Then Toplady was about to speak, Oliver hearing Johnson growl something, and thinking he was about to go on again, begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter had heard Johnson patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’ roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to interrupt the gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said nothing, but continued in the company for some time. When they all met in the evening at the club, Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith, something passed between us, where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.’ After which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was himself again, and rattled away as usual.” All this exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse tyranny of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver, in a fair light. Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—_intus et in cute_—and used to say of him, with that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing with Johnson; when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end of it.” Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment. The former came armed at all points into the argument—the latter was but too glad to fling off all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were, and enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so cordially, the sight of happy human faces. Johnson generally entered into conversation like an athlete or a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after some literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.” “Yes, sir,” returned the admiring disciple, “you tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant affair, truly, one of those conversations on philosophy and polite literature must have been in the Johnsonian times. Poor Goldsmith was disposed to be light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast his own open pleasantry with the dread gravity of Johnson, and those who stood in awe of him. Oliver was out of his element, in fact, among the generality of those with whom he came into contact at the club and elsewhere. He should have lived in the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt, the old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb; he should have known Moore, the gayest of wits, and Maginn, who also _stammered_ forth “his logic and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led him to desire a hearty enjoyment of his social hours in the midst of his friends. He would have quips and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified inspirations. But such he was not to have at the Literary Club, where Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or rather the field, and “glowering frae him,” kept himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.