OLIVER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
1766. had made good ones. He remarked that he had once
Mt. 38. written, in one day, a hundred lines of the Vanity of Human
Wishes; and turning quickly to Goldsmith, added, "Doctor,
" I am not quite idle; I made one line t'other day; but
" I made no more." " Let us hear it," said the other,
laughing; " we'll put a bad one to it." " No, sir," replied
Johnson, " I have forgot it."
Boswell was the reporter of this conversation. He had
arrived from Paris a few clays before, bringing with him
Eousseau's old servant maid, Mademoiselle le Vasseur.
" She's very homely and very awkward," says Hume, " but
" more talked of than the Princess of Morocco or the
" Countess of Egrnont, on account of her fidelity and attach -
" ment towards him. His very dog, who is no better than
" a collie, has a name and reputation in the world ! "* It
was enough for Boswell, who clung to any rag of celebrity ;
nor, remembering how the ancient widow of Cicero and
Sallust had seduced a silly young patrician into thinking
that her close connection with genius must have given her
the secret of it, were Hume and Walpole quite secure of
even the honour of the young Scotch escort of the ugly old
Frenchwoman. They arrived safely and virtuously, notwith-
standing;, and Boswell straightway went to Johnson, whom,
not a little to his discomfort, he found put by his doctors on
a water regimen. Though they supped twice at the Mitre,
it was not as in the old social time. On the night of the
conversation just given, being then on the eve of his return
to Scotland, he had taken Goldsmith with him to call again
on Johnson, " with the hope of prevailing on him to sup
" with us at the Mitre." But they found him indisposed, and
resolved not to go abroad. " Come then," said Goldsmith
* Burton's Life, ii. 299. And see Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 387.