and spontaneity of Burke’s conversation.  “If a man,” he said, “went under a shed at the same time with Burke to avoid a shower, he would say, ‘This is an extraordinary man.’  Or if Burke went into a stable to see his horse dressed, the ostler would say, ’We have had an extraordinary man here.’” When Burke was first going into Parliament, Johnson said in answer to Hawkins, who wondered that such a man should get a seat, “We who know Mr. Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the country.”  Speaking of certain other members of Parliament, more after the heart of Sir John Hawkins, he said that he grudged success to a man who made a figure by a knowledge of a few forms, though his mind was “as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet;” but then he did not grudge Burke’s being the first man in the House of Commons, for he would be the first man everywhere.  And Burke equally admitted Johnson’s supremacy in conversation.  “It is enough for me,” he said to some one who regretted Johnson’s monopoly of the talk on a particular occasion, “to have rung the bell for him.”

The other Irish adventurer, whose career was more nearly moulded upon that of Johnson, came to London in 1756, and made Johnson’s acquaintance.  Some time afterwards (in or before 1761) Goldsmith, like Johnson, had tasted the bitterness of an usher’s life, and escaped into the scarcely more tolerable regions of Grub Street.  After some years of trial, he was becoming known to the booksellers as a serviceable hand, and had two works in his desk destined to lasting celebrity.  His landlady (apparently 1764) one day arrested him for debt.  Johnson, summoned to his assistance, sent him a guinea and speedily followed.  The guinea had already been changed, and Goldsmith was consoling himself with a bottle of Madeira.  Johnson corked the bottle, and a discussion of ways and means brought out the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield.  Johnson looked into it, took it to a bookseller, got sixty pounds for it, and returned to Goldsmith, who paid his rent and administered a sound rating to his landlady.

The relation thus indicated is characteristic; Johnson was as a rough but helpful elder brother to poor Goldsmith, gave him advice, sympathy, and applause, and at times criticised him pretty sharply, or brought down his conversational bludgeon upon his sensitive friend.  “He has nothing of the bear but his skin,” was Goldsmith’s comment upon his clumsy friend, and the two men appreciated each other at bottom.  Some of their readers may be inclined to resent Johnson’s attitude of superiority.  The admirably pure and tender heart, and the exquisite intellectual refinement implied in the Vicar and the Traveller, force us to love Goldsmith in spite of superficial foibles, and when Johnson prunes or interpolates lines in the Traveller, we feel as though a woodman’s axe was hacking at a most delicate piece of carving.  The evidence of contemporary observers, however, must