“You mean Goldsmith? Faith, sir, I do mind it greatly. If I were not certain that he would forthwith hasten to tell Johnson, I would go to him and confess all, asking his forgiveness. But he would tell Johnson and never forgive me, so I'll e'en hold my tongue.”
“You will not lose a night's rest through brooding on Goldsmith's pain, David.”
“It was an impulse of the moment that caused me to adopt that device, my friend. Johnson is past all argument, sir. That sickening sycophant, Boswell, may find happiness in being insulted by him, but there are others who think that the Doctor has no more right than any ordinary man to offer an affront to those whom the rest of the world respects.”
“He will allow no one but himself to attack you, Davy.”
“And by my soul, sir, I would rather that he allowed every one else to attack me if he refrained from it himself. Where is the generosity of a man who, with the force and influence of a dozen men, will not allow a bad word to be said about you, but says himself more than the whole dozen could say in as many years? Sir, do the pheasants, which our friend Mr. Bunbury breeds so successfully, regard him as a pattern of generosity because he won't let a dozen of his farmers have a shot at them, but preserves them for his own unerring gun? By the Lord Harry, I would rather, if I were a pheasant, be shot at by the blunderbusses of a dozen yokels than by the fowling-piece of one good marksman, such as Bunbury. On the same principle, I have no particular liking to be preserved to make sport for the heavy broadsides that come from that literary three-decker, Johnson.”
“I have sympathy with your contentions, David; but we all allow your old schoolmaster a license which would be permitted to no one else.”
“That license is not a game license, Sir Joshua; and so I have made up my mind that if he says anything more about the profession of an actor being a degrading-one—about an actor being on the level with a fiddler—nay, one of the puppets of Panton street, I will teach my old schoolmaster a more useful lesson than he ever taught to me. I think it is probable that he is at this very moment pondering upon those plain truths which were told to him by the Dean.”
“And poor Goldsmith has been talking so incessantly and so earnestly to Burke, I am convinced that he feels greatly pained as well as puzzled by that inopportune visit of the clergyman who exhibited such striking characteristics of the Goldsmith family.”
“Nay, did I not bear testimony in his favour—declaring that he had never alluded to a relation who was a Dean?”
“Oh, yes; you did your best to place us all at our ease, sir. You were magnanimous, David—as magnanimous as the surgeon who cuts off an arm, plunges the stump into boiling pitch, and then gives the patient a grain or two of opium to make him sleep. But I should not say a word: I have seen you in your best part, Mr. Garrick, and I can give the heartiest commendation to your powers as a comedian, while condemning with equal force the immorality of the whole proceeding.”