charm of which make it one
of the literary treasures of the English people.

The sorrows of debt were not Goldsmith's only trouble at this time.
For some reason or other he seems to have become the especial object
of spiteful attack on the part of the literary cut-throats of the day.
And Goldsmith, though he might listen with respect to the wise advice
of Johnson on such matters, was never able to cultivate Johnson's
habit of absolute indifference to anything that might be said or sung
of him. "The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons," says
Lord Macaulay--speaking of Johnson, "did their best to annoy him, in
the hope that he would give them importance by answering them." But
the reader will in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick
or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a
detestable Latin hexameter--

'Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum.'

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, both from
his own observation and from literary history, in which he was deeply
read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not
by what is written about them, but by what is written in them; and
that an author whose works are likely to live, is very unwise if he
stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up
only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which would
soon fall if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in
his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever
written down but by himself.

It was not given to Goldsmith to feel "like the Monument" on any
occasion whatsoever. He was anxious to have the esteem of his friends;
he was sensitive to a degree; denunciation or malice, begotten of envy
that Johnson would have passed unheeded, wounded him to the quick.
"The insults to which he had to submit," Thackeray wrote with a quick
and warm sympathy, "are shocking to read of--slander, contumely,
vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and
actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at
reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child
assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle, and weak,
and full of love should have had to suffer so." Goldsmith's revenge,
his defence of