One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But there is not the least reason to believe that this bad pas- [710 sion, though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of any of his rivals. The truth probably is, that he was not more envious, but merely less prudent than his neighbors. His heart was on his lips. All those small jealousies, which are but too common among men of letters, but which a man of letters who is [720 also a man of the world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of a child. When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, instead of damning with faint praise, instead of doing injuries slily and in the dark, he told everybody that he was envious. "Do not, pray, do not talk of Johnson in such terms," he said to Boswell; "you harrow up my very soul." [730 George Steevens and Cumberland were men far too cunning to say such a thing. They would have echoed the praises of the man they envied, and then have sent to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. Both what was good and what was bad in Goldsmith's character was to his associates a perfect security that he would never commit such villainy. He was neither ill-natured enough, nor [740 long-headed enough to be guilty of any malicious act which required contrivance and disguise. Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But no representation can be more remote from the truth. He did, indeed, go through much sharp [750 misery before he had done anything considerable in literature. But, after his name had appeared on the title-page of the Traveller, he had none to blame but himself for his distresses. His average income during the last seven years of his life certainly exceeded £400 a year; and £400 a year ranked, among the incomes of that day, at least as high as £800 a year would rank at present. A single [760 man living in the Temple with £400 a year might then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had so much. But all the wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He wore [770 fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be remembered, to the honor of his heart, though not of his head, a guinea, or five, or ten, according to the state of his purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been [780 from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he never began. But at length this source of supply failed. He owed more than £2,000; and he saw no hope of extrication from his embarrassments. [790 His spirits and health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous fever, which he thought himself competent to treat. It would have been happy for him if his medical skill had been appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree which he pretended to have received at Padua, he could procure no patients. "I do not practice, he once said; "I make it a rule to pre- [800 scribe only for my friends." "Pray, dear Doctor," said Beauclerk, "alter your rule, and prescribe only for your enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy aggravated the malady. The sick man was induced to call in real physicians; and they at one time imagined that they had cured the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness continued. He could [810 get no sleep, he could take no food. "You are worse, said one of his medical attendants, "than you should be from the degree of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?" "No, it is not," were the last recorded words of Oliver Goldsmith. He died on the 3rd of April, 1774, in his forty-sixth year. He was laid in the churchyard of the Temple; but the spot was not marked by any inscrip- [820 tion, and is now forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a flood of tears. Reynolds had been so much moved by the news that he had flung aside his brush and palette for the day. A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem appeared, which will, as [830 long as our language lasts, associate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. It has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly the sarcasm which his wild blundering talk brought upon him. He was, not long before his last illness, provoked into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen; and at that weapon he proved himself a match for all his assailants together. Within [840 a small compass he drew with a singularly easy and vigorous pencil the characters of nine or ten of his intimate associates. Though this little work did not receive his last touches, it must always be regarded as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish that four or five likenesses which have no interest for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery, and that their places were supplied [850 by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick. Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honored him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens was the sculptor; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more durable and a more valuable memorial [860 of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's writings more justly than Johnson: no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits: and no man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were found in company with great [870 weaknesses. But the list of poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the booksellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttleton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his life has been [880 written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves great praise; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always pleasing; but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster. Whate'er you dream, with doubt possessed, "Twill all be well: no need of care; 5 LIFE IS STRUGGLE And give oneself a world of pain; For what's all one to have or not; That keeps us all alive. 5 ΙΟ 15 To say we truly feel the pain, That keeps us still alive. ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT 20 The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and The rainy clouds are filing fast below, we. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone, Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on? My sweetheart wanders far away from me, Though how it will, and when, and In foreign land or on a foreign sea, where, Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La 10 5 Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel Heigho! aha! for here at home are we:- 45 they O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie. (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT And God he knows, and what must be, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foiled searching of mortality; must be, Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, 35 Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once!) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me, 40 45 50 Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones She will not come though you call all day: Long prayers," I said, "in the world they Come away, come away! Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? 30 say; Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white walled town; |