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oured him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens was the sculptor; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's writings more justly than Johnson; no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits; and no man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were found in company with great weaknesses. But the list of poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the booksellers to furnish prefaces, ended with Lyttelton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years, his life has been written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves great praise; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always pleasing; but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster.

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GOLDS

ANECDOTES OF GOLDSMITH,

FROM

I. NORTHCOTE'S LIFE OF REYNOLDS.

II. CRADOCK'S MEMOIRS.

III. DAVIES'S LIFE OF GARRICK.

IV. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.
V. MISS HAWKINS'S ANECDOTES.
VI. COLMAN'S RANDOM RECORDS.
VII. CUMBERLAND'S MEMOIRS.
VIII. NORTHCOTE'S CONVERSATIONS.
IX. HAWKINS'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.

ANECDOTES OF GOLDSMITH.

NORTHCOTE'S LIFE OF REYNOLDS.

In the course of this year, Sir Joshua took another trip to Paris, from which he had scarcely returned when Mr. Bennet Langton renewed, in a very pressing manner, an invitation which he had given to him and Goldsmith to spend some part of the autumn with him and his lady, the Countess of Rothes, at their seat in Lincolnshire. With this obliging request, however, he was unable to comply; and Goldsmith, in a letter to Mr. Langton, declining the invitation on the part of both, says, Reynolds is just returned from Paris, and finds himself now in the case of a truant, that must make up for his idle time by diligence: we have therefore agreed to postpone our journey till next summer.'

In fact, at this period Sir Joshua may be said to have been at the zenith of his eminence, as we see him now employed in portraying the most illustrious personages in every different department, whilst his intimacy was sedulously sought after by all degrees of persons.

Much of the attention which even Goldsmith personally met with was undoubtedly owing to the patronage of his admired friend; yet Sir Joshua used to say that Goldsmith looked at or considered public notoriety or fame as one great parcel, to the whole of which he laid claim, and whoever partook of any part of it, whether dancer, singer, sleight-of-hand man, or tumbler, deprived him of his right, and drew off the attention of the world from himself, and which he was striving to gain.

Notwithstanding this, he lamented that whenever he entered into a mixed company, he struck a kind of awe on them, which

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