第86章

Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know:Robertson detains you a great deal too long.No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time;but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again.I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils:"Read over your compositions,and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine,strike it out."Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius;and I will venture to say,that if you compare him with Vertot,in the same places of the Roman History,you will find that he excels Vertot.Sir,he has the art of compiling,and of saying every thing he has to say in a pleasing manner.He is now writing a Natural History and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.'

I cannot dismiss the present topick without observing,that it is probable that Dr.Johnson,who owned that he often 'talked for victory,'rather urged plausible objections to Dr.Robertson's excellent historical works,in the ardour of contest,than expressed his real and decided opinion;for it is not easy to suppose,that he should so widely differ from the rest of the literary world.

JOHNSON.'I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster-abbey.While we surveyed the Poets'Corner,I said to him,"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."when we got to Temple-bar he stopped me,pointed to the heads upon it,and slily whispered me,"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS."'In allusion to Dr.Johnson's supposed political principles,and perhaps his own.Boswell.

Johnson praised John Bunyan highly.'His Pilgrim's Progress has great merit,both for invention,imagination,and the conduct of the story;and it has had the best evidence of its merit,the general and continued approbation of mankind.Few books,Ibelieve,have had a more extensive sale.It is remarkable,that it begins very much like the poem of Dante;yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote.There is reason to think that he had read Spenser.'

A proposition which had been agitated,that monuments to eminent persons should,for the time to come,be erected in St.Paul's church as well as in Westminster-abbey,was mentioned;and it was asked,who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there.Somebody suggested Pope.JOHNSON.'Why,Sir,as Pope was a Roman Catholick,I would not have his to be first.I think Milton's rather should have the precedence.I think more highly of him now than I did at twenty.There is more thinking in him and in Butler,than in any of our poets.'

The gentlemen went away to their club,and I was left at Beauclerk's till the fate of my election should be announced to me.

I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate.In a short time Ireceived the agreeable intelligence that I was chosen.I hastened to the place of meeting,and was introduced to such a society as can seldom be found.Mr.Edmund Burke,whom I then saw for the first time,and whose splendid talents had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance;Dr.Nugent,Mr.Garrick,Dr.Goldsmith,Mr.(afterwards Sir William)Jones,and the company with whom I had dined.Upon my entrance,Johnson placed himself behind a chair,on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit,and with humorous formality gave me a Charge,pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club.

Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had been publickly recited to an audience for money.JOHNSON.'I can match this nonsense.There was a poem called Eugenio,which came out some years ago,and concludes thus:

"And now,ye trifling,self-assuming elves,Brimful of pride,of nothing,of yourselves,Survey Eugenio,view him o'er and o'er,Then sink into yourselves,and be no more."Nay,Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society,has these lines:

"Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,And see the ocean leaning on the sky;From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,And on the lunar world securely pry."'

Much pleasant conversation passed,which Johnson relished with great good humour.But his conversation alone,or what led to it,or was interwoven with it,is the business of this work.

On Saturday,May 1,we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous,the Mitre tavern.He was placid,but not much disposed to talk.

He observed that 'The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do;their language is nearer to English;as a proof of which,they succeed very well as players,which Scotchmen do not.

Then,Sir,they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch.I will do you,Boswell,the justice to say,that you are the most UNSCOTTIFIED of your countrymen.You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known,who did not at every other sentence bring in some other Scotchman.'

(Part Three )

On Friday,May 7,I breakfasted with him at Mr.Thrale's in the Borough.While we were alone,I endeavoured as well as I could to apologise for a lady who had been divorced from her husband by act of Parliament.I said,that he had used her very ill,had behaved brutally to her,and that she could not continue to live with him without having her delicacy contaminated;that all affection for him was thus destroyed;that the essence of conjugal union being gone,there remained only a cold form,a mere civil obligation;that she was in the prime of life,with qualities to produce happiness;that these ought not to be lost;and,that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated.Seduced,perhaps,by the charms of the lady in question,I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified;for when I had finished my harangue,my venerable friend gave me a proper check:'My dear Sir,never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice.The woman's a whore,and there's an end on't.'