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.] TSE TRAVELLER AXD WHAT FOLLOWED IT.
public till many years after Goldsmith's death, when it 1704.
appeared in Seward's Anecdotes. The poem had been, emi- S&$Q nently and in a peculiar degree, written from personal feeling and observation; and the course of its composition has been traced with the course of its author's life. "When Boswell came back to London some year or so after its appearance, he tells us with what amazement he had heard Johnson say that " there had not been so fine a poem since Pope's time;" * and then amusingly explains the phenomenon by remarking, that " much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression " were derived from conversation" with the great lexico- grapher. What the great lexicographer really suggested was a title, The Philosophic Wanderer, rejected for something simpler; as, if offered, the Johnsonian sentiment and expression would, I suspect, have been. But " Garth did " not write his own Dispensary" and Goldsmith had still less chance of obtaining credit for his. The rumour that Johnson had given great assistance, is nevertheless contra- dicted by even Hawkins; where he professes to relate the extreme astonishment of the club, that a newspaper essayist and bookseller's drudge should have written such a poem. Undoubtedly that was his own feeling; and others of the members shared it, though it is to be hoped in a less degree. " "Well," exclaimed Chamier, " I do believe he wrote this " poem himself; and let me tell you, that is believing a " great deal." Goldsmith had left the club early that night, after " rattling away as usual." In truth he took little pains himself, in the thoughtless simplicity of those social hours, to fence round his own property and claim. " Mr. Gold- " smith," asked Chamier, at the next meeting of the club,
* Life, ii. 308.
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