lines of this Prologue are strongly characteristical of the dismal gloom
of his mind; which in his case, as in the case of all who are distressed
with the same malady of imagination, transfers to others its own
feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce a comedy, when Mr.
Bensley solemnly began,

'Press'd with[128] the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind.'

But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour shine the more.

In the spring of this year, having published my _Account of Corsica_,
with the _Journal of a Tour to that Island_[129], I returned to London
[130], very desirous to see Dr. Johnson, and hear him upon the subject.
I found he was at Oxford, with his friend Mr. Chambers[131], who was now
Vinerian Professor, and lived in New Inn Hall. Having had no letter from
him since that in which he criticised the Latinity of my Thesis, and
having been told by somebody that he was offended at my having put into
my Book an extract of his letter to me at Paris[132], I was impatient to
be with him, and therefore followed him to Oxford, where I was
entertained by Mr. Chambers, with a civility which I shall ever
gratefully remember. I found that Dr. Johnson had sent a letter to me to
Scotland, and that I had nothing to complain of but his being more
indifferent to my anxiety than I wished him to be. Instead of giving,
with the circumstances of time and place, such fragments of his
conversation as I preserved during this visit to Oxford, I shall throw
them together in continuation[133].

I asked him whether, as a moralist, he did not think that the practice
of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of honesty. JOHNSON.