CHAP, viir.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBEBS.

himself, but to force others to be pleased. Tom Davies 1753.
was no very acute observer; yet even he has noted of him, s^5
that, so far from desiring to appear to the best advantage,
he took more pains to be esteemed worse than he was,
than others do to appear better than they are :* which was
but saving, awkwardly enough, that he failed to make him-
self understood. How time will modify all this; how far the
acquisition of his fame, and its effects upon himself, will
strengthen, with respect, the love which even they who
most laughed at already bore him; and in how much this
laughing habit will nevertheless still beset his friends,
surviving its excuses and occasion; the course of this nar-
rative must show. That his future would more than redeem
his past, Johnson was the first to maintain; for his own
experience of hardship had helped his affection to discern
it, and he was never, at any period of their intercourse, so
forbearing as at this. Goldsmith's position in these days
should nevertheless be well understood, if we would read
aright the ampler chronicle which later years obtained.

He who was to be the chronicler had arrived again in
London. " Look, my lord! " exclaimed Tom Davies with
the voice and attitude of Horatio, addressing a young gentle-
man who was sitting at tea with himself and Mrs. Davies in
their little back parlour, on the evening of Monday the 16th
of May, and pointing to an uncouth figure advancing towards
the glass door by which the parlour opened to the shop,
" It comes ! " The hope of the young gentleman's life was
at last arrived. " Don't tell where I come from," he whis-
pered, as Johnson entered with Arthur Murphy.f " This is

* Life of Garrick, ii. 168.

f Arthur has cilso described the scene ; but though he professes to relate it very
differently from Bos-well, one hardly discovers the alleged material discrepancy.tience of