OLIYBK GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1764. It was not till the sacrifice was more complete, and the grave
mae. had closed over it, that the " partiality " of his friends ceased
to take these equivocal shapes. " There is not a bad line
" in that poem, of the Traveller" said Langton, as they sat
talking together at Reynolds's, four years after the poet's
death; " not one of Diyden's careless verses." " I was glad,"
interposed Reynolds, " to hear Charles Fox say it was one
" of the first poems in the English language." " Why were
" you glad ?" rejoined Langton. " You surely had no doubt
"of this before?" "No," exclaimed Johnson, decisively;
" the merit of the Traveller is so well established, that
• " ]\£r. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure
" diminish it."*
1765. Not very obvious at the first, however, was its progress to
-2Gt.37. this decisive eminence. From the first it had its select
admirers, but their circle somewhat slowly widened. " The
" beauties of this poem," observed the principal literary
newspaper of the day, the St. James's Chronicle, two months
after its publication, " are so great and various, that we
" cannot but be surprised they have not been able to recom-
of strife that elicited gratitude to the gods. Mrs. Cholmondeley (according to
Johnson "a very airy lady," JBoswell, iv. 272) was a younger sister of Mrs.
Woffington the actress, married to the Hon. and Rev. George Cholmondeley.
Fanny Reynolds, Johnson's "dearest dear," was eighty when she died, in
November 1807.
* Reynolds continued : "But his friends may suspect they had too great a
" partiality for him." JOHNSON. "Nay, sir, the partiality of his friends was
"always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him a hearing.
, '' Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so he talked always at
" random. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out whatever was in his mind,
" and see what would become of it. He was angry, too, when catched in an
'' absurdity; but it did not prevent him from falling into another the next minute."
Baswell, vii. 84-5. A little later, when Johnson was complaining of Langton
being too silent at the club, and letting the whigs have it all their own way, '' Sir,"
saidBoswell, " you will recollect that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for
" being glad that Charles Pox had praised Goldsmith's Traveller, and you joined
" him." JOHNSON. " Yes, sir, I knocked Fox on the head without ceremony."