me.
Goldsmith being mentioned; JOHNSON. ‘It is amazing 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 inferiour 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, grows confused, and unable to talk[692]. Take him as a poet, his Traveller is a very fine performance; ay, 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?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, who are before him[693]?’ BOSWELL. ‘Hume,— Robertson[694],—Lord Lyttelton.’ JOHNSON (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[695], or the foppery of Dalrymple[696].’ BOSWELL. ‘Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History we find such penetration—such painting?’ JOHNSON. ‘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 countenance. You must look upon Robertson’s work as romance, and try it by that standard[697].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 where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” Goldsmith’s abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot[698], 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[699]. He is now writing a Natural History and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.’
I cannot dismiss the present topick without observing, that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he often ‘talked for victory,’ rather urged plausible objections to Dr. Robertson’s excellent historical works, in the ardour of contest, than expressed his real and decided opinion; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely differ from the rest of the literary world[700].
JOHNSON. ‘I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster-abbey.
While we surveyed the Poets’ Corner, I said to him,
“Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis[701].”
When we got to Temple-bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it[702], and slily whispered me,
“Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS[703].”’.
Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. ‘His Pilgrim’s Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser[704].’
A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul’s church as well as in Westminster-abbey, was mentioned; and it was asked, who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there[705]. Somebody suggested Pope. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholick, I would not have his to be first. I think Milton’s rather should have the precedence[706]. I think more highly of him now than I did at twenty[707]. There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets.’
Some of the company expressed a wonder why the authour of so excellent a book as The Whole Duty of Man[708] should conceal himself. JOHNSON. ‘There may be different reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was Theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future state.’
The gentlemen went away to their club, and I was left at Beauclerk’s till the fate of my election should be announced to me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate. In a short time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was chosen[709]. I hastened to the place of meeting, and was introduced to such a society as can seldom be found. Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then saw for the first time, and whose splendid talents had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones[710], and the company with whom I had dined. Upon my entrance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous formality gave me a Charge, pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club.
Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had been publickly recited to an audience for money[711]. JOHNSON. ‘I can match this nonsense. There was a poem called Eugenio, which came out some years ago, and concludes thus:
“And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves,
Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves,
Survey Eugenio, view him o’er and o’er,
Then sink into yourselves, and be no more[712].”
‘Nay, Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society[713], has these lines:
“Then we upon our globe’s last verge shall go,
And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.”’
Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that species of wit[714], deigned to allow that there was one good pun in Menagiana, I think on the word corps[715].
Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson relished with great good humour. But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this work[716].
On Saturday, May 1, we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much disposed to talk. He observed that ‘The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their language is nearer to English; as a proof of which, they succeed very well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you, Boswell, the justice to say, that you are the most unscottified of your countrymen. You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in some other Scotchman[717].’
We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced a question which has been much agitated in the Church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay-patrons to present ministers to parishes be well founded; and supposing it to be well founded, whether it ought to be exercised without the