Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/67

Rh, The incident is narrated by Boswell in these words: ‘When he was accompanying two beautiful young ladies with their mother on a tour in France, he was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than to him.’ The other instance needs no gloss: ‘Once at the exhibition of the Fantoccini in London, when those who sat next to him observed with what dexterity a puppet was made to toss a pike, he could not bear that it should have such praise, and exclaimed with some warmth, “Pshaw! I can do it better myself.” He went home with Mr. Burke to supper; and broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than the puppets.’

If these incidents had occurred in one of Goldsmith’s plays, they would have been taken, quite rightly, for delicate examples of sly humour. That Goldsmith should make himself ridiculous for his own and the company’s amusement was not intelligible to Boswell. But indeed all Goldsmith’s circle of friends and acquaintances were in a kind of conspiracy to despise him for his simplicity and quaintness. ‘Whenever I write anything,’ Goldsmith once complained, ‘the publick make a point to know nothing about it.’ Whenever he said anything original or quaint, his friends made a point to see in it nothing but childish absurdity. Hawkins is as bad as Boswell. He records some most winning and delightful sayings with angry and contemptuous comments. Here are a few of them:—

At the breaking up of an evening at a tavern, he