generally showed himself most intimately acquainted with whatever happened to be the subject. Goldsmith the poet, who used to rattle away upon all subjects, had been talking somewhat loosely relative to musick. Some one of the Literary Club (for this happened before I was a member) wished for Mr. Dyer’s opinion, which he gave with his usual strength and accuracy. “Why,” says Goldsmith (turning round to Dyer, whom he had scarcely noticed before), “you seem to know a good deal of this matter.” “If I had not,” replied Dyer, ‘‘I should not, in this company, have said a word upon the subject.”
Mr. Dyer was one of the original members of our club about the year 1762, when it only met once a week on Friday evening, and then it was, I believe, that Mr. Burke’s acquaintance with him commenced—an acquaintance which afterwards grew up into the strictest intimacy.
Mr. Dyer, by the favour of M. Chamier of the Treasury, got the place of commissary, or other office connected with the army; and it is observable that Junius in his second letter displays an intimate acquaintance with the then state of that department. It is also observable that there are one or two Gallicisms in Junius, that the author was apparently much used to French reading, for when he has occasion to divide his paragraphs numerically, he adopts the French mode 1°. 2°., &c., of which I have never met with an instance in any other English writer. Dyer was two years abroad; was a complete master of French and Italian; and one of his first literary attempts was the translation of Les Mœurs, of which
