I sent him a
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon
as I was drest, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his
rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had
already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass
before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm,
and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated.
He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he
produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady
I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty
pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not
without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'
My next meeting with Johnson was on Friday the 1st of July, when he and
I and Dr. Goldsmith supped together at the Mitre. I was before this
time pretty well acquainted with Goldsmith, who was one of the brightest
ornaments of the Johnsonian school.
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