CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SOCIAL POSITION OF GOLDSMITH--HIS COLLOQUIAL CONTESTS WITH
JOHNSON--ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
THE social position of Goldsmith had undergone a material change since the
publication of The Traveler. Before that event he was but partially known
as the author of some clever anonymous writings, and had been a tolerated
member of the club and the Johnson circle, without much being expected from
him. Now he had suddenly risen to literary fame, and become one of the
_lions of the day. The highest regions of intellectual society were now
open to him; but he was not prepared to move in them with confidence and
success. Ballymahon had not been a good school of manners at the outset of
life; nor had his experience as a "poor student" at colleges and medical
schools contributed to give him the polish of society. He had brought from
Ireland, as he said, nothing but his "brogue and his blunders," and they
had never left him. He had traveled, it is true; but the Continental tour
which in those days gave the finishing grace to the education of a
patrician youth, had, with poor Goldsmith, been little better than a course
of literary vagabondizing. It had enriched his mind, deepened and widened
the benevolence of his heart, and filled his memory with enchanting
pictures, but it had contributed little to disciplining him for the polite
intercourse of the world.
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