With due deference to the great critic, and to the author himself, he _did_ mean tardiness of movement; but the epithet, joined as it is with others, tells us also that this slowness of motion was the result of heaviness of heart, and indicative of a sad and pensive spirit. It means all that Dr Johnson said; but it means also, and first of all, the slow pace of the solitary poet. Goldsmith was more probably “flurried at the moment,” when he so readily adopted the interpretation of Dr Johnson, than when he gave his first natural answer. He found the passage explained for him so authoritatively, and so much to the satisfaction of those present, that he could not hesitate in accepting the explanation. But had he taken time and _courage_ to reflect a moment, he would have seen that there was no discrepancy between his own answer and what Dr Johnson had added. Take away the image of the slow moving poet, and you take away all _picture_ from the passage. The pensive sadness is depicted in what Captain Chamier calls, in seeming imitation of the great man he is conversing with, “tardiness of locomotion.” “Remote—unfriended—melancholy—slow.” Every word comes from the heart. Many a time, without a doubt, had our wandering poet, at a distance from his country, walked by the side of some foreign stream—alone—unfriended—with nothing for his portion upon earth but genius and poverty. “We cannot, for our part, see the point of Captain Chamier’s question. He might, with just as much reason, have put the same query to Petrarch, who opens one of his sonnets in a very similar manner. “Solo e pensoso, i più deserti campi Vo misurando, a passi tardi e lenti.” He would have found here also “tardiness of locomotion,” and the languor of the pensive man, united in the same description. “Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravell’d fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”