Indeed, he used often to relate with great humor the
foregoing anecdote of his credulity, and was ultimately in some degree
indemnified by its suggesting to him the amusing little story of Prince
Bonbennin and the White House in the Citizen of the World.
In this year Goldsmith became personally acquainted with Dr. Johnson,
toward whom he was drawn by strong sympathies, though their natures were
widely different. Both had struggled from early life with poverty, but had
struggled in different ways. Goldsmith, buoyant, heedless, sanguine,
tolerant of evils and easily pleased, had shifted along by any temporary
expedient; cast down at every turn, but rising again with indomitable
good-humor, and still carried forward by his talent at hoping. Johnson,
melancholy, and hypochondriacal, and prone to apprehend the worst, yet
sternly resolute to battle with and conquer it, had made his way doggedly
and gloomily, but with a noble principle of self-reliance and a disregard
of foreign aid. Both had been irregular at college, Goldsmith, as we have
shown, from the levity of his nature and his social and convivial habits;
Johnson, from his acerbity and gloom. When, in after life, the latter heard
himself spoken of as gay and frolicsome at college, because he had joined
in some riotous excesses there, "Ah, sir!" replied he, "I was mad and
violent.
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