CHAP. VI.] INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DATIES'S.
" encore the cow! encore the cow! In the pride of my heart 1762.
" I attempted imitations of some other animals, hut with -2B*- 34.
" very inferior effect." A Scotch friend was with Mm, and
gave sensible advice. " My dear sir," said Doctor Blair,
earnestly, " I would confine myself to the cow!" or, as
Walter Scott tells the anecdote in purer vernacular, " Stick
" to the cow, nion." * Nor was the advice lost altogether; for
Boswell stuck afterwards to his cow, in other words to what
he could hest achieve, pretty closely; though Goldsmith,
among others, had no small reason to regret, that he should
also, doing the cow so well, still " with very inferior effect"
attempt imitations of other animals.
But little does Goldsmith or any other man suspect as yet,
that within this wine-bibhing tavern babbler, this meddling,
conceited, inquisitive, loquacious lion-hunter, this bloated
and vain young Scot, lie qualities of reverence, real insight,
quick observation, and marvellous memory, which, strangely
assorted as they are with those other meaner habits, and
parasitical, self-complacent absurdities, will one day connect
his name eternally with the men of genius of his time, and
enable him to influence posterity in its judgments on them.
They seem to have met occasionally before Boswell returned
to Edinburgh; but only two of Goldsmith's answers to the
other's perpetual and restless questionings remain to indicate
the nature of their intercourse. There lived at this time
with Johnson, a strange, silent, grotesque companion, whom
he had supported for many years, and continued to keep
with him till death; and Boswell could not possibly conceive
* JBoswdl, Life, v. 148,9, and note. The story was incautiously told to
Johnson ; and afterwards, on Boswell's talking, as he himself tells us, "too
" confidently upon some point, -which I now forget, he did not spare me. {Nay,
" ' sir,1 said he, £if you cannot talk better as & man, I'd have you bellow like a
" 'cow.' "