For the remainder of Johnson's life a few words must suffice. He wrote only one other great work, the excellent Lives of the Poets,' from which many extracts have been already given. In 1773 he went with Boswell to the Hebrides, with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale to Wales in 1774, and he paid with them a short visit to Paris in the following year.

In 1781 his old friend Mr. Thrale died, and Mrs. Thrale's marriage some time after to Mr. Piozzi put an end to an intimacy which had been one of his greatest comforts during many years.

In December 1784 his own end came, and he was laid in the Abbey, where his friend Garrick had already preceded him.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

In the circle of celebrated men who surrounded the great Dr. Johnson there was no one of so fine a genius as Oliver Goldsmith. His poems, 'The Traveller' and 'The Deserted Village,' were truly described by Johnson as finer than anything that had appeared since the days of Pope; The Vicar of Wakefield' was the delight of the great Goethe, and even his lighter pieces had charms of style which none of his contemporaries could match. Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit, he touched nothing but he added a new grace to it, said Johnson, and he spoke but the bare truth.

Goldsmith was born in 1728 at the village of Pallas, in Longford, where his father was the village pastor

'passing rich on forty pounds a year.' Two years later the pastor obtained the far richer living of Lissoy, in Westmeath, and it is thought that Lissoy is the 'Sweet Auburn' of the Deserted Village,' idealised, however, in the fond recollection of the poet.

The story of Goldsmith's life at school and college is one to call up smiles and tears. While he was still a child he was terribly marked by the small-pox, and he became the butt of many a coarse joke in consequence, and at college a brutal tutor bullied and jeered him so that he ran away and could hardly be prevailed upon to return. But in the village school and by his father's fireside he spent many happy hours, and a little later he sang and romped at the village inn like the Tony Lumpkin of She Stoops to Conquer.'

Goldsmith left Dublin University in 1749, and the next three years he spent at his mother's house (his father was now dead) in a kind of vagabond idleness. before he or his friends could determine what his profession should be. In 1752 they sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine, and two years later he passed over to Leyden to continue his studies, and then early in 1755 he started on his travels' from Leyden, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand.'

The story of the wanderer in chapter xx. of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' is thought to be a more or less faithful picture of Goldsmith's own struggles in life, and in it we read :

I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice, and now turned what was once my amusement into a present means of subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found

them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging but subsistence for the next day.

The exact course of his travels is not known, but he visited Louvain, Paris, and Rouen, and in February 1756 he landed at Dover, apparently without a penny, and he must have begged his way to London. A period of obscure misery followed, of which we have no exact details, but he is said to have assisted in a chemist's shop, then to have practised as a doctor among the poor people of Thames bank, then he became usher in a school in Peckham, and then hack writer for Griffiths, the publisher of the Monthly Review.' Richardson, the kindhearted author of Clarissa,' helped him in this time of need.

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In 1758 Goldsmith published his first work of any pretension, An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,' from which one paragraph may be quoted as expressing the author's own bitter experience.

The poet's poverty is a standing topic of contempt; his writing for bread is an unpardonable offence. Perhaps, of all mankind, an author in these times is used most hardly; we keep him poor and yet revile his poverty. Like angry parents who correct their children till they cry, and then correct them for crying, we reproach him for living by his wit, and yet allow him no other means to live.

The next year he started the Bee,' a pleasant little weekly periodical, something like the Rambler,' but with more variety and liveliness. It ought to have lived, but it did not, and in the fourth number Goldsmith humorously admits his failure.

Were I to measure the merit of my present undertaking by its success, or the rapidity of its sale, I might be led to form conclusions by no means favourable to the pride of an author. Should I estimate my fame by its extent, every newspaper and magazine would leave me far behind. Their fame is diffused in a very wide circle, that of some as far as Islington, and some yet farther still; while mine, I sincerely believe, has hardly travelled beyond the sound of Bow Bell; and while the works of others fly like unpinioned swans, I find my own move as heavily as a new-plucked goose.

In 1760 Goldsmith was the chief contributor to a new periodical, The Public Register,' writing for it the genial 'Chinese Letters,' which were afterwards republished as The Citizen of the World.' The work was suggested by the Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, but it is filled with Goldsmith's humour and tenderness, and Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black are two of his most genuine creations.

About this time he must have become acquainted with Johnson, but unhappily Boswell had not yet come to town, and we do not know how or when the friendship began. Already in the Bee,' Goldsmith in a whimsical description of the travellers in the stage-coach to the Temple of Fame had described Johnson as

a very grave personage whom at some distance I took for one of the most reserved and even disagreeable figures I had seen; but as he approached, his appearance improved, and when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I perceived that, in spite of the severity of his brow, he had one of the most good-natured countenances that could be imagined.

When Boswell appeared in 1762 the friendship was firmly established, and he evidently regarded Goldsmith with somewhat jealous eyes, and the portrait which he draws of him, though not grossly unjust, is far too unfavourable.

His mind resembled a fertile but thin soil. There was a quick but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation, but in truth this has been greatly exaggerated. He had no doubt a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen, and which sometimes produces a laughable confusion in expressing them. He was very much what the French call un étourdi, and from vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous wherever he was, he frequently talked carelessly without knowledge of the subject, or even without thought. His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman.

In 1764 two of Goldsmith's finest works, The Traveller' and The Vicar of Wakefield,' were completed, and in connection with the latter occurs the well-known account given by Johnson to Boswell.

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 dressed, 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.

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The novel lay, however, for some time in the publisher's desk, but at the close of the year The Traveller' appeared, and quickly gained the admiration of the best judges, and three other editions were soon called for.