He was not a social man. He never
exchanged mind with you.'
We spent the evening at Mr. Hoole's. Mr. Mickle, the excellent
translator of The Lusiad, was there. I have preserved little of the
conversation of this evening. Dr. Johnson said, 'Thomson had a true
poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light.
His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly
peep through. Shiels, who compiled Cibber's Lives of the Poets, was one
day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion
of him, and then asked,--Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the
highest admiration. Well, Sir, (said I,) I have omitted every other
line.'
I related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, one
day when they and I were dining at Tom Davies's, in 1762. Goldsmith
asserted, that there was no poetry produced in this age. Dodsley
appealed to his own Collection, and maintained, that though you could
not find a palace like Dryden's Ode on St.
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