London: Printed for J. Swan, in The Strand, 1774. [Price is. 6d.]"

The following extracts from this quaint book may prove interesting:

"This delightful poet, this sweet moralist, this excellent man! departed this life on the 4th of April, 1774, and was interred in the burying ground of the Temple. It was proposed to have buried him in Westminster Abbey, where, however, a monument is to be erected to his memory; but the best and most lasting monument will be found in his works."

"Dr. Goldsmith was in stature rather under the middle size, and built more like the porter than the gentleman; his complexion was pale, his forehead low, his face almost round, and pitted with the small pox; but marked with the strong lines of thinking. Upon the whole there was nothing in his appearance that would not rather prepossess the mind against him, but to those who know him, there appeared a melting softness in his eye, that was the genuine effect of his humanity. Never did that eye behold an object of distress, but it conveyed an intelligence to the heart, that stretched out the hand irresistibly to relieve; and it is well known that his unbounded philanthropy contributed to keep him poor; but he ever felt a satisfaction in the conscious dignity and liberality of his mind, that

the possession of wealth without the will to contribute could never have afforded!”

The intention of giving him a public funeral and of burying him in Westminster Abbey was allowed to drop by reason of the troubled state of his affairs, and he lies quietly in the graveyard of the Temple Church. Two years after his death "The Literary Club" raised a monument to him in Westminster. Dr. Johnson, who refused to disgrace the Abbey with English, wrote the epitaph in Latin, of which the following translation by Croker is given in Austin Dobson's "Life of Goldsmith."

"Of Oliver Goldsmith, a poet, naturalist, and historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn; of all the passions, whether smiles were to be moved or tears, a powerful yet gentle master; in genius, sublime, vivid, versatile; in style, elevated, clear, elegant, the love of Companions, the fidelity of Friends, and the veneration of Readers, have by this monument honored the memory. He was born in Ireland, at a place called Pallas [in the parish] of Forney [and county] of Longford, on the 29th of November, 1731.* Educated at [the University of] Dublin and died in London, 4th April, 1774."

*The date of birth is incorrect.

GOLDSMITH AS A WRITER

IT cannot be said in the case of Oliver Goldsmith that his was an irresistible vocation for literature. He tried many professions and failed either to qualify for them or to maintain himself in them when qualified. Still, as Mr. Austin Dobson points out, his whole early career constituted in point of fact a training for that pursuit in which alone he was to achieve success. "He had tried many things and failed And yet, he had unconsciously gone through a course of training, and accumulated a stock of experience, of which little or nothing was to be lost."

It was to his disgust at the uncongenial position he filled as usher, rather than to his deliberate choice of the career, that Goldsmith "took up" with his first literary essays. From the first, however, to judge from his letters, he was gifted with a power of graphic and fluent expression which stood him in good stead when he closed with the offer of Griffiths, the bookseller. Hard as he must have worked, and miscellaneous as were the subjects on which he was required to employ his pen, it is no wonder that at first he tried to escape from the drudgery. It was in order to provide himself with an outfit for a problematical medical appointment in India that

he undertook his first considerable piece of original writing, "An Essay on the Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe." By the time, however, that it was published in 1759, under the title "Enquiry into the present State of Polite Learning in Europe," any thought of another calling than literature had evidently been abandoned.

This first work, as Mr. Austin Dobson says, "revealed the dawning graces of a style, which, as yet, occasionally elliptical and jerky, and disfigured here and there by Johnsonian constructions, nevertheless ran bright and clear." Although published anonymously, it had the merit of bringing Goldsmith more prominently before the bookmen and critics, and it was on the whole favorably received. From this period date the large number of original essays, which, published anonymously in the many periodicals of the day, were afterwards collected and included in his works, essays, as he enthusiastically called them, "on the most interesting subjects." We are surprised at the wide range of these subjects-Criticism, Social Studies, Character Sketches, Caricatures "delicate and minute," observations on animal instincts, historical articles on foreign universities and one or two short poems.

In 1769 began his connection with John Newbery, the hustling little book-seller of St. Paul's Church

yard, and it was in his magazine, the "Public Ledger," that those letters purporting to be written by a philosophical Chinaman, Lien Chi Altangi, living in London, to a friend in the East, first saw the light. These letters are an admirable criticism of the civilization of the time, and published eventually in 1762 for the author, with the title, "The Citizen of the World," they added greatly to Goldsmith's reputation.

It was towards the end of this period when he was little recognized that, under the pressure of dire necessity, as we have seen, the manuscript of "The Vicar of Wakefield" was sold. Dr. Johnson, who had arranged the sale, said at a subsequent period to their mutual friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, "I myself did not think it would have much success. It was written and sold to a book-seller before the 'Traveler,' but published after, so little expectation had the book-seller from it."

This same dire necessity was to accompany poor Goldsmith to the end of his days. His lavish generosity and the proud independence of spirit which prevented him from selling his pen to the rival politicians of the day, or from seeking the patronage of the wealthy, are chiefly to be blamed for this, but Goldsmith himself attributes it partly to his comparative slowness of production, he not being content, as he explains in one of his letters, to part