Miss Reynolds relates that she overheard a gentleman at her brother's table, to whom he was talking his best, suddenly stop him in the middle of a sentence with Hush! Hush! Doctor Johnson is going to say something.' The like was overheard at the first Academy dinner; when a Swiss named Moser, the first keeper appointed, interrupted him on seeing Johnson roll himself as if about to speak, and was paid back for his Toctor Shonson' zeal by Goldsmith's quick retort, and are you sure you'll comprehend what he says?' His happy rebuke of similar subserviency of Boswell's, that he was for turning into a monarchy what ought to be a republic, is recorded by Boswell himself (who adds, with that air of patronage which is now so exquisitely ludicrous, for my part I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith 'talk away carelessly '); and upon the whole evidence it seems clear enough, that his talk was not below the average of that of other celebrated men, and certainly did not deserve the Johnsonian antithesis which even goodhumoured Langton repeats so complacently: 'no man was

more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more 'wise when he had.' Walpole said much the same thing of Hume, whose writings he thought so superior to his conversation that he protested the historian understood nothing till he had written upon it; and even of his friend Gray he said he was the worst company in the world, for he never talked easily: yet Walpole himself talked ill, and so did Gay; and so did Dryden, Pope, and Swift; and so did Hogarth and Addison.

For

Nothing is recorded of those men, or of others as famous, so clever as the specimens of the talk of Goldsmith which Boswell himself has not cared to forget. Nay, even he goes so far as to admit, that 'he was often very fortunate in his 'witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson 'himself.' An immortal instance was remembered by Reynolds. He, Johnson, and Goldsmith were together one day, when the latter said that he thought he could write a good fable; mentioned the simplicity which that kind of composition requires; and observed that in most fables the animals introduced seldom talk in character. 'instance,' said he, the fable of the little fishes who saw 'birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned 'Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill,' he continued, 'consists in making them talk like little fishes.' At this point he observed Johnson shaking his sides and laughing; whereupon he made this home thrust. Why, 'Mr. 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.' This was what Garrick would call a forcible hug, and it shook laughter out of Johnson in his own despite. But in truth no one, as Boswell has admitted, could take such 'adventurous liberties' with the great social despot, and escape unpunished.' Beauclerc tells us that on Goldsmith originating, one day, a project for a third theatre in London solely for the exhibition of new plays, in order to deliver authors from the supposed tyranny of managers (a project often renewed since, and always sure

:

to fail, for the simple reason that authors themselves become
managers, and all authors cannot be heard), Johnson
treated it slightingly upon which the other retorted ‘Aye,
'aye,
this may be nothing to you, who can now shelter
'yourself behind the corner of a pension;' and Johnson
bore it with perfect good humour. But the most amusing
instance connected with the pension occurred a year or two
afterward, when, on the appearance of Mason's exquisite
Heroic Epistle, Goldsmith, delighted with it himself, carried
it off to his friend, and was allowed to read it out to him
from beginning to end with a running accompaniment of
laughter, in which Johnson as heartily joined at the invo-
cation to George the Third's selected (and in part pilloried)
pensioners, as at the encounter of Charles Fox with the
Jews.

witness, ye chosen train

Who breathe the sweets of his Saturnian reign;
Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares,
Hark to my call, for some of you have ears.

When one of the most active of the second-rate politicians, and the great go-between of the attempted alliance between the Chatham and Rockingham whigs, Tommy Townshend (so called not satirically, but to distinguish him from his father), anticipated in the present year that connection of Johnson's and Shebbeare's names (I formerly described them pensioned together, the He-Bear and the She-Bear' as some one humorously said), he did not get off so easily. But Johnson had brought these allusions on himself by plunging into party-war, at

the opening of the year, with a pamphlet on the False Alarm, as he called the excitement on Wilkes's expulsion, in which he did not spare the opposition; and which, written in two nights at Thrale's, continued to attract attention. Boswell tells us that when Townshend made the attack, Burke, though of Townshend's party, stood warmly forth in defence of his friend; but the recent publication of the Debates corrects this curious error. Burke spoke after Townshend, and complained of the infamous private libels of the Town and Country Magazine against members of the opposition, but did not refer to Townshend's attack: he left the vindication of Johnson to their common friend Fitzherbert, who rose with an emphatic eulogy at the close of the debate, and called him a pattern of morality.' In truth Burke had this year committed himself too fiercely to the stormy side of

opposition, to be able to stretch his hand across even to his old friend Johnson. His friend had cast himself with the enemies of freedom, and was left to fare with them. His unsparing vehemence in the House of Commons contrasted with his calm philosophic severity in the press. He was charged with want of common candour, and denounced the sickly habit. 'Virtues are not to be sacrificed to candour.' He was reproached for his following of certain leaders, and made the reproach his glory. 'I will cling 'to them, adhere to them, follow them in and out, wash the ' very feet they stand on: wash their feet and be subservient, 'not from interest but from principle.' Those leaders were

still the Rockinghams, but not so isolated as of old. There were yet dissensions between the rival parties of opposition, but not such as withheld them from concentrating, for this one while at least, hate and bitterness on the government. The Grenvilles had too great a grudge against the Bedfords too freely to indulge at its expense their grudge against the Rockinghams; Chatham had suffered too bitterly for his own mistake, to continue his feud with either; and the Rockinghams themselves, content with Burke's masterly Observations defending them against Grenville's finance, had waived their dislike of Wilkes, and backed even faction in the City and Temple in the Lords. The excitement was unexampled. Desertion on either side was denounced as the worst of crimes. Language unheard till now, was launched from both houses at the government. Lord Shelburne dared the premier to find a wretch so base and mean-spirited,' as to take the seals Lord Camden had flung down. In evil hour, poor Charles Yorke (Lord Rockingham's attorney-general, and sensitive as he was accomplished) accepted the challenge; and then, maddened by his own reproaches, perished within two days, his patent of peerage lying incomplete before him. Chatham rose in the Lords to a height of daring which even he had never reached, and (resolving to be a scarecrow of violence to 'the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate whigs and 'temperate statesmen') prayed that rather than any compromise should now be made, or the people should vail their representative rights to their governors, either the question