OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK n.
1-759. The time will come when Mr. Griffiths, with acconi-
.ffiUJi. paniment such as that of his ancient countryman's friend
when the leek was offered, will publicly withdraw these
vulgar falsehoods ; and meanwhile they are not deserving
of remark. Indeed the quarrel, or interchange of foul
reproach, as between author and bookseller, may claim at
all times the least possible part of attention. It is a third
more serious influence to which appeal is made, and on
whose right interference the righteous arrangement must at
last depend. But at the close of the second epoch, so brief
yet so sorrowful, in the life of this great and genuine
man-of-letters, it becomes us at least to understand the
appeal he would have entered against the existing controul
and government of the destinies of literature. It was
manifestly premature, and some passages of his after-life
will plainly avow as much : but it had too sharp an
experience in it not to have also much truth, and it would
better have become certain bystanders in that age to have
gone in and parted the combatants, than, as they did, make a
ring around them for enjoyment of the sport, or in philosophic
weariness abandon the scene altogether.
" You know," said Walpole to one of his correspondents,
" how I shun authors, and would never have been one
" myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.
" They are always in earnest, and think their profession
" serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning.
" I laugh at all these things, and divert myself." "It is
" probable," said David Hume, " that Paris will be long rny
" home . . I have even thoughts of settling in Paris for the
" rest of my life . . I have a reluctance to think of living
" among the factious barbarians of London. Letters are
" there held in no honour. The taste for literature is