Goldsmith did not find the residence among the great unattended with
mortifications. He had now become accustomed to be regarded in London as a
literary lion, and was annoyed at what he considered a slight on the part
of Lord Camden. He complained of it on his return to town at a party of his
friends. "I met him," said he, "at Lord Clare's house in the country; and
he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man." "The
company," says Boswell, "laughed heartily at this piece of 'diverting
simplicity.'" And foremost among the laughters was doubtless the
rattle-pated Boswell. Johnson, however, stepped forward, as usual, to
defend the poet, whom he would allow no one to assail but himself; perhaps
in the present instance he thought the dignity of literature itself
involved in the question. "Nay, gentlemen," roared he, "Dr. Goldsmith is in
the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith, and
I think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him."
After Goldsmith's return to town he received from Lord Clare a present of
game, which he has celebrated and perpetuated in his amusing verses
entitled the Haunch of Venison. Some of the lines pleasantly set forth the
embarrassment caused by the appearance of such an aristocratic delicacy in
the humble kitchen of a poet, accustomed to look up to mutton as a treat:
"Thanks, my lord, for your venison; for finer or fatter
Never rang'd in a forest, or smok'd in a platter:
The haunch was a picture for painters to study,
The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy;
Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting,
To spoil such a delicate picture by eating:
I had thought in my chambers to place it in view,
To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu;
As in some Irish houses where things are so-so,
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show;
But, for eating a rasher, of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it was fry'd in.
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