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own, whenever I attempted to entertain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance odious, and never made me any return for my endeavors to please them." In 1756 he succeeded, in some way or other, in getting back to England, and managed to find his way to London penniless and in rags, but possessed of a medical degree, obtained no one knew how or where.

Literary Obscurity (1756-1764). -These eight years were a very dark period in Goldsmith's life. Cut off from his relatives in Ireland, without money or friends, possessed of no personal attractions, but afflicted with an extremely sensitive and diffident nature, his condition was disheartening. He began practice as a physician, in which he was unsuccessful, and having served as a chemist's clerk, as an usher in boarding-schools, and as a drudge for booksellers, Dr. Goldsmith at last entered upon the vocation of his life, that of literature. He began by writing stories, prefaces, criticisms, and contributions for magazines and reviews. Gradually he acquired facility in his profession, and his compositions began to procure for him means of support and literary fame; he became acquainted with Dr. Johnson and the eminent men of the time; his circumstances constantly improved, and in 1764 he published his exquisite poem, "The Traveller," which marked the commencement of his successful literary period.

Decade of Literary Success (1764-1774). - Goldsmith was now universally known and admired; the most distinguished in London society became his friends; he was elected a member of the famous Literary Club; and Dr. Johnson, the supreme judge of literary appeal, announced to a brilliant company of literati, "Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class" But not even now was he freed from financial troubles, nor was he ever; he wasted his income by injudicious expenditures, by gambling, by his unsurpassed generosity, and contracted debts for the necessaries of life. He would lavish his guineas on the street-beggars and send away his tailor unpaid. Thus "poor Goldsmith" was always poor, and would probably have been so if his literary profits had been much greater. As it was, Goldsmith has been upheld from his own day to this as a kind of martyr, through the world's indifference towards intellectual talent and literary excellence. But he was his own enemy, and all through life the cause of his own unhappiness and misery. As his debts became more and more oppressive, and his health impaired, he lost his former gayety of spirits, and though he continued his gay and social mode of living, was often melancholy and gloomy inwardly. He became subject to fits of depression, and was often irritable and morose. In 1773 he furnished Percy with the materials for his biography, from which resulted the "Percy Memoir."

Death and Burial.-Goldsmith died April 4, 1774, and Dr. Johnson thus wrote to Boswell in July: "Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith there is little to be told more than the papers have made public. He died of a fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts began to grow heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed not less than two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before?" His sudden death was lamented by his numerous literary friends; Burke wept when he heard of it, and Reynolds laid aside his brush for the day; newspapers and magazines were filled with tributes to his memory; and above all, the poor, miserable creatures whom he had befriended and aided bewailed bitterly. Plans were made for a public funeral, and the pall was to have been carried by Lord Shelburne, Lord Louth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Beauclerk, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick, but for some unknown reason they were not carried out, and he was buried privately in the cemetery of Temple Church. Soon after, at the expense of The Literary Club, a monument was erected to him in Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, by the side of that of John Gay. Nollekens chiselled the bust of the poet, and Dr. Johnson wrote the epitaph in Latin, which contains the celebrated line: "Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit."

GOLDSMITH'S HOMES.

Lissoy.-This Irish village where Goldsmith passed his youth was probably the original Auburn of the "Deserted Village," and its name has since been changed to that given it by the poet in his poem.

London Residences. - Straitened circumstances rendered the habitations of Goldsmith's early London life miserable and poor. In 1759 he had lodgings in Green Arbor Court, Old Bailey, and a literary friend thus described a visit which he paid him there: "I called on Goldsmith at his lodgings, in March, 1759, and found him writing his 'Inquiry' in a miserable, dirty-looking room, in which there was but one chair; and when, from civility, he resigned it to me, he was himself obliged to sit in the window." But by 1761 he was able to remove to more genteel rooms in Wine-Office Court, in Fleet Street, where he often gave dinners to his literary friends. About 1764 he took up his abode in the Temple, where he continued to live the greater part of the time till his death. His apartments were on the first floor, and elegantly furnished.

Edgeware Country-house. About this period (1766), or perhaps a little earlier, Goldsmith, in addition to the apartments he occupied in the Temple, took a country-house on the Edgeware Road in conjunction with a Mr. Bott, one of his literary friends, for the benefit of good air and the convenience of retirement. To this little mansion he gave the jocular appellation of "Shoemaker's Paradise," the architecture being in a fantastic style, after the taste of its original possessor, who was one of the craft.... It was situated near to the six-mile stone on the Edgeware Road, and Mr. Boswell mentions that he and Mr. Mickle, translator of the "Lusiad," paid him a visit there in April, 1772. Unfortunately they did not find him at home; but having some curiosity to see his apartment, they went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead pencil. He had carried down his books thither that he might pursue his labors with less interruption. According to the testimony of a literary friend who had close intercourse with him for the last ten years of his life, the following was his mode of study and living while in the country: He first read in a morning, from the original works requisite for the compilation he had in hand, as much as he designed for one letter or chapter, marking down the passages referred to on a sheet of paper, with remarks. He then rode or walked out with a friend or two, returned to dinner, spent the day generally convivially, without much drinking, to which he was never addicted; and when he retired to his bedchamber took up his books and papers with him, where he generally wrote the chapter, or the best part of it, before he went to rest. This latter exercise, he said, cost him very little trouble; for, having all his materials duly prepared, he wrote it with as much ease as a common letter. The mode of life and study thus described, Goldsmith, however, only pursued by fits. He loved the gayeties, amusements, and society of London, and among these he would occasionally lose himself for months together. To make up for his lost time he would again retire to the farm-house, and there devote himself to his labors with such intense application that for weeks successively he would remain in his apartments without taking exercise. WASHINGTON IRVING.

GOLDSMITH'S FRIENDS.

Goldsmith belonged to the brilliant coterie of literary men that gravitated about Dr. Johnson. Smollett, Burke, Hogarth, Reynolds, Beauclerk, Garrick, Johnson, and Boswell were numbered among his friends, though the last ever regarded him with jealousy. He was one of the nine original members of The Literary Club, a society which has continued to the present day, and whose centenary was celebrated in London, September, 1864. His social successes rather turned his head with a supreme idea of his own greatness, and his manner was often pompous and affected. In answer to an invitation to dine from a rival, he wrote, "I would, with pleasure, accept your kind invitation, but to tell you the truth, my dear boy, my "Traveller" has found me a home in so many places that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see. To-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the next day with Topham Beauclerk; but I'll tell you what I'll do for you I'll dine with you on Saturday." Goldsmith was fond of genuine, rollicking fun, and would often collect his obscure friends in his apartments for a frolic, in which their loud songs and jests would annoy and vex all other inmates of the house. He never felt quite at home in the formal meetings of The Literary Club, and enjoyed more the gatherings of the smaller societies which he had formed. One of these was the Shilling Whist Club, which met at Devil Tavern; another held its meetings on Wednesday evenings at the Globe Tavern, in Fleet Street, and was known as the Wednesday Club.

[For The Literary Club and Goldsmith's friendship with Dr. Johnson, see "Johnson."]

BOSWELL'S CHARACTERIZATION OF GOLDSMITH.

He was a native of Ireland and a contemporary with Mr. Burke at Trinity College, Dublin, but did not give much promise of future celebrity. He, however, observed to Mr. Malone that "though he made no great figure in mathematics, which was a study in much repute there, he could turn an ode of Horace into English better than any of them." He afterwards studied physics at Edinburgh and upon the Continent, and I have been informed was enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding at universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when, luckily for him, his challenge was not accepted; so that, as I once observed to Dr. Johnson, he disputed his passage through Europe. He then came to England, and was employed successively in the capacities of an usher to an academy, a corrector of

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