prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went
to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how he added five hundred
pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at
Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and
how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how
tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much his merriment
annoyed the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle and
with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel
Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his
father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his
fooleries--all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they
had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicings. All the
caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his
hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he displayed with a
cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a
fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the
whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill; but assuredly he
has used nobody so ill as himself.

That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world
is strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted
themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has
indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works.
Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an
inspired idiot, and by another as a being

"Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll."

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come
in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary