Oliver Goldsmith, known best to us as the author of The Vicar of Wakefield, and described by Boswell as "one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school" was, like his master, an adventurer in literature.

The son of a poor Irish clergyman, he went, after an unhappy time at school, where he was teased by the boys on account of his disfigurement by small pox, to Trinity College, Dublin.

Here, like Johnson at Oxford, he was a "lounger at the college-gate" and, in spite of his poverty, a leading spirit in college riots, such as the ducking of a bailiff and the gathering of a dancing party "of humblest sort" in his college room.

However, he worked hard enough to get the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and learnt, besides, to write ballads and to play the flute. After three years of idleness he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, the money being provided by a generous uncle. But more of this bounty was spent on fine clothes than on medical books and his restlessness soon drove him abroad to the university of Leyden, where he studied little except in what Johnson calls "the great book of mankind."

With the true spirit of the Irish adventurer he now began his wanderings on foot through Flanders, France, Switzerland and Italy. Sometimes he had to depend on the tunes of his flute to get him food and lodging; sometimes he earned a few shillings "by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant." Having thus disputed his passage through Europe, as Boswell says, he landed in England at the age of 28 without a shilling in his pocket.

For him, as for Johnson, there was only one kind of life possible—the life of "Grub Street." Here are a few lines from his own Description of an Author's Bedchamber:

In his early years in London he was, as Boswell tells us, "employed successively in the capacities of an usher to an academy, a corrector of the press, a reviewer, and a writer for a news-paper. He had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson.... To me and many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though, indeed, upon a smaller scale. At this time I think he had published nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally known that one Dr Goldsmith was the authour of An Enquiry into the present State of polite Learning in Europe, and of The Citizen of the World, a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese."

Johnson paid his first visit to Goldsmith in 1761. Dr Percy, a friend of both, gave this account of it:

"The first visit Goldsmith ever received from Johnson was on May 31, 1761, when he gave an invitation to him, and much other company, many of them literary men, to a supper in his lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Percy being intimate with Johnson, was desired to call upon him and take him with him. As they went together the former was much struck with the studied neatness of Johnson's dress. He had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar from his usual appearance that his companion could not help inquiring the cause of this singular transformation. 'Why, Sir,' said Johnson, 'I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example.'"

Johnson quickly took Goldsmith to his heart, and praised his writing at a time when the public "made a point to know nothing about it."

Goldsmith was an original member of the Literary Club and, rather to Boswell's chagrin, soon became a real intimate of Johnson's household:

"My next meeting with Johnson," says Boswell, "was on Friday the 1st of July, [1763] when he and I and Dr Goldsmith supped together at the Mitre.... Goldsmith's respectful attachment to Johnson was then at its height; for his own literary reputation had not yet distinguished him so much as to excite a vain desire of competition with his great Master. He had increased my admiration of the goodness of Johnson's heart, by incidental remarks in the course of conversation, such as ... when I wondered that he was very kind to a man of whom I had heard a very bad character, 'He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson....'"

"At this time Miss Williams, as she was then called ... had so much of his attention, that he every night drank tea with her before he went home, however late it might be.... Dr Goldsmith, being a privileged man, went with him this night, strutting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority ... 'I go to Miss Williams.' I confess, I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed so proud; but it was not long before I obtained the same mark of distinction[25]."

Goldsmith, indeed, was sometimes rather bitter about Boswell.

"Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked someone. "He is not a cur," answered Goldsmith, "you are too severe. He is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking."

The Traveller, published in 1764, at length brought Goldsmith fame, though not a fortune. He received but twenty guineas for it and was still miserable enough to qualify for Johnson's protection.

"I received one morning," so Johnson told Boswell, "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 drest, 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."

The novel ready for the press was The Vicar of Wakefield.

This is not the place for a full account of Goldsmith's works; but we will glance at one or two.

The picture of English country life in The Deserted Village still delights us. Here, for instance, are a few lines on the village schoolmaster:

As a writer of plays, Goldsmith gained a great success with She Stoops to Conquer. Johnson, to whom it was dedicated, said:

"I know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so much the great end of comedy—making an audience merry."

Goldsmith wrote histories of England, Greece, and Rome—sometimes inaccurate, but always readable, and, with but a shallow knowledge of natural science, plunged into a work called A History of the Earth and Animated Nature. He had, as Boswell says, "a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen."

"Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a natural history, and ... had taken lodgings, at a farmer's house, near to the six mile-stone, on the Edgeware road, and had carried down his books in two returned post-chaises.... I went to visit him at this place ... and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black lead pencil."

When Johnson heard of the project, he said:

"Goldsmith, Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history."

Goldsmith was certainly not very sound on cows. This is what he says of their horns:

"At three years old the cow sheds its horns, and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives"!

But all that Goldsmith wrote had charm, and no one was more sensitive to it than Johnson.

In conversation Goldsmith was not so happy. Garrick described him as one

and Johnson said of him: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had."

The truth was that Goldsmith's vanity, which made him eager to get in and shine, could not bear the rough buffetings of Johnson's talk. "There is no arguing with Johnson," he complained, "for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."

He was as vain of his fine clothes, when he had money to buy them, as of his literary reputation:

"Well, let me tell you," he said once, "when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water-lane.' Johnson. 'Why, Sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.'"

Once at a dinner-party Goldsmith became really angry when "beginning to speak, he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table." When at length he complained, Johnson silenced him by calling him impertinent.

But later, at the Club, they were quickly reconciled:

"'Dr Goldsmith,' said Johnson, 'something passed to-day where you and I dined; I ask your pardon.' Goldsmith answered placidly, 'It must be much from you, Sir, that I take ill.' And so at once the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldsmith rattled away as usual."

Sometimes Goldsmith had the last word, as when they were discussing the writing of a good fable, like that of the little fishes:

"'The skill,' said Goldsmith, 'consists in making them talk like little fishes.' While he indulged himself in this fanciful reverie, he observed Johnson shaking his sides, and laughing. Upon which he smartly proceeded, 'Why, Dr Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES.'"

But these victories and defeats in conversation were only incidents in the history of a well-tried friendship.

When Goldsmith died in 1774 at the age of 46, Johnson wrote to his friend, Bennet Langton:

"Poor Goldsmith is gone.... He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expence. But let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."

"Goldsmith" he said many years later, "was a man who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster-Abbey, and every year he lived, would have deserved it better."

Westminster Abbey holds a memorial, but not the mortal remains, of Oliver Goldsmith.

For the monument which, at the suggestion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was set up in the Abbey two years after Goldsmith's death Johnson wrote the inscription.

"I ... send you," he wrote to Sir Joshua, "the poor dear Doctor's epitaph. Read it first yourself; and if you then think it right, shew it to the Club. I am, you know, willing to be corrected."

The Club suggested several alterations, the chief of them being that the epitaph should be in English rather than in Latin.

"But the question was, who should have the courage to propose them to him [Johnson]. At last it was hinted, that there could be no way so good as that of a Round Robin, as the sailors call it, which they make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not to let it be known who puts his name first or last to the paper.... Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr Johnson, who received it with much good humour, and desired Sir Joshua to tell the gentlemen, that he would alter the Epitaph in any manner they pleased, as to the sense of it; but he would never consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription."

Here we will risk the posthumous wrath of Johnson and give the first sentence of the epitaph in English:

Oliver Goldsmith
Poet, Naturalist, Historian,
Who scarce left a single kind of writing
Untouched
And touched none that he did not adorn.