"
Johnson used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling in these motley
circles, observing that, having been originally poor, he had contracted a
love for low company. Goldsmith, however, was guided not by a taste for
what was low, but for what was comic and characteristic. It was the feeling
of the artist; the feeling which furnished out some of his best scenes in
familiar life; the feeling with which "rare Ben Jonson" sought those very
haunts and circles in days of yore, to study "Every Man in His Humor."
It was not always, however, that the humor of these associates was to his
taste: as they became boisterous in their merriment he was apt to become
depressed. "The company of fools," says he, in one of his essays, "may at
first make us smile; but at last never fails of making us melancholy."
"Often he would become moody," says Glover, "and would leave the party
abruptly to go home and brood over his misfortune."
It is possible, however, that he went home for quite a different purpose;
to commit to paper some scene or passage suggested for his comedy of The
Good-Natured Man. The elaboration of humor is often a most serious task;
and we have never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than
was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer--still, we hope,
living--whom we found in the agonies of producing a farce which
subsequently set the theaters in a roar.
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