Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/69

Rh affairs of the world, trifle with his fortunes, and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.

The whole problem of Ireland is illustrated in epitome by the commentators on Goldsmith. Johnson, it is true, did justice to him, and even Boswell is constrained to admit that ‘he was often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson himself.’ The affair of the little fishes and the whales is narrated by Boswell. Goldsmith had one day said that he believed he could write a good fable, and could make the animals talk in character. ‘For instance (said he), the fable of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill (continued he) consists in making them talk like little fishes.’ Johnson laughed at this speech—is it possible he was remembering that fishes cannot talk? But his laughter produced the famous retort—‘if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like .’

The attitude of his friends to Goldsmith remains a puzzle. Perhaps the solution is that Miss Edgeworth’s Essay on Irish Bulls marks a new era in the history of the national intellect, and that few Englishmen, and fewer Scotsmen, before her time, understood that fanciful form of speech, where wisdom masquerades as absurdity. However this may be, it is certain that the misunderstanding of Goldsmith continued long after his death. Samuel Rogers, the poet, made inquiry concerning Goldsmith of William Cook, who has been already mentioned in the list of Johnson’s biographers. Cook was an old man when Rogers met him; he had been acquainted with Goldsmith in his youth. When he was asked what Goldsmith was like in conversation, his