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OLIVEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
1763. part, of this eagerness to make every subject a battle-ground,
m. 35. which made him. say, at a moment of illness and exhaustion, that if he were to see Burke then, it would kill him.* From the first day of their meeting, now some years ago, at G-arrick's dinner-table, his desire had been to measure him- self, on all occasions, with Burke. " I suppose, Murphy," he said to Arthur, as they came away from the dinner, "you " are proud of your countryman. Cum tails sit, utinam " noster esset."\ The club was an opportunity for both, and promptly seized; to the occasional overshadowing, no doubt, of the comforts and opportunities of other members. Yet for the most part their wit-combats seem not only to have interested the rest, but to have improved the temper of the combatants, and made them more generous to each other. " How very great Johnson has been to-night," said Burke to Langton, as they left the club together. Langton assented, but could have wished to hear more from another person. " Oh, no!" replied Burke, " it is enough for me to have rung " the bell to him." I
spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Burke said to him that Johnson
showed more powers of mind in company than in his writings ; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his assent with " Why no, sir !" Croker, 768. Bcswell mentions the same peculiarity, and tells us that he used to consider the Why no, sir! as a kind of flag of defiance; as if he had said, "Any argument you " may offer against this is not just. No, sir, it is not." It was like Falstaff's " I deny your major." viii. 318.
* " That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burlce now, it would
" kill me. So much was he accustomed to consider conversation as a contest, a,nd " such was his notion of Burke as an opponent." Boswell, vi. 80. On the other hand with what complacency, in his better health, he writes to Mrs. Thrale (Letters, ii. 127.) " But [Mrs. Montagu] and you have had, with all your adulation, " nothing finer said of you than was said last Saturday night of Burke and me. " We were at the Bishop of [St. Asaph's], a bishop little better than your bishop " [Hinchliffe]; and towards twelve we fell into talk, to which the ladies listened, "just as they do to you; and said, as I heard, There is no rising unless " somebody icill cry Fire!" f Murphy's Essay, 53.
J Langton's collectanea, in BosweU, vii. 374. It must surely have been only
for the purpose of ringing the bell to him, that lie took the particular part in the |
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