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"He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked always for fame. A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburden his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent friend of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation. Goldsmith too was very envious." Mr. B. defended him, by observing that he owned it frankly upon all occasions.-J. “Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy that he could not conceal it. He was so full of it that he overflowed. He talked of it, to be sure, often enough. Now, Sir, what a man avows, he is not ashamed to think; though many a man thinks what he is ashamed to avow. We are all envious naturally; but by checking envy we get the better of it. So we are all thieves naturally: a child always tries to get at what it wants the nearest way; by good instruction and good habits this is cured, till a man has not even an inclination to seize what is another's; has no struggle with himself about it."

He said, "Goldsmith's Life of Parnell is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have ate and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him."

Dr. Goldsmith, upon occasion of Mrs. Len

nox's bringing out a play, said to Dr. Johnson at the Club, that a person had advised him to go and hiss it, because she had attacked Shakspeare in her book called Shakspeare Illustrated.' JOHNSON." And did not you tell him that he was a rascal?"-GOLDSMITH. "No, Sir, I did not. Perhaps he might not mean what he said." -JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, if he lied it is a different thing."-Colman slily said (but it is believed Dr. Johnson did not hear him), "Then the proper expression should have been,-Sir, if you don't lie, you're a rascal."

Goldsmith could sometimes take adventurous liberties with Johnson, and escape unpunished. When he once talked of a project for having a third theatre in London, solely for the exhibition of new plays, in order to deliver authors from the supposed tyranny of managers, Johnson treated it slightingly; upon which Goldsmith said," Aye, aye, this may be nothing to you, who can now shelter yourself behind the corner of a pension;" and Johnson bore this with good humour.

Goldsmith, upon being visited by Johnson one day in the Temple, said to him with a little jealousy of the appearance of his accommodation, "I shall soon be in better chambers than these." Johnson at the same time checked him,

and paid him a handsome compliment, implying that a man of his talents should be above attention to such distinctions. "Nay, Sir (said he), never mind that; nil te quæsiveris extra.”

FINIS.

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