“Dear sir, I feel honoured,” cried Mrs. Thrale. “But who will take charge of your nest of linnets in the meantime?”
“Our friend Dr. Goldsmith will be proud of that duty, dear madam,” said Johnson.
“Madam,” said Dr. Goldsmith, “I have my flute in my pocket; if any one tries to enter this house, I swear that I shall play it, and if every one does not fly then, a posse of police shall be sent for. You have heard me play the flute, doctor?”
“Sir,” said Johnson, “when I said that music was of all noises the least disagreeable, I had not heard you play upon your flute.”
“No, sir; for had you heard me, you would not have said ‘least disagreeable’—no, sir; least would not have been the word,” said Goldsmith.
“Pan-pipes would be an appropriate instrument to such a satyr,” said a tall thin gentleman in an undertone to another, when Johnson and Mrs. Thrale had walked away, and Goldsmith had begun to listen in ecstasy to Tom Linley’s playing of Pugnani’s nocturne.
“Ah, friend Horry, you have never ceased to think ill of Dr. Goldsmith since the night you sat beside him at the Academy dinner,” said the other gentleman.
“I think no ill of the man, George,” said Horace Walpole. “Surely a man may call another a scarecrow without malice, if t’other be a scarecrow.”
“’Tis marvellous how plain a fellow seems when he has got the better of one in an argument,” laughed George Selwyn, for he knew that Walpole had not a good word to say for Goldsmith since the former had boasted, on the narrowest ground, of having detected the forgeries of Chatterton, thereby calling for a scathing word or two from Goldsmith, who had just come from the room where the unfortunate boy was lying dead.