But later, at the Club, they were quickly reconciled:
"'Dr Goldsmith,' said Johnson, 'something passed to-day where you and I dined; I ask your pardon.' Goldsmith answered placidly, 'It must be much from you, Sir, that I take ill.' And so at once the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldsmith rattled away as usual."
Sometimes Goldsmith had the last word, as when they were discussing the writing of a good fable, like that of the little fishes:
"'The skill,' said Goldsmith, 'consists in making them talk like little fishes.' While he indulged himself in this fanciful reverie, he observed Johnson shaking his sides, and laughing. Upon which he smartly proceeded, 'Why, Dr Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES.'"
But these victories and defeats in conversation were only incidents in the history of a well-tried friendship.
When Goldsmith died in 1774 at the age of 46, Johnson wrote to his friend, Bennet Langton:
"Poor Goldsmith is gone.... He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expence. But let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."
"Goldsmith" he said many years later, "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."
Westminster Abbey holds a memorial, but not the mortal remains, of Oliver Goldsmith.