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the biography of any other man of letters, to comprehend our debt of gratitude to Boswell; we have but to remember how fruitless is the quest, when we would seek to stand face to face with any other as famous Englishman. 'So, sir,' said Johnson to Cibber, 'I find you knew Mr. Dryden?' 'Knew him!' said Cibber. O Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own brother.' Then,' rejoined the other, 'you can tell me some anecdotes ' of him?' 'Oh yes,' exclaimed Colley, 'a thousand! why, 'we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. 'I remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he 'came into the room in winter-time, he used to go and sit close by the fire in one corner; and that in summer-time, 'he would always go and sit in the window.' Such was the information Johnson got from Cibber as to the manners and habits of Dryden. Such, or little better, but for Boswell, might have been our knowledge of Johnson.

Early in April he dined in company with Johnson and Goldsmith at General Oglethorpe's, and 'fired up' the brave old General by making a question of the moral propriety of duelling. 'I ask you first, sir,' said Goldsmith, 'what would you do if you were affronted?' 'I answered,' says Boswell, 'I should think it necessary to fight.' 'Why 'then,' was the reply, 'that solves the question.' 'No, sir,' interposed Johnson, 'it does not solve the question:' which he thereupon proceeded himself to solve, by regretting the superfluity of refinement which existed in society on the subject of affronts, and admitting that duelling must be

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tolerated so long as such notions should prevail. After this (the General having meanwhile poured a little wine on the table, and, at Johnson's request, described with a wet finger the siege of Belgrade), a question was started of how far people who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem nolle, the same likings and the same aversions. Why, sir,' returned Johnson, 'you must shun the subject as to which 'you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: 'I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the 'Rockingham party.' 'But, sir,' retorted Goldsmith, 'when 'people live together who have something as to which they 'disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the 'situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: You may 'look into all the chambers but one. But we should have 'the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk 'of that subject.' Johnson hereupon exclaimed loudly, 'Sir, 'I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a 'man from whom you differ as to some point; I am only 'saying that I could do it. You put me in mind of Sappho 'in Ovid. Goldsmith had said too clever a thing, and got punished for it. So it was with Percy, very often; so with Joseph Warton; so with Dean Barnard; so with Langton; so even with Beauclerc and Reynolds. What Miss Anna Seward called 'the wit and aweless impoliteness of the stupendous creature' bore down every one before it. 'His forcible spirit

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' and impetuosity of manner,' says Boswell, 'spared neither ( sex nor age. I have seen even Mrs. Thrale stunned.' Yet she never said more when she recovered, than Oh dear good man!' And Dean Barnard, invoking the aid of his friends against the aweless impoliteness, and submitting himself to be taught by their better accomplishments, has told us in lively verse with what good humour it was borne by Reynolds.

"Dear knight of Plympton, teach me how

To suffer with unclouded brow

And smile serene as thine,

The jest uncouth and truth severe;
Like thee to turn my deafest ear,
And calmly drink my wine.

"If I have thoughts and can't express 'em,
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em

In terms select and terse;

Jones teach me modesty and Greek,
Smith how to think, Burke how to speak,

And Beauclerc to converse."

Soon after the dinner at Oglethorpe's, Goldsmith returned to his Edgeware lodging, and was sometime busied with the Animated Nature. No doubt it was a task he best worked at in the country: for though the general defect of the book is that it too manifestly seems a compilation (in which we are occasionally left to doubt, too, whether he believes most implicitly the credulous romance of the early naturalists and travellers, or the scientific soberness of the great Frenchman his contemporary), there are yet many passages of exquisite country observation in it; and not a few in which the grace of diction, the choice of perfect and finely finished

imagery, and an elegant clearness and beauty in the tone of reflection, may compare with his best original compositions, in poetry or prose. On the whole it was a surprising piece of task-work, allowance being made for the circumstances in which its drudgery was undergone, and which the course his necessities now obliged him to take did not tend to relieve. He got Griffin to advance him what remained to be paid upon it; acknowledged the receipt and executed the assignment in June; and had then received and paid away the whole eight hundred guineas, while upwards of a third of his labour remained still unperformed. Nor was this all. He had involved himself in an undertaking to Newbery, to supply another tale like the Vicar of Wakefield; some years had elapsed since the unredeemed promise was made; and a portion of a tale submitted to the publisher had lately been returned with intimation of disapproval. It appears to have been a narrative version of the plot of the Good-natur'd Man, and on that ground objected to. So much was long remembered by Miss Mary Horneck, to whom, and to her sister, Goldsmith afterwards read such chapters as he had written; and it may be worth stating in connection with this fact, which Hazlitt heard from Mrs. Gwyn herself in Northcote's painting room, that Southey notices in his Omniana a fraud he supposes to have been practised on Goldsmith's reputation in France, by the announcement, in a list of books at the end of a volume published in the year of his death, of a translation from the English entitled 'Histoire de François Wills, ou

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le Triomphe de la Bienfaisance, par l'auteur du Ministre de Wakefield. It is suggested that this may have been the incomplete chapters left by Goldsmith, thought unworthy of publication here, concluded by some inferior hand, and sold to the French market; but it does not appear that 'Francis Wills' was ever seen in the form of a book, and more probably the announcement had been made on the faith of some statement by Francis Newbery, on the failure of which it fell to the ground.

Another labour that occupied Goldsmith in the Edgeware cottage was the abridgment of his Roman History: and of this kind of task-work it may be said, as of the Animated Nature, that such defects of imperfect information as it exhibited, were counterbalanced by simplicity of diction and unaffectedness of style; and that schoolboys have more profited by the one than lost by the other. Johnson said he would make a very fine natural history book, though, if he could distinguish a cow from a horse, that he believed to be the extent of his scientific knowledge; and the same will have to be said of his other history books, even though his general historical knowledge should be measured by the anecdote of Gibbon's visit to him in the Temple some few months hence, when he looked up from the manuscript of his Grecian History which he happened to be writing, asked of his scholarly visitor the name of the Indian king who gave Alexander so much trouble, and, on Gibbon facetiously answering Montezuma, gravely wrote it down. But his ignorance in this and other respects I

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