To think of Oliver Goldsmith is to feel him near—a friend, and the brightest of friends. This is the spell that still he sways. His words are semblant to moving memories. His genius purifies the clouds of life, and cheers and inspires the heavy-laden heart. One cannot tell what was, and is, the hidden charm that gave and gives for ever this appealing influence. It may be touching simplicity. It may have been his sacrifice and deep devotion, or that kindly affectionateness which is itself sublime. It might be that pretty gift, the joyousness of innocence. It is radiant to remember Goldsmith's love of life, and its pleasures and adventures. He loved the town. He loved the country. He loved the rich. He loved the poor, the crude, the cultured, the pious, and the base. He was a philanthropist. It kept him poor. He was, in all his struggles, ever a patron of literature. No striving aspirant pleaded for his munificence in vain. If his old friends in Ireland came to London, he housed, fed, and clothed them. No beggar in the street could pass without recognition. It was all one to this pure benevolence whether the gift was rendered in gold or copper. The beggar who sought a penny could, no doubt, find room for a guinea, if need be, just as easily in some poor pocket hidden in his deserved rags and tatters. Goldsmith taught that great lesson that, after all, the undeserving most deserve compassion. So completely is Goldsmith bound up in his works, that as you fondly press the cherished volume of all that he gave that was best, the heart of the man beats with yours, and in an immortal friendship his life and hope and spirit are your own. His many and most varied intimacies reveal a genius for companionability, whilst his higher and deeper unions show equally his force in friendship, that great grace which few attain.

Everyone became swiftly fond of him and he as fond of everyone. Unlike Socrates and Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith loved the fields and the countryside. He roamed and rambled everywhere. Hardly a county seemed to him quite unknown, from Surrey to Yorkshire. He wandered West: Bath lives hallowed through his visits to the place. With the bright and beautiful Misses Horneck and their widowed mother he went again to France, doubtless often laughingly recalling his earlier travels and their troubles, telling much and hiding more, with the very poverty of the past now proving the rich treasures of the present. All hardships were melted to deep delights in merry reminiscence, Oliver Goldsmith, loving the Horneck girls much as Horace Walpole cherished in his heart the beautiful Misses Berry, had nicknames for these daughters of his gentle hostess, the elder being Little Comedy, and the younger the Jessamy Bride. If ever Goldsmith loved anyone, he loved the Jessamy Bride. The sweet girl was bewitching, gentle, and innocent, bright, and very young, and that chivalrous and tender soul that honoured her with his devotion a prematurely bent and aged man of more than forty summers. Her wifely affections were early destined for another heart. From the beginning, come what may, she could never be Oliver Goldsmith's wife. The Jessamy Bride was a pure and lovely spirit. No poet was ever moved in reverence for a fairer personification of a pure ideal.

It was a most stately, graceful, gracious, and fascinating very old lady whom, when years, and many years, had come and gone, Hazlitt met and greeted. Still she remembered and still she revered the loved and moving heart of Oliver Goldsmith. It is his greatness, and it is his glory that his soul could and did appeal to the sublime spirit of pure womanhood. Of none could greater, or more than this be said. Man need not crave for more, or aspire on earth to purer heights. It was beautiful to know, and to be the friend of, and it was divine to be remembered by, the Jessamy Bride. These two made merry when they met. Laughing eyes danced. All was pure, spontaneous revelry. These two were the source and centre of mirth and cheerfulness. Partly he amused, and partly enticed reverence and respect. The outward laughter moved, but depth of life and love drew heart to heart. This sunshine was most fair. As it was, Goldsmith knew the last loneliness of things, and lived a single life and died in solitude. In Oliver Goldsmith, Washington Irving says: "Eminent ability was allied with spotless virtue." He sympathetically suggests how home, wife, and children would have softened those ills that came from solitude and enriched what was at once an abundant, and yet still, in some respects, an impoverished nature.