270 Anecdotes.
��and I have written many.' Ah, Doctor (says his friend), there go two-and-forty sixpences you know to one guinea '.
They had spent an evening with Eaton Graham 2 too, I re member hearing it was at some tavern ; his heart was open, and he began inviting away ; told what he could do to make his college agreeable, and begged the visit might not be delayed. Goldsmith thanked him, and proposed setting out with Mr. John son for Buckinghamshire in a fortnight ; ' Nay hold, Dr. Minor (says the other), I did not invite you V
Many such mortifications arose in the course of their intimacy to be sure, but few more laughable than when the newspapers had tacked them together as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour lost 4 . Dr. Goldsmith came to his friend, fretting and foaming, and vowing vengeance against the printer, &c. till Mr. Johnson, tired of the bustle, and desirous to think of something else, cried out at last, 'Why, what would'st thou have, dear Doctor ! who the plague is hurt with all this nonsense ? and how is a man the worse I wonder in his health, purse, or character, for being called Holofernesl' I do not know (replies the other) how you may relish being called Holofernes, but I do not like at least to play Goodman Dull 5 .
Dr. Johnson was indeed famous for disregarding public abuse. When the people criticised and answered his pamphlets, papers, &c. ' Why now, these fellows are only advertising my book (he would say) ; it is surely better a man should be abused than
1 'Le marechal de Rochefort, capi- 2 Rev. George Graham of Eton
taine des gardes-du-corps, mourut. College.
II dtait le favori de M. de Lou- 3 See Life, v. 97, for Johnson's
vois, qui a la mort de M. de account of this incident.
Turenne 1'avait fait faire marechal 4 Love's Laboitr's Lost.
de France avec les autres, dont le s Prior in his Life of Goldsmith, ii.
Frangais, fertile en bons mots, disait 283, quotes the article in which the
que le roi avait change une piece two men had been thus ridiculed. It
d'or en monnaie.' Mtmoires du is found, he says, in the St. James's
Due de Saint -Simon, ed. 1829, Chronicle, June 14, 1770. This num-
iii. 386. ber is not in the British Museum.
forgotten.
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