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Sir Joshua and Goldsmith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have no time." This shows how little Beauclerc was the companion of the poet's mind, or could judge of him below the surface. Reynolds, the kind participator in joyless dissipation, could have told a different story of his companion's heart-sick gayety.
The only comment, however, which he is said to have made, partakes more of quaint and dry humor than bitterness: "That Graham," said he, "is enough to make one commit suicide." What more could be said to express the intolerable nuisance of a consummate bore? We have now given the last scenes between Goldsmith and Johnson which stand recorded by Boswell.
In consequence of the Washington papers having referred to the august 7th of this month, my room was on that day a blooming garden. Nor were flowers alone represented there. The silversmith, the goldsmith, the landscape-painter, all sent in their contributions. After the reading was done at night, the whole audience rose; and it was spontaneous, hearty, and affecting.
We have pictures of the fuller, to whom the woollen garments the togas and tunics, and the mantles of the women were regularly sent to be washed by treading in vats, to be beaten, stretched, and bleached with sulphur, and to have their naps raised with a comb or a bunch of thorns. The goldsmith is depicted at his furnace or his anvil.
Home gave up the publication of the Gazette, in whose office Collins had been for some time a compositor, the latter applied for the position, and was informed that 'the office would be given to none but a gentleman. This little incident recalls the quiet satire which Goldsmith levels in 'The Good-natured Man, against just such absurd sensitiveness as Collins had to submit to:
My next meeting with Johnson was on Friday the 1st of July, when he and I and Dr. Goldsmith supped together at the Mitre. I was before this time pretty well acquainted with Goldsmith, who was one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school.
They would dine at a coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they would frequent the Abbey and the British Museum and find out where Doctor Johnson had lived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to Ralph, who burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired. "It's a delightful plan," he said.
In the most savage parts of India they are possessed of the secret of dying vegetable substances scarlet, and that of refining lead into a metal which, for hardness and color, is little inferior to silver." Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited to such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in view.
Thenceforth everything good or desirable, above what might serve for the barest subsistence of labor, was systematically and exhaustively gathered up by the capitalists, to be exchanged in foreign lands for gold and gems, silks, velvets, and ostrich plumes for the rich. As Goldsmith had it: "Around the world each needful product flies For all the luxuries the world supplies."
Goldsmith was also a faithful customer of George's coffee-house which was situated close to the Grecian.
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