OLIYEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
1762. began in Switzerland are lying still in his desk untouched.
^Btlk. They are not to tell for so many pitiful items in the drudgery
for existence. They are to " catch the heart, and strike for
" honest fame."
He thought poorly, with exceptions already named in this
narrative, of the poetry of the day. He regarded Churchill's
astonishing success as a mere proof of the rage of faction;
and did not hesitate to call his satires lampoons, and his
force turbulence. Fawkes and "Woty were now compiling
their Poetical Calendar, and through Johnson, who con-
tributed, they asked if he would contribute; but he declined.
Between himself and Fawkes, who was rector of a small
Kentish village he had occasionally visited, civilities had
passed; but he shrunk from the poetical school of Fawkes
and Woty, and did not hesitate to say so. He dined at the
close of the year at Davies's, in company with Robert
Doclsley, where the matter came into discussion. " This is
" not a poetical age," said Goldsmith; " there is no poetry
" produced in it." " Nay," returned Dodsley, " have you
" seen my Collection. You may not be able to find palaces
" in it, Eke Dryden's Ode, but you have villages composed
" of very pretty houses, such as the Spleen.'" Johnson was
not present; but when the conversation was afterwards
reported to him by Boswell, he remarked that Dodsley had
said the same thing as Goldsmith, only in a softer manner.*
Another guest, besides Dodsley, was present at Davies's
* Life, vi. 156-7. Yet Dodsley was quite right in Ms praise of the Spleen,
which was especially liked "by Gray, as it has been by all men of taste. "The
" Spleen, a poem in Dodsley's Collection, by Mr. Green of the Custom House, was
" a great favourite with him for its wit and originality." Nicholls's Reminiscences
of Gray, Worlcs, v. 36,7. It* is in Green's poem the neat line occurs, by way of
recommending exercise as a cure for the malady,
Fling but a stone, the giant dies !
In a letter to "Walpole, I may add, written many years before he expressed that