“Doctor,” said Johnson one day, “I have not been quite idle; I lately made a line of poetry.”
Instead of holding up his hands reverently, Goldsmith cried out with his customary levity—“Come, sir, let us hear it; we will try and put a bad one to it.”
“No, sir,” replied the petted monster, drawing in; “I have forgotten it.”
Boswell’s attempts to depreciate Goldsmith are blunderingly made. He always admits enough to betray his own unfair spirit. Johnson having had in 1767, an interview with the king in the library of St. James’s Palace, the thing was greatly talked of. Boswell says, that once at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the doctor was, by request (the henchman’s of course), induced to repeat the circumstances of the meeting, and that during the recital, Goldsmith was observed to be silent and inattentive. He says, the latter was envious of Johnson’s luck, but he goes on to state that at last the frankness and simplicity of his nature prevailed, he advanced to Johnson and told him, he acquitted himself admirably—that he (Goldsmith), “should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it.” No sign of any very deadly envy in all this, surely. Johnson himself, though he mostly made a point of defending Goldsmith against attacks, could not help feeling a little pique and jealousy toward the wit, who never refrained from arguing the matter with him, comically or keenly as he saw fit. Johnson was truculent at times, and would speak rudely to Goldsmith in company. One of the surly moralist’s formulas, whenever Goldsmith would say, “I don’t see that,” was—“Nay, my dear sir, why can you not see what everybody else sees?” On such occasions, Goldsmith’s independence, or want of tact was against him. Johnson at times, used to put him down in this way. During an argument, Goldsmith having been several times contradicted, “sat in restless agitation,” says the veracious Boswell, “from a wish to get in and shine.” No easy matter when Johnson was cloudy. “Finding himself excluded,” he goes on—“he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for some time with it in his hand. Once, when beginning again to speak, he was overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not notice the attempt. Thus disappointed, Goldsmith threw down his hat in a passion, and said—‘take it’—looking angrily at Johnson. Then Toplady was about to speak, Oliver hearing Johnson growl something, and thinking he was about to go on again, begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter had heard Johnson patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’ roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to interrupt the gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said nothing, but continued in the company for some time. When they all met in the evening at the club, Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith, something passed between us, where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.’ After which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was himself again, and rattled away as usual.” All this exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse tyranny of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver, in a fair light. Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—intus et in cute—and used to say of him, with that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing with Johnson; when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end of it.”
Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment. The former came armed at all points into the argument—the latter was but too glad to fling off all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were, and enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so cordially, the sight of happy human faces. Johnson generally entered into conversation like an athlete or a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after some literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.” “Yes, sir,” returned the admiring disciple, “you tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant affair, truly, one of those conversations on philosophy and polite literature must have been in the Johnsonian times. Poor Goldsmith was disposed to be light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast his own open pleasantry with the dread gravity of Johnson, and those who stood in awe of him. Oliver was out of his element, in fact, among the generality of those with whom he came into contact at the club and elsewhere. He should have lived in the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt, the old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb; he should have known Moore, the gayest of wits, and Maginn, who also stammered forth “his logic and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led him to desire a hearty enjoyment of his social hours in the midst of his friends. He would have quips and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified inspirations. But such he was not to have at the Literary Club, where Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or rather the field, and “glowering frae him,” kept himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.
“While all the clubbists trembled at his nod.”
A great deal of pedantry and paradox was mixed up with the literature of Goldsmith’s time; men’s minds were apt to be as stiff as their costumes, and authors were considered to have a certain professional dignity to support.
Oliver, as we have said, was out of his element in the midst of such circumstances; he did not admire the gravity which is too often a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind, but was disposed in company
“To rattle on exactly as he’d talk
To any body in a ride or walk.”