shman; and was anxious to impress on others
Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record
kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern,
we find Johnson saying, "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now
have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose
in his principles, but he is coming right." Johnson took walks with
Goldsmith; did him the honour of disputing with him on all occasions;
bought a copy of the _Life of Nash_ when it appeared--an unusual
compliment for one author to pay another, in their day or in ours;
allowed him to call on Miss Williams, the blind old lady in Bolt
Court; and generally was his friend, counsellor, and champion.
Accordingly, when Mr. Boswell entertained the great Cham to supper at
the Mitre--a sudden quarrel with his landlord having made it
impossible for him to order the banquet at his own house--he was
careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. His guests that evening
were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had
conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to
Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who
deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune patriotism that
provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the
high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not
got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old
pensioner in Bolt-court, "as usual, endeavoured with too much
eagerness to _shine_, and disputed very warmly with Johnson against
the well-known maxim of the British constitution, 'The king can do no
wrong.'" It was a dispute not so much about facts as about
phraseology; and, indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the
expressions used on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that "what was
morally false could not be politically true;" and that, in short, the
king could by the misuse of his regal power do wrong. Johnson replied,
that, in such a case, the immediate agents of the king were the
persons to be tried and punished for the offence. "The king, though he
should command, cannot force a judge to condemn a man unjustly;
therefore it is the judge whom we prosecute and punish." But when he
stated that the king "is above everything, and there is no power by
which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an important chapter
in English history. "What did Cromwell do for his country?" he hi