An Artificial Age : Port, the Patron, and the Pillory, 59 



character which he is made out — mostly by literary men — to 

 be. So far as I can gather he was just a little too liberal with 

 his guineas to the miserable rhymsters who haunted his ante- 

 chamber — when they got so far. The patron paid handsomely 

 for the very doubtful privilege of having dedicated to him what 

 was called a copy of verses. The verses were rightly so called. 

 They were copied verses — that is, the best of them. The others 

 — those that were original — were not merely unrythmical, they 

 were unspeakable. You know what an unmacadamised road is. 

 Well, if you read some of the verses that the patrons patronised 

 you will find the literary equivalent to the unmacadamised 

 road. Without the patron the poet would not have been. 

 Ladies and gentlemen, the patron had a great deal to answer 

 for. Dr. Johnson sought his patron, but failed to find him, 

 and so failing, turned upon him and rent him in one of the 

 most perfect specimens of complete letter writing that exists in 

 literature. The one man who had sufficient self-respect — 

 sufficient self-reliance — sufficient independence to publish his 

 first poem without a patron was an Irishman. His name was 

 Oliver Goldsmith. His poem, *' The Traveller," was dedicated 

 to his brother. " The Deserted Village " was dedicated to his 

 dear friend Reynolds. And now that I have mentioned the 

 nanie of Goldsmith, allow me to say that the extraordinary 

 ideas that have prevailed regarding him for many years are in 

 my opinion due to the unfortunate circumstance of his being 

 alluded to so frequently by a person named Boswell — a Scotch- 

 man upon whom the proverbial surgical operation had not 

 been performed. Boswell never understood to the day of his 

 death that Goldsmith was laughing at him. Perhaps, too, 

 Boswell may have heard what Goldsmith said of him, when 

 someone asked " Who is that cur that follows Johnson about ? " 

 " He is not a cur," said Goldsmith ; " he is only a burr. 

 Kelly threw him at Johnson one day as a joke, but he has stuck 

 to him ever since." This was probably the one jest of Gold- 

 smith's that Boswell could understand least of all. Another 

 misfortune of Goldsmith's lay in the circumstance that Noll 



