This latter gift, displayed constantly in a company which had little knowledge of the peculiar quality of Irish wit and no faculty of sympathy or imagination, is at the bottom of the constant depreciation of him on the part of Boswell and others of his set.

His mock self-importance they thought ill-breeding; his humorous self-depreciation and keen sense of his own ridiculousness, mere lack of dignity and folly.

It is curious to read Boswell and watch how often Goldsmith, without Boswell's knowing it, got the best of the joke.

In writing he had what we can now recognise as peculiarly Irish gifts.

All our modern writers of light half-farcical comedy are Irish.