... for shortness call'd Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,
and Johnson said of him: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen
in his hand, or more wise when he had."
The truth was that Goldsmith's vanity, which made him eager to get in
and _shine_, could not bear the rough buffetings of Johnson's talk.
"There is no arguing with Johnson," he complained, "for when his pistol
misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."
He was as vain of his fine clothes, when he had money to buy them, as
of his literary reputation:
"Well, let me tell you," he said once, "when my tailor brought home
my bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg of you.
When any body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention
John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water-lane.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that was
because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it,
and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat
even of so absurd a colour.'"
Once at a dinner-party Goldsmith became really angry when "beginning to
speak, he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who
was at the opposite end of the table." When at length he complained,
Johnson silenced him by calling him impertinent.
[Illustration: JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH OUTSIDE FILBY'S SHOP]
But later, at the Club, they were quickly reconciled:
"'Dr Goldsmith,' said Johnson, 'something passed to-day where you and
I dined; I ask your pardon.' Goldsmith answered placidly, 'It must be
much from you, Sir, that I take ill.' And so at once the difference was
over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldsmith rattled
away as usual."
Sometimes Goldsmith had the last word, as when they were discussing the
writing of a good fable, like that of the little fishes:
"'The skill,' said Goldsmith, 'consists in making them talk like
little fishes.' While he indulged himself in this fanciful reverie,
he observed Johnson shaking his sides, and laughing. Upon which he
smartly proceeded, 'Why, Dr 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.'"
But these victories and defeats in conversation were only incidents in
the history of a well-tried friendship.
When Goldsmith died in 1774 at the age of 46, Johnson wrote to his
friend, Bennet Langton:
"Poor Goldsmith is gone.... He died of a fever, exasperated, as I
believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised money and squandered
it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expence. But let not
his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."
"Goldsmith" he said many years later, "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."
Westminster Abbey holds a memorial, but not the mortal remains, of
Oliver Goldsmith.
For the monument which, at the suggestion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was
set up in the Abbey two years after Goldsmith's death Johnson wrote the
inscription.
"I ... send you," he wrote to Sir Joshua, "the poor dear Doctor's
epitaph. Read it first yourself; and if you then think it right, shew
it to the Club. I am, you know, willing to be corrected."
The Club suggested several alterations, the chief of them being that
the epitaph should be in English rather than in Latin.
"But the question was, who should have the courage to propose them to
him [Johnson]. At last it was hinted, that there could be no way so
good as that of a _Round Robin_, as the sailors call it, which they
make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not to let it
be known who puts his name first or last to the paper.... Sir Joshua
agreed to carry it to Dr Johnson, who received it with much good
humour, and desired Sir Joshua to tell the gentlemen, that he would
alter the Epitaph in any manner they pleased, as to the sense of it;
but _he would never consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey
with an English inscription_."
Here we will risk the posthumous wrath of Johnson and give the first
sentence of the epitaph in English:
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Poet, Naturalist, Historian,
Who scarce left a single kind of writing
Untouched
And touched none that he did not adorn.