ing." An Eton Master called Graham, who was supping with the two
doctors, and had got to the pitch of looking at one person, and talking
to another, said, "Doctor, I shall be glad to see _you_ at Eton." "I
shall be glad to wait on you," said Goldsmith. "No," replied Graham,
"'tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor; 'tis Doctor Major there." Poor
Goldsmith said afterwards, "Graham is a fellow to make one commit
suicide."

Boswell who attributes some of Goldsmith's sayings about Johnson to
envy, said with probable truth that Goldsmith had not more envy than
others, but only spoke of it more freely. Johnson argued that we must be
angry with a man who had so much of an odious quality that he could not
keep it to himself, but let it "boil over." The feeling, at any rate,
was momentary and totally free from malice; and Goldsmith's criticisms
upon Johnson and his idolators seem to have been fair enough. His
objection to Boswell's substituting a monarchy for a republic has
already been mentioned. At another time he checked Boswell's flow of
panegyric by asking, "Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a
serpent?" To which Boswell replied with charming irrelevance, "Johnson
is the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle." The last of
Goldsmith's hits was suggested by Johnson's shaking his sides with
laughter because Goldsmith admired the skill with which the little
fishes in the fable were made to talk in character. "Why, Dr. Johnson,
this is not so easy as you seem to think," was the retort, "for if you
were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."

In spite of sundry little sparrings, Johnson fully appreciated
Goldsmith's genius. Possibly his authority hastened the spread of public
appreciation, as he seemed to claim, whilst repudiating Boswell's too
flattering theory that it had materially raised Goldsmith's position.
When Reynolds quoted the authority of Fox in favour of the _Traveller_,
saying that his friends might suspect that they had been too partial,
Johnson replied very truly that the _Traveller_ was beyond the need of
Fox's praise, and that the partiality of Goldsmith's friends had always
been against him. They would hardly give him a hearing. "Goldsmith," he
added, "was a man who, whatever he wrote, always did it better than any
other man could do." Johnson's settled opinion in fact was that embodied
in the famous epitaph with its "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit," and,
though dedications ar