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66 now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He "has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right."

A first supper so successful would of course be soon repeated, but few could have guessed how often. They supped again at the Mitre on the 1st of July; they were together in Inner Templelane on the 5th; they supped a third time at the Mitre on the 6th; they met once more on the 9th; the Mitre again received them on the 14th; on the 19th they were talking again; they supped at Boswell's chambers on the 20th; they passed the 21st together, and supped at the Turk's-head in the Strand; they were discussing the weather and other themes on the 26th; they had another supper at the Turk's-head on the 28th, and were walking from it, arm in arm down the Strand, when Johnson gently put aside the enticing solicitations of wretchedness with No, no, my Girl, it won't do ("he, however" interposes Boswell, ❝did not "treat her with harshness; and we talked of the wretched life of "such women"); they sculled down to Greenwich, read verses on the river, and closed the day once more with supper at the Turk'shead, on the 30th; on the 31st they again saw each other; they took tea together, after a morning in Boswell's rooms, on the 2nd of August; on the 3rd they had their last supper at the Turk'shead (Johnson encouraged the house because the mistress of it was a good civil woman, and had not much business), before Boswell's reluctant departure for Utrecht, where the old judge laird was sending him to study the law; and so many of Johnson's sympathies had thus early been awakened by the untiring social enjoyment, the eagerness for talk, the unbounded reverence for himself, exhibited by Boswell, strengthened doubtless by his youth and idleness (of themselves enough, to him, to make any man acceptable), by his condition in life, by a sort of romance in the lairdship of Auchinleck which he was one day to inherit, and not a little, it may be, by even his jabbering conceits and inexpressible absurdities, that on the 5th of August, the sage took a place beside him in the Harwich coach, accompanied him to the port he was to sail from, and as they parted on the beach enjoined him to keep a journal, and himself promised to write to him. "Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked some one, amazed at the sudden intimacy. "He is not a cur," answered Goldsmith; "you are too severe. He is only a bur. Tom Davies 'flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of "sticking."

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Boswell has retorted this respectful contempt; and in him it is excessively ludicrous. "It has been generally circulated and "believed," he says, "that the Doctor was a mere fool in con"versation; but in truth this has been greatly exaggerated."

Goldsmith had supped with them at the Mitre on the 1st of July, and flung a paradox at both their heads. He maintained that knowledge was not desirable on its own account, since it often was a source of unhappiness. He supped with them again at the Mitre five days later, as Boswell's guest, when Tom Davies and others were present; and again was paradoxical. He disputed very warmly with Johnson, it seems, against the sacred maxim of the British Constitution, that the king can do no wrong: affirming his belief that what was morally false could not be politically true; and that, as the king might, in the exercise of his regal power, command and cause the doing of what was wrong, it certainly might be said, in sense and in reason, that he could do wrong : all which appeared to Boswell sensible or reasonable proof of nothing but the speaker's vanity, and eager desire to be conspicuous wherever he was. Among the guests on this occasion was a presbyterian doctor and small poet, Ogilvie, who was unlucky enough to hit upon praise of Scotland for a subject. He began by modestly remarking that there was very rich land around Edinburgh, upon which, says Boswell, "Goldsmith, who had studied "physic there, contradicted this, very untruly, with a sneering "laugh. Disconcerted a little by this, Mr. Ogilvie then took new 'grounds, where, I suppose, he thought himself perfectly safe; for "he observed that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects." "I believe, sir," said Johnson, upon this, "you have a great "many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is "remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, sir, let “me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees "is the high road which leads him to England." This unexpected and pointed sally produced what Boswell calls "a roar" of applause ; and even at all this distance of time one seems to hear that hearty roar, Goldsmith contributing to it not the least.

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Much to his host's discomposure; who saw, in the very loudness of his laugh, only the desire to make himself as prominent as might be. "As usual, he endeavoured, with too much eagerness, to "shine." It is added, indeed, that his respectful attachment to Johnson was now at its height; but no better reason is given for it, than that his own literary reputation had not yet distinguished him so much " as to excite a vain desire of competition with his "great master.” In short it is impossible not to perceive, that, from the first hour of their acquaintance, Boswell is impatient of Goldsmith, who appears to him very much what the French call un étourdi, a giddy pate; Mr. Boswell, no doubt, feeling his own steady gravity and good sense quite shocked by the contrast of such levity. Also, he is particular to inform us, he finds Goldsmith's person short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, and his

deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Much of this feeling, however, will perhaps be accounted for by a passage from one of his later descriptions. "It may also be "observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated "with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential "and important." We have but to imagine Boswell suddenly discovering that Goldsmith might be treated with an easy familiarity, to be quite certain that the familiarity would be carried to an ex

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"ing to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, I go to Miss Williams." To be allowed to go to Miss Williams was decisive of Johnson's favour. She was one of his pensioners, blind and old; was now living in a lodging in Bolt-court, provided by him till he should have a room in a house to offer her, as in former days; was familiar with his earlier life and its privations, was always making and drinking tea, knew intimately all his ways, and talked well; and he never went home at night, however late, supperless or after supper, without calling to have tea with Miss Williams. Why do you keep that old blind woman in your house?" asked Beauclerc once. "Why sir," answered Johnson, "she was a friend "of my poor wife, and was in the house with her when she died. "She has remained in it ever since, sir."

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Beauclerc's friendships with women were not of the kind to help his appreciation of such gallantry as this; though he seems to have known none, in even the circles of fashion, so distinguished, that he did not take a pride in showing to them his rusty-coated philosopher-friend. The then Reader of the Temple, Mr. Maxwell, has described the levees at Inner Temple-lane. He seldom called at twelve o'clock in the day, he says, without finding Johnson in

bed, or declaiming over his tea to a party of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters, among whom Goldsmith, Murphy, Hawkesworth (an old friend and fellow-worker under Cave), and Langton, are named as least often absent. Sometimes learned ladies were there, too; and particularly did he remember a French lady of wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. It was in the summer of this year and the lady was no other than the famous Countess de Boufflers, acknowledged leader of French society, mistress of the Prince of Conti, aspiring to be his wife, and of course, in the then universal fashion of the savantes, philosophes, and beaux esprits of Paris, an Anglomane. She had even written

a tragedy in English prose, on a subject from the Spectator; and was now on a round of visitings, reading her tragedy, breakfasting with Walpole, dining with the Duke of Grafton, supping at Beauclerc's, out of patience with every body's ridiculous abuse of every other body that meddled in politics, and out of breath with her own social exertions. "Dans ce pays-ci," she exclaimed, "c'est "un effort perpétuel pour se divertir;" and, exhausted with it herself, she did not seem to think that any one else succeeded any better. It was a few days after Horace Walpole's great breakfast at Strawberry-hill, where he describes her with her eyes a foot deep in her head, her hands dangling and scarce able to support her knitting-bag, that Beauclerc took her to see Johnson. They sat and talked with him some time; and were retracing their way up Inner Temple-lane to the carriage, when all at once they heard a voice like thunder, and became conscious of Johnson hurrying after them. On nothing priding himself more than on his politeness, he had taken it into his head, after a little reflection, that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality; and, eager to show himself a man of gallantry, he was now hurrying down the staircase in violent agitation. He overtook them before they reached the Temple-gate, and, brushing in between Beauclerc and the Countess, seized her hand and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. "A consi"derable crowd of people gathered round," says Beauclerc, "and were not a little struck by this singular appearance." The hero of the incident would be the last person to be moved by it. The more the state of his toilet dawned upon him, the less likely would he be to call attention to it. There was no more remarkable trait in Johnson, and certainly none in which he more contrasted with the subject of this narrative, than that, as Miss Reynolds was always surprised to remark, no external circumstances ever prompted him

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to make the least apology for them, or to seem even sensible of their existence.

It was not many months after this that he went to see Goldsmith in a new lodging, in the locality which not Johnson alone had rendered illustrious, but its association with a line of the greatest names of English literature; the Dorsets, Raleighs, Seldens, Clarendons, Beaumonts, Fords, Marstons, Wycherleys, and Congreves. He had taken rooms on the then library staircase of the Temple. They were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jeffs, the butler of the society, shared them with him); and, on Johnson's prying and peering about in them, after his shortsighted fashion, flattening his face against every object he looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke out. “I "shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,” he said. Nay, sir," answered Johnson, "never mind that. Nil te "quæsiveris extra." Invaluable advice! could Goldsmith, blotting out remembrance of his childhood and youth, and looking solely and steadily on the present and the future, but have dared to act upon it.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 1763-1764.

GOLDSMITH'S removal from the apartments of Newbery's relative in Wine Office-court, to his new lodging on the library 1763. staircase of the Temple, took place in an early month of Æt. 35. 1764, and seems to connect itself with circumstances at the close of 1763 which indicate a less cordial understanding between himself and Newbery. He had ceased writing for the British Magazine; was contemplating an extensive engagement with James Dodsley; and had attempted to open a connection with Tonson of the Strand. The engagement with Dodsley went as far as a formal signed-agreement (for a Chronological History of the Lives of Eminent Persons of Great Britain and Ireland), in which the initials of a medical bachelor are first assumed by him; and at the close of which another intimation of his growing importance appears, in the stipulation that "Oliver Goldsmith shall “print his name to the said work." It was to be in two volumes, octavo, of the size and type of the Universal History; each volume was to contain thirty-five sheets; Goldsmith was to be paid at the rate of three guineas a sheet; and the whole was to be delivered in the space of two years at farthest. But nothing came

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