was paid to them than to him;
and once at the exhibition of the Fantoccini in London, when those who
sat next him observed with what dexterity a puppet was made to toss a
pike, he could not bear that it should have such praise, and exclaimed
with some warmth, 'Pshaw! I can do it better myself.'

* These were the Misses Horneck, known otherwise as 'Little
Comedy' and 'The Jessamy Bride.'--ED.

He boasted to me at this time of the power of his pen in commanding
money, which I believe was true in a certain degree, though in the
instance he gave he was by no means correct. He told me that he had sold
a novel for four hundred pounds. This was his Vicar of Wakefield. But
Johnson informed me, that he had made the bargain for Goldsmith, and the
price was sixty pounds. 'And, Sir, (said he,) a sufficient price too,
when it was sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated,
as it afterwards was, by his Traveller; and the bookseller had such
faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by
him a long time, and did not publish it till after The Traveller had
appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money.

Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins have strangely misstated the history
of Goldsmith's situation and Johnson's friendly interference, when this
novel was sold. I shall give it authentically from Johnson's own exact
narration:--'I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that
he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to
me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon
as I was drest, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his
rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had
already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass
before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm,
and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated.
He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he
produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady
I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty
pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not
without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'

My next meeting with Johnson was on Friday the 1st of July, when he and
I and Dr. Goldsm