[198] Sir Joshua Reynolds was inclined to tell stories about Goldsmith's negligence in his habits, his want of neatness in dress, his unkempt appearance at all times, and his absolute want of cleanliness. No doubt the reflection was merited by the careless author; but the famous artist was himself such a gross consumer of snuff that his shirt-bosom, collars, and vest were never in a respectable condition.
[199] Milton was a London boy in his eighth year when Shakespeare died (1616); he was seventeen years old when Fletcher died (in 1625); and twenty-nine when Ben Jonson died (in 1637).
[200] Paul Jovius was from an ancient Italian family. He wrote altogether in Latin. Clement VII. made him a bishop, and he enjoyed the favor of Charles V. and Francis I., which enabled him to amass great wealth. He died at Florence in 1552.
[201] "Pope died in 1744," says Lowell, "at the height of his renown, the acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Voltaire when the excitement and exposure of his coronation-ceremonies at Paris hastened his end, a generation later."
[202] No other man presented within himself such a bundle of contradictions. "He seems an embodied antithesis," says Whipple,—"a mass of contradictions, a collection of opposite frailties and powers. Such was the versatility of his mind and morals, that it is hardly possible to discern the connection between the giddy goodness and the brilliant wickedness which he delighted to exhibit." In all his relations he was consistently inconsistent.