most distinguished abilities as a writer, their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically says of himself, is very true-he always gets the better when he argues alone; meaning, that he is master of a subject in his study, and can write well upon it; but when he comes into company, he grows confused, and unable to talk. Take him as a poet, his Traveller is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his Deserted Village, were it not sometimes too much the echo of his Traveller. Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian-he stands in the first class." BOSWELL. "An histo rian! my dear sir, you will surely not rank his compilation of the Roman history with the works of other historians of this age?" JOHNSON." Why, who are before him?" BoSWELL." Hume,Robertson, Lord Lyttelton." JOHNSON. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise.) I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." BOSWELL. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose history we find such penetration-such painting?" JOHNSON. "Sir, you must consider how that peuetration and that painting are employed; it is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds, as sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece; he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard: history it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has

done this in his History. Now, Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool; the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight-would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your compositions; and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus, or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying every thing he has to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale."

6

Boswell adds, "I cannot dismiss the present topic without observing, that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he often talked for victory,' rather urged plausible objections to Dr. Robertson's excellent historical works, in the ardour of contest, than expressed his real and decided opinion; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely differ from the rest of the literary world."

Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. His Pilgrim's Progress has great merit both for invention,

imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind: few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he

had read Spenser."

Some of the company expressed a wonder, why the author of so excellent a book as the Whole Duty of Man should conceal himself. JOHNSON. "There may be different reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles; so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or, he may have been a man of rigid self-denial; so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future state."

He talked of Isaac Walton's Lives, which was one of his most favourite books: Dr. Donne's Life, he said, was the most perfect of them. He observed, that "it was wonderful that Walton, who was in a very low situation in life, should have been familiarly received by so many great men, and that at a time when the ranks of society were kept more separate than they are now."

Johnson praised the Spectator, particularly the character of sir Roger de Coverley. He said, "Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has generally

been fancied: he was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison of some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die. I never could see why sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me, that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come."

Talking of the eminent writers in queen Anne's reign, he observed, "I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them: he was the most universal genius; being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour. Mr. Addison was, to be sure, a great man: his learning was not profound; but his morality, his humour, and his elegance of writing, set him very high."

"Addison wrote Budgell's papers in the Spectator, at least mended them so much, that he made them almost his own; and Draper, Tonson's partner, assured Mrs. Johnson, that the much admired epilogue to the Distressed Mother, which came out in Budgell's name, was in reality written by Addi

son."

He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books. Boswell said, he thought Cheyne had been reckoned whimsical. JOHNSON. "So he was in some things; but there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some objection or other may not be made." He added, "I would not have you read any thing else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his English Malady."

Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "He was a blockhead:" and, upon Boswell's ex

pressing his astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." BoSWELL. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones.* I, indeed, never read Joseph Andrews." ERSKINE. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." JOHNSON."6 Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted, that you would hang yourself: but, you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment."

A book of travels, lately published under the title of Coriat Junior, and written by Mr. Paterson, was mentioned. Johnson said, this book was in imitation of Sterne, and not of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical one. "Tom Coriat," said he, "was a humourist about the court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Europe, and published his travels: he afterwards travelled on foot through Asia, and had made many

*"Johnson's severity against Fielding did not arise from any viciousness in his style, but from his loose life, and the profligacy of almost all his male characters. Who would venture to read one of his novels aloud to modest women? His novels are male amusements, and very amusing they certainly are. Fielding's conversation was coarse, and so tinctured with the rank weeds of the Garden, that it would now be thought only fit for a brothel."-Burney.