virtue (it was the night when Burke announced his famous judgment, that from all the large experience he had had, he had learnt to think

"kind.

Let the request be made with a happy ambiguity of "expression, so that we may have the chance of his sending it also as a present." "I am willing," observed Johnson, "to offer my "services as secretary on this occasion." "As many as are for Doctor "Johnson being secretary," cried another member, "hold up your

Carried unanimously."

hands. "He will be our dictator," said Boswell. "No," returned Johnson, "the company is to dictate to me. I am only to write for wine; and I am quite disinterested, as I drink none; I shall not be suspected of having forged "the application. I am no more than humble scribe.” Then," interposed Burke, inveterate punster that he was, "you shall pre"scribe.' "Very well," cried Boswell; "the first play of words "to-day." "No, no," interrupted Reynolds, recalling a previous bad pun of Burke's "the bulls in Ireland." "Were I your dictator," resumed Johnson, " you should have no wine. It would be my "business cavere ne quid detrimenti Respublica caperet, and wine is dangerous. Rome," he added smiling, "was ruined by luxury.” "Then," protested Burke, "if you allow no wine as dictator, you "shall not have me for your master of the horse." The club lives again for us very pleasantly, in this good-humoured friendly talk.

66

Six days after Boswell's election, he was with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Langton, among the guests at the dinner table of booksellers Dilly in the Poultry. They were dissenters; and had asked two ministers of their own persuasion, Doctor Mayo and Mr. Toplady, to meet their distinguished guests. The conversation first turning upon natural history, Goldsmith contributed to it some curious facts about the partial migrations of swallows ("the stronger 66 ones migrate, the others do not "), and on the subject of the nidification of birds seemed disposed to revive the old question of instinct and reason. "Birds build by instinct," said Johnson; "they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any "one they ever build." "Yet we see," remarked Goldsmith, "if "you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a "slighter nest and lay again." Sir," said Johnson, "that is "because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. "In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore "make her nest quickly." To which Goldsmith merely added that the nidification of birds was "what is least known in natural history, "though one of the most curious things in it." But this easy flow of instructive gossip did not satisfy Boswell. He saw a great

opportunity, with two dissenting parsons present, of making Johnson "rear"; and so straightway "introduced the subject of "toleration." Johnson and the dissenters disagreed of course; and when they put to him, as a consequence of his argument, that the persecution of the first Christians must be held to have been perfectly right, he frankly declared himself ignorant of any better way of ascertaining the truth than by persecution on the one hand and endurance on the other. "But how is a man to act, sir?" asked Goldsmith at this point. "Though firmly convinced of the truth "of his doctrine, may he not think it wrong to expose himself to

"persecution? Has he a right to do so? Is it not, as it were, committing voluntary suicide?" "Sir, as to voluntary suicide, "as you call it," retorted Johnson, "there are twenty thousand men who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach "for fivepence a-day." "But," persisted Goldsmith, “have they "a moral right to do this?" Johnson evaded the question by asserting that a man had better not expose himself to martyrdom who had any doubt about it. "He must be convinced that he "has a delegation from Heaven." "Nay," repeated Goldsmith, apparently unconscious that he was pressing disagreeably on Johnson. "I would consider whether there is the greater chance of "good or evil upon the whole. If I see a man who has fallen into "a well, I would wish to help him out; but if there is a greater 66 probability that he shall pull me in, than that I shall pull him out, I would not attempt it. So, were I to go to Turkey, I "might wish to convert the grand signior to the Christian "faith; but when I considered that I should probably be put to "death without effectuating my purpose in any degree, I should "keep myself quiet." To this Johnson replied by enlarging on perfect and imperfect obligations, and by repeating that a man to be a martyr, must be persuaded of a particular delegation from Heaven. “But how,” still persisted Goldsmith, "is this to be "known? Our first reformers, who were burnt for not believing "bread and wine to be Christ-" "Sir," interrupted Johnson, loudly, and careless what unfounded assertion he threw out to interrupt him, "they were not burnt for not believing bread and "wine to be Christ, but for insulting those who did."

What with his dislike of reforming protestants and his impatience of contradiction, Johnson had now become excited to keep the field he had so recklessly seized, and in such manner that none should dispossess him. Goldsmith suffered accordingly. Boswell describes him during the resumption and continuation of the argument, into which Mayo and Toplady again resolutely plunged with their antagonist, sitting in restless agitation from a wish to get in and "shine;" which certainly was no unnatural wish after the unfair way he had been ousted. Finding himself still excluded, however, he had taken his hat to go away; but yet remained with it for some time in his hand, like a gamester at the close of a long night, lingering still for a favourable opening to finish with success. Once he began to speak; and found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not perceive his attempt. "Thus disappointed of "his wish to obtain the attention of the company," says Boswell, "Goldsmith in a passion threw down his hat, looking angrily at "Johnson, and exclaiming in a bitter tone, Take it." At this

moment, Toplady being about to speak, and Johnson uttering some sound which led Goldsmith to think he was again beginning, and was taking the words from Toplady, "Sir," he exclaimed, venting his own envy and spleen, according to Boswell, under the pretext of supporting another person, "the gentleman has heard 66 you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him." "Sir," replied Johnson sternly, "I was not interrupting the "gentleman. I was only giving him a signal of my attention. "Sir, you are impertinent." Goldsmith made no reply, but continued in the company for some time. He then left for the club.

66

But it is very possible he had to call at Covent-garden on his way, and that for this, and not for Boswell's reason, he had taken his hat early. The actor who so served him in Young Marlow, Lee Lewes, was taking his benefit this seventh of May; and, for an additional attraction, Goldsmith had written him the осса"sional" epilogue I formerly mentioned, which Lewes spoke in the character of Harlequin, and which was repeated (for the interest then awakened by the writer's recent death) at his benefit in the following year. But if he called at the theatre, his stay was brief; for when Johnson, 'Langton, and Boswell appeared in Gerrard-street, they found him sitting with Burke, Garrick, and other members, "silently brooding," says Boswell, "over Johnson's "reprimand to him after dinner.” Johnson saw how matters stood, and saying aside to Langton, "I'll make Goldsmith forgive "me," called to him in a loud voice, "Doctor Goldsmith! some"thing passed to-day where you and I dined : I ask your pardon." To which Goldsmith at once "placidly" answered, "It must be "much from you, sir, that I take ill." And so at once, Boswell adds, the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldy rattled away as usual.

The whole story is to Goldsmith's honour. Not so did the reverend Percy or the reverend Warton show Christian temper, when the one was called insolent and the other uncivil; not so could the courtly-bred Beauclerc or the country-bred Doctor Taylor restrain themselves, when Johnson roared them down; not so the gentle Langton and unruffled Reynolds, when even they were called intemperate; not so the historic Robertson, though comparing such rebukes of the righteous to excellent oil which breaks not the head, nor the philosophic Burke, drily correcting the historian with a suggestion of "oil of vitriol; "—not so, in short, with one single submissive exception, any one of the constant victims to that forcible spirit and impetuosity of manner, which, as the submissive victim admits, spared neither sex nor age.

But Boswell was not content that the scene should have passed as it did. Two days after, he called to take leave of Goldsmith

before returning to Scotland, and seems to have chafed, with his meddling loquacity, what remained of a natural soreness of feeling. He dwells accordingly with great unction, in his book, on the "jealousy and envy" which broke out at this interview, from a man who otherwise possessed so many "most amiable qualities ;" and yet, in the same passage, is led to make the avowal that he does not think Goldsmith had more envy in him than other people. "In my opinion, however, Goldsmith had not more of it than "other people have, but only talked of it freely." He pursues the same subject later, where, in answer to a remark from Johnson about the envy of their friend, he defends him by observing that he owned it frankly on all occasions; and is thus met by Johnson. "Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy that "he could not conceal it." Dr. Beattie in like manner informs us: "He was the only person I ever knew who acknowledged "himself to be envious;" to which let me add that Tom Davies makes a similar remark for himself, when he says, in a passage of his Life of Garrick which Johnson saw and approved before publication, that he never knew any man but one who had the honesty and courage to confess he had envy in him, and that man was Doctor Johnson. Such are the inconsistencies in which we find ourselves on this subject, and which really reach their height, when, in reply to some pestering of Boswell's on the same eternal theme, Johnson goes so far as to say that vanity was so much the motive of Goldsmith's virtues as well as vices that it prevented his being a social man, so that "he never exchanged mind with you." As I have repeatedly illustrated in the course of this book, Goldsmith's faults lay on the ultra-social and communicative side. He was but too ready on all occasions to pour out whatever his mind contained, nor does it seem, as far as we may judge, that he was impatient of receiving like confidences from others.

But his last interview with Boswell remains to be described. As the latter enlarged on his having secured Johnson for a visit to the Hebrides in the autumn,—an achievement which elsewhere he compared to that of a dog who had got hold of a large piece of meat, and run away with it to a corner where he might devour it in peace, without any fear of others taking it from him,-Goldsmith interrupted him with the impatient remark that "he would "be a dead weight for me to carry, and that I should never be "able to lug him along through the Highlands and Hebrides." Nor, Boswell continues, was he patiently allowed to enlarge upon Johnson's wonderful abilities; for here Goldsmith broke in with that exclamation, "Is he like Burke, who winds into his subject "like a serpent," which drew forth the triumphant answer, "But "Johnson is the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle,"