Through all, this corpulent, learned, dainty, keen-eyed, indefatigable little man, is cool--over cool; he has no enthusiasms but the enthusiasm of knowing things. No wrongs that he records seem to chafe him; his blood has no boiling-point; his love no flame; his indignation no scorching power. A great, imposing, processional array of sovereigns, armies, nations--of the wise, the vicious, the savage, the learned, the good; but not a figure in it all, however pure or innocent, which kindles his sympathies into a glow; not one {130} so profligate as to make his anger burn; not one so lofty or so true as to give warmth to his expressions of reverence. Yet notwithstanding, if any of my young readers are projecting the writing of a history, I strongly advise them to avoid the subject of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. _Oliver Goldsmith._ [Sidenote: Oliver Goldsmith.] And now we come to another member of our club, who reaped far fewer of the substantial rewards of life.----Who, with any relish for the beatitudes of letters, has not tender reverence for the memory of Goldsmith? He was the youngest member of the club at its start, and yet the thirty-four years he then counted had been full of change and adventure: he had wandered away early from the beautiful paternal home of Lissoy in Ireland; had studied in Scotland and in Leyden; had idled in both; had been vagrant over Europe; had tried medicine, tried flute-playing, tried school-keeping, tried proof-reading for the old shopkeeper, Samuel Richardson, and had finally landed in a court not {131} far from Johnson's, where he did work for the booksellers. Amongst this work were certain essays which attracted the old Doctor's attention by their rare literary qualities; and the old gentleman had befriended the author--all the more when he found him a man who did not befriend himself; and who, if he had only sixpence in his pocket (and he was not apt to have more), would give the half of it to a beggar. A little over-love for wine, too--when the chance of a tavern dinner came to him--was another weakness which the great Doctor knew how to pardon; and so Goldsmith became one of the original clubmen; Reynolds, with all his courtly ceremony, growing to love the man; so did Burke; but Boswell was always a little jealous of him, and Goldsmith caught at any occasion for giving a good slap to that sleek self-consequence which shone out all over Boswell--even to his knee-buckles and his silken hose. I do not suppose that Goldsmith contributed much to the weightier debates of the club, and can imagine him sulking somewhat if he found no good opening in the troubled waters in which to feather his dainty oar. Again there was an {132} awkwardness, partly self-consciousness, partly organic tremor, which put him at bad odds in promiscuous talk; to say nothing of the irascibility which he had not learned to control, and which sometimes put a stammer to the tongue;