CHAPTER X. 1778. Dinner at Topham Beauclerk's. - Boswell elected of The Club. Goldsmith in Company, and in his Study. -His Roman History." Talking for Victory.' -Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Monuments in St. Paul's.-Milton.- Butler." The Whole Duty of Man." Puns. · Lay Patronage. The Bread Tree. Savage Life. - - - Reasoning of Brutes. Toleration.-Martyrdom. - Doctrine of the Trinity. Government of Ireland. - Invocation of Saints. -"Goldy."-Literary Property.-State of Nature. -Male Succession.--Influence of the Seasons on the Mind.- Projected Visit to the Hebrides. ON Friday, April 30., I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, where were Lord Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some more members of the LITERARY CLUB, whom he had obligingly invited to meet me, as I was this evening to be balloted for as candidate for admission into that distinguished society. Johnson had done me the honour to propose me, and Beauclerk was very zealous for me. Goldsmith being mentioned: JOHNSON. "It is amazing how little Goldsmith knows. He seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than any one else." SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. "Yet there is no man whose company is more liked." JOHNSON. "To 6 be sure, Sir. When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer, their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically says of himself is very true, very true, he always gets the better when he argues alone; meaning, that he is master of a subject in his study, and can write well upon it; but when he comes into company, grows confused, and unable to talk. Take him as a poet, his Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his Traveller." Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, -as a comic writer, - or as an historian, he stands in the first class." BOSWELL. "An historian! My dear Sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age?" JOHNSON. "Why, who are before him?" BOSWELL. "Hume,-Robertson, Lord Lyttelton." JOHNSON (his antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." BOSWELL. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History (1) we find such penetration, such painting?" JOHNson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir (1) [Robertson's Charles V. and Goldsmith's Roman History were both published in 1769.] ETAT. 64. GOLDSMITH AND ROBERTSON. 281 Joshua paints faces in a history-piece: he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, Sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his History. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, Sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight, would be buried under his own ornaments. 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 wherever 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 topic 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.' (1) 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.'" (2) 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, I believe, 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. (1) Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13. (2) In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and perhaps his own. ÆETAT. 64. "THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN." 283 JOHNSON. " Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I would not have his to be first. I think Milton's rather should have the precedence. (1) 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." Some of the company expressed a wonder why the author of so excellent a book as "The Whole Duty of Man" should conceal himself. (2) JOHNSon. There may be different reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid self-denial, so that he (1) Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour republican's political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his "injustice to Milton." (2) In a manuscript in the Bodleian Library several circumstances are stated, which strongly incline me to believe that Dr. Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York, was the author of this work. - M. See, on the subject of the author of this celebrated and excellent work, Gent. Mag. vol. xxiv. p. 26., and Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 300. The late eccentric but learned Dr. Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, believed that Dr. Chapel, formerly provost of that college, was the author. Dr. Barrett was librarian of his college, and a perfect Magliapechi in slovenliness and erudition. It is odd, too, that Magjabechi's portrait is exceedingly like Dr. Barrett.-C. |