particularly "when in company with people of any consequence, always as if impressed with some fear of disgrace; and, indeed, well he might. I have been witness to many "mortifications he has suffered in Dr. Johnson's company." Croker's Boswell, 831. I suspect the mortification described in the text, however, to be another instance of the compilation of this lady's Recollections from already existing anecdotes, and that her story is but another form of Boswell's.

1770.

Æt. 42.

1770. Æt. 42.

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Doctor Johnson, on seeing the latter roll himself as if about to speak ("Stay, stay, Toctor Shonson is going to zay "zomething"), and was paid back for his zeal by Goldsmith's retort, "And are you sure you'll comprehend what he says?"* His happy rebuke of a similar subserviency of Boswell's, that he was for turning into a monarchy what ought to be a republic, is recorded by Boswell himself, who adds, with that air of patronage which is now so exquisitely ludicrous, " for my part I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly;" and upon the whole evidence it seems clear enough, that, much as his talk suffered from his maladdress, in substance it was not in general below the average of that of other celebrated men. Certainly, therefore, if we concede some truth to the Johnsonian antithesis which even good-humoured Langton repeats so complacently, “no man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had," we must yet admit it with due allowance. Walpole said much the same thing of Hume, whose writings he thought so superior to his conversation that he protested the historian understood nothing till he had written upon it; and even of his friend Gray he said he was the worst company in the world, for he never talked easily yet, in the sense of professed talk, Walpole himself talked ill, and so did Gay; and so did Dryden, Pope, and Swift; and so did Hogarth and Addison.§

Nothing is recorded of those men, or of others as famous,

*Boswell adds, "This was, no doubt, very provoking, especially to one so "irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of 'indignation." iii. 301.

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as

"One evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority. 'Sir,' said he, 'you "are for making a monarchy of what should be a republic.'" (iii. 300.) That is surely very happily said. Pinkerton's Correspondence, i. 70.

§ Pope says of Dryden (in Spence's Anecdotes) that he was "not very con

1770.

so clever as the specimens of the talk of Goldsmith which Boswell himself has not cared to forget. Nay, even he goes Et. 42. so far as to admit, that "he was often very fortunate in his "witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson "himself." An immortal instance was remembered by Reynolds. He, Johnson, and Goldsmith, were together one day, when the latter said that he thought he could write a good fable; mentioned the simplicity which that kind of composition requires; and observed that in most fables the animals introduced seldom talk in character. "For instance," said he, "the fable of the little fishes who saw "birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill," he continued, "consists in making them talk like little fishes." At this point he observed Johnson shaking his sides and laughing, whereupon he made this home thrust. "Why, Mr. Johnson, "this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were "to make little fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES."* This was giving Johnson what Garrick called a forcible

"versible;" and Dryden describes his own talk as "slow and dull." "As much company as I have kept," says Pope of himself, "and as much as I love it, I love reading better." (Spence, 45, Ed. 1820.) Walpole describes one of the dullest days he ever passed to have been between "tragedy and comedy," when he had Gray and Hogarth to dine with him. The one wouldn't talk, and the other couldn't. Gray "" never converses easily," he said on another occasion; "all his words are "measured and chosen, and formed into sentences." Collected Letters, ii. 240. The remark in the text, it is at the same time to be remembered, applies to conversation in the sense of a professed art; and is not to be supposed to imply that these famous men, even though they were not expert at the cunning fence of talk, might not nevertheless be (as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu protests Addison was) "the best company in the world." Swift gives us not a bad idea of at least one quality which must have made Addison amusing company, in telling us that Stella had a trick which she learned from him, of always encouraging a man in absurdity, instead of endeavouring to extricate him. And see ante, 100 (note).

* The remark shows what a capital book Goldsmith's fairy stories for children would have been (ante, i. 272), and what a loss the nursery libraries of this kingdom have experienced. Failing this, however, they have certainly of late had a substitute well deserving of mention here, in Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. I do not

1770.

hug,* and it shook laughter out of the big man in his own Et. 42. despite. But in truth no one, as Boswell has admitted, could take such "adventurous liberties" with the great social despot, "and escape unpunished."+ Beauclerc tells us that on Goldsmith originating, one day, a project for a third theatre in London solely for the exhibition of new plays, in order to deliver authors from the supposed tyranny of

admire that writer's novels generally, but in his children's legends there seems to
me to be a most surprising sense of the variety of being that exists in the universe,
and a most subtle sympathy with it. So intimate a knowledge is conveyed to us of the
feelings of ducks and ducklings, swans and storks, mermans and mermaidens, night-
ingales, flowers, and daisies, even of slugs and cuttlefish, and of what all sorts of
animated creatures round about us think, do, and might say if they could speak, that
one begins to feel as Mrs. Gulliver did when her husband returned from Houynhnm
land. Not only do Andersen's whales and little fishes and bulls talk all in cha-
racter, but even his vegetables. His green peas have as much conversational
character as his ducks and geese; nay, his very peg-tops and balls are full of
individuality. A "daisy " with him is quite a sweet creature for the pathetic and
pastoral beauty of her tongue; and one of his "leather-balls" is of so aristocratical
a character, that when proposals are made to her by a "peg-top," because they
happen to have been companions in the same drawer, she indignantly asks him
whether he is aware that her "father and mother were morocco slippers," and
that she has "cork in her body." Nor can I enough admire his picture of the
stork parading about on his long red legs, discoursing in Egyptian, which language
he had learnt from his mother. Is not Egyptian the very language that by way of
accomplishment a stork would know? But the prince of all histories, for its
thorough illustration of the spirit of humbug, and of the way in which the great and
small vulgar agree to cant about what they do not believe, is the "Emperor's new
"Clothes," the idea of which Andersen seems to have found in an earlier German
tale. I commend it to all readers.
* Boswell, iii. 274.

+ Stockdale describes an argument between Johnson and Goldsmith at Tom Davies's dinner table this year, in which, on the other hand, one may perceive the kind of subject into which the inferior disputant often blundered indiscreetly, without the support of either knowledge or good-taste. "Among other topics, "Warburton claimed our attention. Goldsmith took a part against Warburton, "whom Johnson strenuously defended, with many strong arguments, and with "bright sallies of eloquence. Goldsmith ridiculously asserted that Warburton 66 was a weak writer. This misapplied characteristic Dr. Johnson refuted. I "shall never forget one of the happy metaphors with which he strengthened and "illustrated his refutation. 'Warburton,' said he, 'may be absurd, but he will "never be weak he flounders well.' Goldsmith," adds Mr. Stockdale, “made "a poor figure in conversation: in that exercise of the mind he was as indigent "of force and expression as Johnson was superabundant in both." Percival Stockdale's Memoirs, ii. 64.

managers (a project often renewed since, and always sure
to fail, for the simple reason that authors themselves become
managers, and all authors cannot be heard), Johnson treated
it slightingly upon which the other retorted "
Ay, ay,
"this may be nothing to you, who can now shelter yourself
"behind the corner of a pension;" and Johnson bore it
with perfect good humour. But the most amusing instance
connected with the pension occurred a year or two afterwards,
when, on the appearance of Mason's exquisite Heroic Epistle,*
Goldsmith, delighted with it himself, carried it off to his
friend, and was allowed to read it out to him from beginning
to end with a running accompaniment of laughter,† in which
Johnson as heartily joined at the invocation to George the

Of this once so disputed authorship there is now no doubt, or that Walpole was privy to it all along. See Correspondence of Mason and Walpole, passim. Nicholls tells us, that, on Mason expressing offence at the king for having reflected on him with severity on some occasion, he remarked to him "that is a trifle for "you to say, who are the author of the Heroic Epistle;" on which Mason replied instantly, in a surly, nasal tone which was not unusual to him, "I am told the "king thinks so, and he is welcome." Gray's Works, v. 40. It is very amusing now to read Percival Stockdale's remark in his Memoirs (ii. 88) on Mason's satire. "A piece of finer and more poignant poetical irony never was written. It was "foolishly given by many people to Mason: it was totally different from his man'ner; its force, its acuteness, its delicacy, and urbanity of genius prove that he was incapable to write it. Yet he was absurdly and conceitedly offended with "those who supposed him to be the author of it," &c. &c. Johnson of course detested Mason for what he called his whiggism and his priggism, but there were things in the Heroic Epistle which he would have liked even if he had known the writer, just as he persisted in admiring passages notwithstanding his dislike of its general tone, and freely forgave its laugh at himself for its equally hearty laugh at many of his favourite aversions.

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This was in 1773. See Boswell, viii. 90-91, and see Coll. Lett. v. 342. Mason was making but a poor return for this appreciation of his humour, when, falling into Walpole's tone in the course of their conferences about the Epistle, he writes àpropos of one of the many "Postscripts" which its success elicited: "If "I send for a new pamphlet, it is above a fortnight before it arrives. This was "the case with the Heroic Postscript, which you mentioned in your last. But you "did not tell me that I had the honour of being placed in the same line with "Doctor Goldsmith; if you had, I should hardly have sent for it. However, I am more contented with my company than Garrick will be with his." Walpole and Mason Correspondence, i. 131.

1770.

Et. 42.