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At another time, Goldsmith being mentioned, "It is amazing (said Johnson) how little Goldsmith knows. He seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than any one else."-SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS."Yet there is no man whose company is more liked."-JOHNSON. "To be sure, Sir. When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically says of himself is very true, he always gets the better when he argues alone; meaning, that he is master of a subject in his study, and can write well upon it; but when he comes into company, he grows confused, and unable to talk. Take him as a poet, his Traveller' is a very fine performance; aye, and so is his Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comick writer,-or as an historian, he stands in the first class."-BoswELL. "An historian! My dear Sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age?"-J.

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Why, who are before him?"-B. “ Hume, Robertson, Lord Lyttleton."-J. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise), "I have not read Hume; but doubtless Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the

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foppery of Dalrymple."-B. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History we find such penetration-such painting?"-J. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history-piece; he imagines an heroic counYou must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, Sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his History. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool; the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, Sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,-would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know; Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is

particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's Abridgment is better than that of Lucius Florus, or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same. places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying every thing he has to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale."

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Dr. Goldsmith's play, 'She Stoops to Conquer,' being mentioned, Johnson said, "I know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so much the great end of comedy, making an audience merry."

Johnson observed, that it was long before Goldsmith's merit came to be acknowledged. That he once complained to him, in ludicrous terms of distress, "Whenever I write any thing, the public make a point to know nothing about it;" but that his Traveller' brought him into high reputation.-MR. LANGTON. "There is not one bad line in that poem; not one of Dryden's careless verses."-SIR JOSHUA. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say it was one of the finest poems in the English language.”—LANGTON. Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before."-JOHNSON. "No; the merit of

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'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish. it."-SIR JOSHUA. "But his friends may suspect they had a too great partiality for him."-J. "Nay, Sir, the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him a hearing. Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so he talked always at random. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out whatever was in his mind, and see what would become of it. He was angry too when catched in an absurdity; but it did not prevent him from falling into another the next minute. I remember Chamier, after talking with him for some time, said, 'Well, I do believe he wrote this poem himself; and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal. Chamier once asked him what he meant by slow, the last word in the first line of The Traveller,'

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Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,'

Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered, 'Yes.' I was sitting by, and said, No, Sir; you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.' Chamier believed then that I had written the line, as much as if he had seen me write it. Gold

smith, however, was a man who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster-Abbey, and every year he lived would have deserved it better. He had, indeed, been at no pains to fill his mind with knowledge. He transplanted it from one place to another; and it did not settle in his mind; so he could not tell what was in his own books."

"Goldsmith (he said) referred every thing to vanity; his virtues and his vices too were from that motive. He was not a social man. He never exchanged mind with you."

Goldsmith had long a visionary project, that some time or other, when his circumstances should be easier, he would go to Aleppo, in order to acquire a knowledge, as far as might be, of any arts peculiar to the East, and introduce them into Britain. When this was talked of in Dr. Johnson's company, he said, "Of all men Goldsmith is the most unfit to go out upon such an enquiry; for he is utterly ignorant of such arts as we already possess, and consequently could not know what would be accessions to our present stock of mechanical knoweldge. Sir, he would bring home a grinding-barrow, which you see in every street in London, and think that he had furnished a wonderful improvement." Of Goldsmith he on some other occasion said,

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