Goldsmith wrote histories of England, Greece, and Rome--sometimes inaccurate, but always readable, and, with but a shallow knowledge of natural science, plunged into a work called _A History of the Earth and Animated Nature_. He had, as Boswell says, "a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen." "Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a natural history, and ... had taken lodgings, at a farmer's house, near to the six mile-stone, on the Edgeware road, and had carried down his books in two returned post-chaises.... I went to visit him at this place ... and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black lead pencil." When Johnson heard of the project, he said: "Goldsmith, Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history." Goldsmith was certainly not very sound on cows. This is what he says of their horns: "At three years old the cow sheds its horns, and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives"! But all that Goldsmith wrote had charm, and no one was more sensitive to it than Johnson. In conversation Goldsmith was not so happy. Garrick described him as one ... for shortness call'd Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll, and Johnson said of him: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had." The truth was that Goldsmith's vanity, which made him eager to get in and _shine_, could not bear the rough buffetings of Johnson's talk. "There is no arguing with Johnson," he complained, "for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it." He was as vain of his fine clothes, when he had money to buy them, as of his literary reputation: "Well, let me tell you," he said once, "when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water-lane.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.'" Once at a dinner-party Goldsmith became really angry when "beginning to speak, he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table." When at length he complained, Johnson silenced him by calling him impertinent. [Illustration: JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH OUTSIDE FILBY'S SHOP] But later, at the Club, they were quickly reconciled: