OLIYEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1762. to Mm now of that choicest of lier gifts. He had some how of
StiHi. promise shining through his dullest weather. It is supposed
that he memorialised Lord Bute, soon after Johnson's
pension, with the scheme we have seen him throw out hints
of in his review of Van Egrnont's Asia ;* and nothing is more
prohahle than that the notion might have revived with him,
on hearing Johnson's remark to Langton in connection with
his pension. "Had this happened twenty years ago, I
" should have gone to Constantinople to learn Arabic, as
" Pocock did." But what with Samuel Johnson might he
a nohle amhition, with little Groldy was hut theme for a
jest; and nothing so raised the laugh against him, a few
years later, as Johnson's notice of the old favourite project
he was still at that time clinging to, that some time or other,
" when Ms circumstances should he easier," he would like to
goto Aleppo, and bring home such arts peculiar to the East
as he might he able to find there. " Of all men Goldsmith is
" the most unfit to go out upon such an inquiry; for he is
" utterly ignorant of such arts as we already possess, and
" consequently could not know what would be accessories
" to our present stock of mechanical knowledge. Sir, he
" would bring home a grinding barrow, wMch you see in
" every street in London, and think that he had furnished
" a wonderful improvement, "t
But brighter than these visionary fancies were shining for
* See ante, 186. The same subject is pursued in Letter cviii of the Citizen of the
World. '' To Lord Bute Goldsmith made an application to be allowed a salary to enable
"him to execute Ms favourite plan. . but poor Goldsmith, who had not then
" published his Traveller, or distinguished his name by any popular display of
"genius, being obscure and unfriended, was not successful. His petition or
" memorial was unnoticed and neglected." Percy Memoir, 65.
°t" Yet there is a passage in the Letter above named which shows that Goldsmith
took no mean view of the objects to be aimed at in such an enterprise, and felt
that its successful accomplishment would task a higher and hardier spirit than
his own. "Of all the English philosophers," he says, "I most reverence Bacon,