said to one of his pupils:  “Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”  Goldsmith’s abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot.  Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying every thing he has to say in a pleasing manner.  He is now writing a Natural History and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.’

I cannot dismiss the present topick without observing, that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he often ’talked for victory,’ rather urged plausible objections to Dr. Robertson’s excellent historical works, in the ardour of contest, than expressed his real and decided opinion; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely differ from the rest of the literary world.

Johnson.  ’I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster-abbey.  While we surveyed the Poets’ Corner, I said to him,

“Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.”

when we got to Temple-bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me,

“Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."’*

     * In allusion to Dr. Johnson’s supposed political
     principles, and perhaps his own.  Boswell.

Johnson praised John Bunyan highly.  ’His Pilgrim’s Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind.  Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale.  It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote.  There is reason to think that he had read Spenser.’

A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul’s church as well as in Westminster-abbey, was mentioned; and it was asked, who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there.  Somebody suggested Pope.  Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholick, I would not have his to be first.  I think Milton’s rather should have the precedence.  I think more highly of him now than I did at twenty.  There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets.’

The gentlemen went away to their club, and I was left at Beauclerk’s till the fate of my election should be announced to me.  I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate.  In a short time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was chosen.  I hastened to the place of meeting, and was introduced to such a society as can seldom be found.  Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then saw for the first time, and whose splendid talents had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones, and the company with whom I had dined.  Upon my entrance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous formality gave me a Charge, pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club.