"'
BOSWELL. 'How hard is it that man can never be at rest.' RAMSAY. 'It is
not in his nature to be at rest. When he is at rest, he is in the worst
state that he can be in; for he has nothing to agitate him. He is then
like the man in the Irish song,
"There liv'd a young man in Ballinacrazy.
Who wanted a wife for to make him un_ai_sy."'
Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson observed, that it was long before his
merit came to be acknowledged. That he once complained to him, in
ludicrous terms of distress, 'Whenever I write any thing, the publick
_make a point_ to know nothing about it:' but that his _Traveller_
brought him into high reputation.[721] LANGTON. 'There is not one bad line
in that poem; not one of Dryden's careless verses.' SIR JOSHUA. 'I was
glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the
English language.' LANGTON. 'Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt
of this before.' JOHNSON. 'No; the merit of _The Traveller_ is so well
established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure
diminish it.'[722] SIR JOSHUA. 'But his friends may suspect they had too
great a partiality for him.' JOHNSON.
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