s Whig,"
and who generally spoke of Whigs as rascals, and maintained that the
first Whig was the devil. If his intellect was wider, his heart was as
warm as Johnson's, and in conversation he merited the generous applause
and warm emulation of his friends. Johnson was never tired of praising
the extraordinary readiness 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