bourhood, and no one there knew what was | tism, the clever inquisitiveness which have the fate of her or of her children. And made him the best-despised and best-read then also Mr. Grimes went and took his writer in English literature. wife with him. But they could not be said to vanish. Scratching his head one day, he told me with a dolorous voice that he had made his fortune. "We've got as snug a little place as ever you see, just two mile out of Colchester," said Mrs. Grimes, triumphantly," with thirty acres of land just to amuse John. And as for the Spotted Dog, I'm that sick of it, another year'd wear me to a dry bone." We looked at her, and saw no tendency that way. And we looked at John, and thought that he was not triumphant. Who followed Mr. and Mrs. Grimes at the Spotted Dog we have never visited Liquorpond Street to see. From The Gentleman's Magazine. 44 whilst The portraits handed down to us of Boswell by his contemporaries are mostly graphic; some of them are malignant, some bitter, some temperate; and those that are Who is temperate are probably just. this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked "He is not a cur," a friend, of Goldsmith. replied Goldsmith; "you are too severe; he is only a burr. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." Miss Burney thus caricatures the appearance of Boswell in Johnson's presence, when intent upon his note-taking: The moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the doctor, and his mouth dropped down to catch every syllable that was uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing, as if hoping from it THE sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of latently or mystically some information." Boswell, prefixed to Mr. Murray's edition But Hannah More calls Boswell "a very of Johnson's Life, illustrates with striking agreeable, good-natured man;" A Johnson, in writing to him, said, “I love accuracy the saying of Hazlitt, that man's life may be a lie to himself and you as a kind man, I respect you as a goodothers; and yet a picture painted of him by natured man, and hope in time to reverence a great artist would probably stamp his you as a man of exemplary character; "and character." The busy vanity, the garrulous a little further on, "My regard for you is complacency of the man when out of sight so radicated and fixed that it is become of Dr. Johnson, as he may be supposed to part of my mind, and cannot be effaced but have been when the portrait was etched, by some cause uncommonly violent." This are brought out with all the humour and is flattering testimony; perhaps, if we dilute Johnson's opinion of Boswell with point of a caricature, without its exaggeration. The thin nose, that seems to sniff the something of the contempt that was proair for information, has the sharp shrewd-fessed for him by those whom he lived ness of a Scotch accent. The small eyes, amongst, we may get a fair idea of his true too much relieved by the high-arched eyebrows, twinkle with the exultation of victo- It is in biography that Boswell, the prince ries not won an expression contracted of biographers, is treated with the most from a vigilant watching of Dr. Johnson, malevolence. Macaulay, whose nationality who when he spoke, spoke always for as a Scotchman, so pertinaciously claimed victory; the bleak lips, making by their protrusion an angle almost the size of the nose, proclaim Boswell's love of "drawing people out," a thirst for information at once droll and impertinent, but which finally embodied itself in a form that has been pronounced by Lord Macaulay the most interesting biography in the world; the ample chins, fold upon fold, tell of a strong affection, gross, and almost sottish, for port wine and tainted meats; whilst the folded arms, the slightly inclined posture, the strong and arrogant setting of the head, exbibit the self-importance, the shrewd understanding, not to be obscurated by vanity, the imperturbable but artless ego character. for him by Mr. Adam Black, might have A grove, a forest shall thy ears surround! However impatiently Goldsmith's admirBut should not the ingenuousness of Bos-ers may resent such a conclusion as this, a well's confessions have saved him from so reference to the opinions of his contempomuch severity of criticism? The man who raries will only render it indisputable. freely avows his humiliations may excite Horace Walpole called him "an inspired surprise and laughter; but he hardly de- idiot." Garrick's distich is too well known serves contempt. But the truth is, Irving, to repeat. Johnson, who really loved him, who attacks Boswell as a man, in reality and who of all the clique had the highest dislikes him as a biographer. He is at a appreciation of his genius, often spoke of loss to divine the reason of Boswell's inces- him in the most contemptuous terms. sant and enthusiastic admiration of Dr. Anecdotes of the estimation in which he was Johnson, and is indignant at the contempt held are numerous. Boswell tells, by way which he manifested towards Goldsmith. of illustrating Goldsmith's vanity, how he Irving thinks Goldsmith a greater man than went home with Mr. Burke to supper, after Johnson; Boswell held the contrary belief. witnessing with impatience the dexterity of The live critic has this advantage over the some puppets, and how he broke his shins dead, that he is able to attack without fear by attempting to exhibit to the company of recrimination. There is, perhaps, truth how much better he could jump over a stick in Irving's opinion of Boswell; but why so than the dolls. On one occasion Miss much severity ? Reynolds, at a supper-party, toasted Dr. Goldsmith as the ugliest man she knew; whereupon a Mrs. Cholmondeley rose up, and offering Miss Reynolds her hand desired her better acquaintance; 66 thus," exclaimed Dr. Johnson, who was present, the ancients at the commencement of their Surveyed from the distance of sixty or seventy years Goldsmith is surely a very different man from the Goldy" of the Literary Club. Irving knows him and loves him only as the author-as the absolute purist in style, the harmonious and exquisite depicter of English life and English manners, the sympathetic and deeply philosophic poet, the mild and assuasive satirist, the witty and brilliant dramatist; in the language of his epitaph, Affectuum potens at lenis dominator : Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus. Something of all this excellence is recognized by Boswell; but intimacy brought out the character: and the awkward, ugly man was for ever breaking through the idealism in which isolation or silence might have wrapped him. To Boswell, and not ouly to Boswell, but to Reynolds, Beauclerck, Langton, Nugent, and even Johnson, Goldsmith is not so much a poet and a thinker as a conceited little Irishman, chattering heedlessly as a magpie that his presence might not be overlooked, who struts about in a suit of ratteen lined with satin, and a pair of bloom-coloured breeches, and who gives to a Grub-street pauper the money that he owes to his tailor; who, when he writes on zoology or history merely translates into a purer idiom the mistakes 64 friendships used to sacrifice a beast between them." Burke's opinion of Goldsmith is conveyed in the following anecdote: "As Colonel O'Moore and Mr. Burke were walking to dine with Sir Joshua Reynolds, they observed Goldsmith (also on his way to Sir Joshua's) standing near a crowd of people who were staring and shouting at some foreign women in the windows of one of the hotels in Leicester Square. Observe Goldsmith,' said Mr. Burke to O'Moore, ' and mark_what passes between him and me by-and-by at Sir Joshua's.' They passed on, and arrived before Goldsmith, who came soon after, and Mr. Burke affected to receive him very coolly. This seemed to vex poor Goldsmith, who begged Mr. Burke to tell him how he had the misfortune to offend him. Burke appeared very reluctant to speak, but after a good deal of pressing, said, That he was really ashamed to keep up an intimacy with one who could be guilty of such monstrous indiscretions as Goldsmith had just exhibited in the Square.' Goldsmith, with great earnestness, protested he was unconscious of what was meant. Why,' said Burke, did 66 you not exclaim as you were looking up at indigence ere he reached even the phantom of those women, what stupid beasts the independence. He who could find no friend crowd must be for staring with such admir- when friendship would have been serviceation at those painted Jezabels," while a man able, turned a suspicious eye on friendship of your talent passed by unnoticed?' Gold- when it was offered after it was no longer smith was horror-struck, and said, Surely, needed. Capricious, irritable, contemptusurely, my dear friend, I did not say so?' ous, his friends were forced to accept him Nay!' replied Burke; had you not said as he himself had said every man should acso, how should I have known it ?' That's cept life on the conditions under which he true,' answered Goldsmith, with great hu- offered himself. Objectionable as those mility; I am very sorry - it was very conditions might be, those who surrounded foolish. I do recollect that something of him felt them a light and easy restraint, the kind passed through my mind.'” when taken with the advantages which his This anecdote is given on the authority friendship conferred. He had powers adeof Mr. Croker, who had the story from quate to the highest occasions. He had a Colonel O'Moore. Such authority might mind so copiously stored that even his bigbe questioned were the story not corrobo- otry is made profitable by the marrowy rated by many anecdotes of similar in- juices with which it is full fraught. He had stances of Goldsmith's vanity. The multi- abilities which set him at the head of an asplication of such anecdotes, however, could sembly comprising the most eminent pronot render more strong than it is the testi- fessors the poetry, art, wit, and humour of mony conveyed by Boswell to the undoubted the age had produced. It was but natural, contempt in which Goldsmith was held by that the admiration he excited and the subhis contemporaries. This contempt Bos- mission he enforced should have been enwell shared with the rest. But the severity thusiastically participated in by one whose with which he has been visited for it, seems mind was peculiarly adapted to appreciate hardly deserved when it is considered that his, and whose admiration was being conthe whole of his passages about Goldsmith stantly renewed and as constantly heightput together, do not contain half as much ened by his unwearied attention to all that acid as the verse of Garrick, or half as much was said and all that was done by him whose cynical contempt as the sentence of Wal-life he had early resolved to write. pole. Boswell may well be excused for not having lived many years after his time; for many years it took to render Goldsmith appreciated as he is now appreciated, in spite of the admiration professed by Johnson in his epitaph, and which was endorsed by the signatures of the Round Robin. To collect materials for such a life was an occupation Boswell could not have pursued clandestinely. Memory might prove treacherous; it might be impossible to carry from the dinner-table all the good things, in their natural sequence of conversation, that had been said around it. To ensure The charge of abject toadyism has been veracity it was plain that notes of the conpreferred repeatedly and ably against Bos-versation must be taken on the spot; and well. But it is almost invariably preferred this mode of reporting could not escape the through his connection with Johnson. His love of the friendship of those who had achieved fame or notoriety has been pointed out, but without much contempt; his heterogeneous assemblage of acquaintances, of Paoli and Lloyd, of Churchill and Wilkes, of Bickerstaff and Murphy, of Robert Levett and the keeper of Newgate, has been laughed at, but without much scorn for the passion which led him into such diversified society. It is as the biographer of Dr. Johnson that he is ridiculed as a toady; and yet it is certain that this charge has been advanced without fair consideration of the nature of the duties he had imposed upon himself. Than these duties nothing could be more difficult, nothing more delicate. Johnson turned friendless into London with nothing to live upon but an undigested mass of desultory reading, had been forced to battle through every form of complicated attention of the man whose words were being vigilantly set down. Johnson's capriciousness, his independence, and certainly his suspicion, would have made him savagely prohibit a less ingenious diplomatist than Boswell from violating what he himself would call the social statutes of domestic life, by committing to paper, for ultimate publicity, the conversations which were designed for hours dedicated to the relaxation of friendly gatherings. But with all Boswell's tact he came in for rebuffs which would have demolished a man of less pliability. "I will not be put to the question!" shouted the surly philosopher once, in reply to a number of Boswell's nimble but puerile questions asked in rapid succession. Don't you consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with what and why. What is this? What is that? Why is a cow's tail 66 long? Why is a fox's tail bushy?” “ Why, temper-to render so much past work sir," said Boswell, "you are so good that I abortive, or to demolish a scheme to the acventure to trouble you." Sir," said complishment of which he had pledged Johnson, "my being so good is no reason for your being so ill." 66 Whatever prejudice we may entertain towards Boswell, it is impossible to refuse him the merit of being one of the very greatest tacticians on record -a greater than Pope. His admiration of Johnson, his attention, his devotion, his obsequiousness, no doubt induced much of the contempt that has envy for its basis; Robertson protested, and Goldsmith grew angry; but he made no enemies; he lived on good terms with those whose memories he has immortalized, with Langton and Beauclerk, with Nugent and Davies, with a host of people who would never have been heard of but for him. And it is certain that whatever secret feelings may have animated them towards each other, between Boswell and Goldsmith there is no evidence to show that any avowed hostility or even dislike whatever subsisted. every hope of his heart. Once, and once only, Boswell took serious offence at the Boswell's submission to such rebuffs, un- doctor's affronts, and absented himself for a doubtedly reads with but little credit to his week from his society. But a coarse piece character. But (1), rebuffs of a much of flattery soothed him and won him back. coarser kind than these were being constant-" I said to-day," said the injured man, "to ly administered by Johnson to men with Sir Joshua, when he observed that you whom he still remained very good friends. tossed me sometimes, I don't care how often Take such illustrations as these: Mur- or how high he tosses me, when only phy and Johnson were conversing near the friends are present, for then I fall upon soft side of the scenes during the performance ground; but I do not like falling on stones, of "King Lear." Garrick coming off the which is the case when enemies are present. stage, exclaimed, "You talk so loud, you I think this is a pretty good image, sir.". destroy all my feelings."-"Prithee," said Sir," said Johnson, it is one of the hapJohnson, "do not talk of feelings; Punch piest I ever heard." has no feelings.". -Johnson was dining one day at Sir Joshua Reynolds' with a large and distinguished company, amongst whom was Mr. Israel Wilkes, brother of the "patriot." During the conversation Wilkes was about to make some remark, when Johnson's hatred of Wilkes' belongings breaking forth, he stopped him, exclaiming, "I hope, sir, what you are about to say may be better worth hearing than what you have said."-A Mr. Elliott, a barrister and a man of fashion, happening to speak in Dr. Johnson's presence with approbation of the laws and government of Venice, "Yes, sir, said Johnson, "all republican rascals think as you do.” — Dr. Barnard, a worthy divine holding a high position in the Church of England, ventured before a large company to state his opinion to Dr. Johnson that men never improved after the age of forty-five. "That's not true, sir," said It is no doubt his complete, and perhaps Johnson; You, who are, perhaps, forty- unparalleled, ingenuousness, that has proeight, may still improve if you will try. I cured him so much contempt. A perfect wish you would set about it; and I am tactician in his conduct, he was as simple, afraid there is great room for it."-Such and sometimes as silly in his writings as instances may be multiplied. Boswell's Goldsmith, whom he laughed at, was in his book is full of them, and they form the conversation. Many of his comments on chief portion of the innumerable ana going Johnson's sayings really justify Lord Maunder Johnson's name. And yet it was caulay's criticism that he had "no wit, no Johnson who laid it down as a maxim humour," and exhibit him in as ridiculous "never to speak of a man in his own pres- a light as Mr. Croker is exhibited by many ence. It is always indelicate, and may be of the notes to his edition of the Life. In offensive." If Boswell was not knocked telling, for instance, the story of Johnson's down by Johnson's fist or cudgel, he was remarking, in reply to a question, how he certainly more lucky than others who an- felt at the failure of "Irene," "Like the noyed the doctor. And (2), it is to be re- Monument,” he says Johnson meant by membered that Boswell was already far ad- this that he continued firm and unmoved as vanced in his book, when he was met by the that column;" an explanation so ridicupetulance and insolence of his hero. It had lously supererogatory as to imply an insult already cost him much labour, and certainly to the understanding of his readers. His much ridicule, to accomplish what he had frame thrills" over the most ponderous, already done; and it was not to be sup- involved, and depressing bits of declamation posed that he was going to allow the most in the Rambler. Speaking of the preface popular characteristic of Dr. Johnson—his to the Dictionary, one of its excellencies," VOL. XVII. 754 LIVING AGE. 66 66 says he, has always struck me with pecu- | rowed a shilling from me; and when I liar admiration; I mean the perspicuity asked him for it again, seemed to be rather with which he has expressed scientific prin- out of humour. A droll little circumstance ciples. As an instance of this, I will quote once occurred, as if he meant to reprimand the following sentence: When the radical my minute exactness as a creditor; he thus idea branches out into parallel ramifica- addressed me; Boswell, lend me sixpence tions, how can a consecutive series be -not to be repaid."" formed, of senses in their own nature collateral?'" Irony could not have done more, had it selected as a specimen of the doctor's perspicuity, his definition of "Network":"anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices, between the intersections." He talks of Johnson's books, his manuscripts, his wig, his loose breeches, with the solemn emphasis of a Roman Catholic describing the con-issue of indefinite profit to English readers. dition of some canonised bones. In Johnson's lodgings he is Gulliver at Laputa; and his insensibility to the ridiculous is manifested in the artless manner in which he misses the obvious and ludicrous implica tions of his minute confessions. 66 It would be begging the question to concede that Boswell was a toady, but that his toadyism was a merit, inasmuch as it was the instrument of giving to the world one of the most entertaining and instructive books ever written. But this much may fairly be said: that if Boswell was a toady, his toadyism should not be converted into a reproach, since it has been capped by an But was Boswell a toady? was his conduct the insinuating, spaniel-like subserviency it has been declared to be? Reduced to simple terms, Boswell's iniquity seems to have been a love for notoriety or reputation: a thirst for communion with men distinguished His ingenuousness, indeed, is nowhere either by genius or activity: by the genius better illustrated than by his_account of his of a Johnson, or the activity of a Wilkes. introduction to Johnson at Davies' shop in The obverse of the medal struck off by naCovent Garden. It may be confidently as- ture, representing the old laird of Auchinserted that there is nothing in English liter-leck disgusted with his son for cultivating ture more exquisitely absurd than the par- the acquaintance of a man who kept a ticulars of this interview. He had read the school and called it an academy, is doubtRambler, and he had read Rasselas, and from less droll enough, but it is certainly more both these works he had imbibed the most flattering to Boswell than to Boswell's faextraordinary notions of the awful being of ther. It seems to us a pardonable ambiJohnson. He was possessed, he says, of tion iu a young man to solicit with eagera kind of mysterious veneration, by figur-ness — - though that eagerness was at the ing to himself a state of solemn elevated ab- onset pusillanimous and to retain through straction, in which he supposed him to live unaffected admiration and veneration the in the immense metropolis of London." He friendship of a philosopher who occupies was in Davies' back-parlour when Johnson the most conspicuous position in English unexpectedly entered the shop, and Mr. letters during the eighteenth century, and Davies announced his awful approach to whose acquaintance was not less ardently him somewhat in the manner of an actor desired by men whom posterity has not yet in the part of Horatio, when he addresses learnt to accredit with either obsequiousHamlet on the appearance of his father's ness or meanness. The mild, contemplaghost, Look, my lord, it comes!'" He tive Langton was, certainly, at the onset, was much agitated, and begged Davies not as enthusiastic an admirer of Johnson, as to introduce him as a Scotchman. "Boswell. He too, had read the Rambler said Davies, roguishly, "he comes from and Rasselas, and such was his delight that Scotland." "Mr. Johnson," piteously ex- he had travelled to London chiefly for the claimed Boswell, "I do indeed come from purpose of obtaining an introduction to the Scotland, but I cannot help it." Johnson, author. Langton's admiration contented turning quickly upon him, exclaimed stern- itself with listening and applauding: Bosly, "That, sir, I find, is what a very great well's, with listening and recording. The number of your countrymen cannot help." distinction is enormous. It preserves LangSuch candour admits us into a much closer ton's character, and mutilates Boswell's. intimacy with him, than his most laboured But Boswell's loss is posterity's gain. accounts of himself, his hopes, or his ante- Langton remains embalmed in the narrative cedents, procure for us. One day," he of Boswell, the perfect gentleman, the unsays, "I owned to him that I was occasion- affected saint, the soft and courtly scholar. ally troubled with a fit of narrowness; And yet, this much is certain: that without 'why, sir,' said he, 'so am I, but I do Boswell, Bennet Langton would not be not tell it." He has now and then bor-more hopelessly forgotten than the man "But," |