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1 Ep. viii. 12.

1 Ep. xiv. 16.

earth. CAMBRIDGE. "A Spanish writer has this thought in a poetical conceit. After observing that most of the solid structures of Rome are totally perished, while the Tiber remains the same, he adds,

'Lo que èra firme huió, solamente
Lo Fugitivo permanece y dura.'"'

JOHNSON. "Sir, that is taken from Janus Vitalis:

immota labescunt;

Et quæ perpetuò sunt agitata manent.'"

The bishop said, it appeared from Horace's writings that he was a cheerful contented man. JOHNSON. "We have no reason to believe that, my lord. Are we to think Pope was happy, because he says so in his writings? We see in his writings what he wished the state of his mind to appear. Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, talks with contempt of it in his writings, and affects to despise every thing that he did not despise." BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. "He was like other chaplains, looking for vacancies: but that is not peculiar to the clergy. I remember, when I was with the army, after the battle of Lafeldt, the officers seriously grumbled that no general was killed.” CAMBRIDGE. "We may believe Horace more, when he says,

'Romæ Tibur amem ventosus, Tibure Romam ;'

than when he boasts of his consistency:

'Me constare mihi scis, et discedere tristem,
Quandocunque trahunt invisa negotia Romam.”

999

BOSWELL. "How hard is it that man can never be at rest!" RAMSAY. "It is not in his nature to be at rest. When he is at rest, he is in the worst state

that he can be in: for he has nothing to agitate him. He is then like the man in the Irish song',

There lived a young man in Ballinacrazy,
Who wanted a wife for to make him unaisy.""

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Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson observed, that it was long before his merit came to be acknowledged that he once complained to him, in ludicrous terms of distress, "Whenever I write any thing, the publick make a point to know nothing about it:" but that his "Traveller " brought him into high reputation. LANGTON. "There is not one bad line in that poem; not one of Dryden's careless verses.” SIR JOSHUA. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." LANGton. LANGTON. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." JOHNSON. "No; the merit of The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." SIR JOSHUA. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him." JOHNSON. "Nay, sir, the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him a hearing. Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so he talked always at random. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out whatever was in his mind, and see what would become of it. He was angry, too, when catched in an absurdity; but it did not prevent him from falling into another the next minute. I remember Chamier, after talking with him some

[Called "Alley Croker." This lady, a celebrated beauty in her day, was the youngest daughter of Colonel Croker, of Ballinagard, in the county of Limerick. The lover whose rejection has immortalised her name is not known; but she married Charles Langley, esq., of Lisnarnock. She died without issue, about the middle of the last century.-ED.]

* First published in 1765.-MALONE.

time, said, 'Well, I do believe he wrote this poem himself; and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal.' Chamier once asked him, what he meant by slow, the last word in the first line of The Traveller,'

'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.'

Goldsmith,

Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? who would say something without consideration, answered, 'Yes.' I was sitting by, and said, 'No, sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.' Chamier believed then that I had written the line, as much as if he had seen me write it'. Goldsmith, however, was a man, who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey; and every year he lived would have deserved it better. He had, indeed, been at no pains to fill his mind with knowledge. He transplanted it from one place to another, and it did not settle in his mind; so he could not tell what was in his own books."

We talked of living in the country. JOHNSON. "No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance; if he is to shut himself up for a year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields than to an opposite wall 2. Then if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to

1 [See ante, vol. ii. p. 6, as to the lines of this poem which Johnson wrote.— ED.]

[Mr. Cumberland was of a contrary opinion. "In the ensuing year I again paid a visit to my father at Clonfert; and there, in a little closet, at the back of the palace, as it was called, unfurnished, and out of use, with no other prospect from its single window but that of a turf-stack, with which it was almost in contact, I seated myself by choice, and began to plan and compose The West Indian. In all my hours of study, it has been through life my object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to distract my attention, and, therefore, brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever avoided. A d.ad wall, or, as

keep him from walking in again; but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he shall walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life; and The proper study of mankind is man,' as Pope observes." BOSWELL. “I fancy London is the best place for society; though I have heard that the very first society of Paris is still beyond any thing that we have here." JOHNSON. "Sir, I question if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got together in less than half a year. They talk in France of the felicity of men and women living together: the truth is, that there the men are not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, and they are not held down in their conversation by the presence of women." RAMSAY. "Literature is upon the growth, it is in its spring in France: here it is rather passée." JOHNSON. "Literature was in France long before we had it. Paris was the second city for the revival of letters: Italy had it first, to be sure. What have we done for literature, equal to what was done by the Stephani and others in France? Our literature came to us through France. Caxton printed only two books, Chaucer and Gower, that were not translations from the French; and Chaucer, we know, took much from the Italians. No, sir, if literature be in its spring in France, it is a second spring; it is after a winter. We are now before the French in literature: but we had it long after them. In England, any man who wears a sword and a powdered wig is ashamed to be illiterate. I believe it is not so in France. Yet there is, probably, a great deal of

in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are not attractions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits; and whilst in those pursuits it can find interest and occupation, it wants no outward aids to cheer it.”—Mem, vol. i. p. 271. 277. -ED.]

learning in France, because they have such a number of religious establishments; so many men who have nothing else to do but to study. I do not know this; but I take it upon the common principles of chance. Where there are many shooters, some will hit."

We talked of old age. Johnson (now in his seventieth year) said, It is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age 1." The bishop asked, if an old man does not lose faster than he gets. JOHNSON. "I think not, my lord, if he exerts himself." One of the company rashly observed, that he thought it was happy for an old man that insensibility comes upon him. JOHNSON (with a noble elevation and disdain). No, sir, I should never be happy by being less rational." BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. "Your wish then, sir, is ynparkely diĉaokoδιδασκο μενος. JOHNSON. "Yes, my lord." His lordship mentioned a charitable establishment in Wales, where people were maintained, and supplied with every

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Hobbes was of the same opinion with Johnson on this subject; and, in his answer to D'Avenant's Preface to Gondibert, with great spirit, explodes the current opinion, that the mind in old age is subject to a necessary and irresistible debility. "And now, while I think on 't," says the philosopher, "give me leave, with a short discord, to sweeten the harmony of the approaching close. I have nothing to object to your poem, but dissent only from something in your preface, sounding to the prejudice of age. It is commonly said, that old age a return to childhood: which methinks you insist on so long, as if you desired it should be believed. That's the note I mean to shake a little. That saying, meant only of the weakness of body, was wrested to the weakness of mind, by froward children, weary of the controlment of their parents, masters, and other admonitors. Secondly, the dotage and childishness they ascribe to age is never the effect of time, but sometimes of the excesses of youth, and not a returning to, but a continual stay with childhood. For they that want the curiosity of furnishing their memories with the rarities of nature in their youth, and pass their time in making provision only for their case and sensual delight, are children still, at what years soever; as they that coming into a populous city, never going out of their inn, are strangers still, how long soever they have been there. Thirdly, there is no reason for any man to think himself wiser to-day than yesterday, which does not equally convince he shall be wiser to-morrow than to-day. Fourthly, you will be forced to change your opinion hereafter, when you are old; and, in the meantime, you discredit all I have said before in your commendation, because I am old already.-But no more of this." Hobbes, when he wrote these pleasing and sensible remarks, was sixty-two years old, and D'Avenant forty-five. MALONE.

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