OLIVER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1763. men " whose necessities and abilities were nearly coininensu-
m. 35. " rate," he had a special contempt. As chairman of quarter-
sessions, what other judgment could he Tbe expected to have
of them ? Being men of loose principles, he would say, bad
economists, and living without foresight, " it is their endea-
" vour to commute for their failings by professions of greater
" love to mankind, more tender affections and finer feelings
" than they will allow men of more regular lives, whom they
" deem formalists, to possess." * "With a man of such regular
life, denouncing woe to loose characters that should endeavour
to commute for their failings, poor Goldsmith had naturally
little chance; and it fared as ill with the rest of the club
when questions of "economy" or "foresight" came up.
Mr. Hawkins, after the first four meetings, begged to be
excused his share of the reckoning, on the ground that he
did not partake of the supper. " And was he excused ? "
asked Doctor Burney, when Johnson told him of the incident
many years after. " Oh yes, sir," was the reply; " and very
" readily. No man is angry at another for being inferior
" to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly, for the grati-
" fication of scorning him privately. Sir John, sir, is a very
" unclubbable man. Yet I really believe him," pursued John-
son, on the same occasion, very characteristically, " to be an
" honest man at the bottom; though to be sure he is rather
" penurious, and he is somewhat mean, and it must be owned
" he has some degree of brutality, and is not without a
" tendency to savageness that cannot well be defended." f
It was this latter tendency which caused his early secession
from the club. He was not a member for more than two or
* Life of Johnson, 218.
t Madame cl'Arblay is the authority for this, which she relates with but slight
variation both in her Memoirs of her father, and in her own Diary. See also
BosweO, ii. 273, and is. 287-8.