exhibit, Goldsmith, with much agitation, besought me to spare him; and I was about to tear them, when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them at the table. I have now lost all recollection of them, and, in fact, they were little worth remembering; but, as they were serious and complimentary, the effect upon Goldsmith was the more pleasing, for being so entirely unexpected. The concluding line, which is the only one I can call to mind, was

'All mourn the poet, I lament the man.'

This I recollect, because he repeated it several times, and seemed much gratified by it. At our next meeting he produced his epitaphs, as they stand in the little posthumous poem above mentioned, and this was the last time he ever enjoyed the company of his friends."Memoirs, vol. i.

Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly chastised; Burke, the Dinner-bell of the House of Commons, is not spared; and of all the more distinguished names of the Club, Johnson, Cumberland, and Reynolds alone escape the lash of the satirist. The former is not mentioned, and the two latter are even dismissed with unqualified and affectionate applause.

We have said that Reynolds is omitted: we shall presently see with what a grave event his escape is associated.

DEATH OF GOLDSMITH.

Retaliation, as we have already observed, was thrown off in parts, at intervals, and was never completed. Some characters, originally intended to be introduced, remained unattempted; others were but partially sketched-such was the one of Reynolds, the friend of the poet's heart:

"Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind,

He has not left a wiser or better behind.

His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand :

His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;

Still born to improve us in every part,

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.

To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,

When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing:
When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff.

Here the friendly portrait stood unfinished on the easel; the hand of the artist had failed! The return of a local complaint, under which he had suffered for some time past, added to general prostration of health, brought Goldsmith back to

town before he had well settled himself in the country. The local complaint subsided, but was followed by a low nervous fever. He was not aware of his critical situation, and intended to be at the Club on the 25th of March, on which occasion Charles Fox and Sir Charles Bunbury, and two other new members, were to be present. In the afternoon, however, Goldsmith felt so unwell that he took to his bed, and his symptoms grew so strong as to keep him there. His malady fluctuated for several days, during which he had skilful advice and careful nursing. He had for some time been subject to fits of strangury, brought on by too severe application to sedentary labours; and one of these attacks, aggravated by mental distress, produced fever. In spite of caution to the contrary, he had recourse to Dr. James's fever powder, which he had once found beneficial, but which was now injurious to him. His appetite was gone, his strength failed, and his mind was ill at ease. "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 grew too weak to talk, and scarcely took any notice of what was said to him. He sank at last into a deep sleep; he awoke, but in strong convulsions, which continued without intermission until he expired, on the 4th of April, 1774, at five o'clock in the morning, in the 46th year of his age. Walpole thus chronicles the event:

"Dr. Goldsmith is dead. The owl hooted last night on the round tower [of Strawberry Hill]. The republic of Parnassus has lost a member; Dr. Goldsmith is dead of a purple fever, and I think might have been saved if he had continued James's powder, which had had much effect, but his physician interposed. * His numerous friends neg

* James's Fever Powder was the fashionable medicine of the day: Walpole swore that he would take it if the house were on fire. As Goldsmith was cautioned by his medical attendants against taking the fever-medicine, it might damage the fame of the medicine, which was the property of Newbery. With this view was published a statement, in which Hawes, the apothecary, was reported to have sent the wrong powders, in which charge Goldsmith long persisted; but this is not credible, and an intelligent practitioner of our time, Mr. White Cooper, who has lately inquired into the matter, acquits Hawes of the charge. Besides, Goldsmith had obstinately sent for more fever powder; and shortly before Hawes retired from attendance, he found Goldsmith much worse and on Hawes inquiring how he did, the patient sighed deeply, and in a very low voice said he wished he had taken his (Hawes's) friendly

:

lected him shamefully at last, as if they had no business with him when it was too serious to laugh. He had lately written epitaphs for them all, some of which hurt, and perhaps made them not sorry that his own was the first necessary. The poor soul had sometimes parts, though

never common sense."

Scandalous and spiteful to the last is Horace Walpole !

But what was the real effect of Goldsmith's death upon the world of art and letters? Burke, on hearing the news, burst into tears. Sir Joshua Reynolds, as Northcote informed Mr. Prior, relinquished painting for the day-an unusual forbearance, it was considered, of one who under all common circumstances rarely permitted himself to be diverted from the exercise of his art. Dr. Johnson, though little prone to exhibit strong emotions of grief, seems to have felt sincerely on this occasion: three months afterwards he thus wrote to Boswell" Of poor dear Goldsmith there is little to be told more than the papers have made public. He died of a fever, I am afraid more violent from uneasiness of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed not less than two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before ?" And again, "Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone. much further. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man." To these details, in Mr. Prior's Life of the poet, Washington Irving adds: "I was abroad at the time of his death;" writes Mr. McDonnell, the youth whom, when in distress, he had employed as an amanuensis, "and I wept bitterly when the intelligence first reached me. A blank came over my heart as if I had lost one of my dearest relatives, and was followed for some days by a feeling of despondency."

On the stairs of his chambers in the Temple, there was the lamentation of the old and infirm, and the sobbing of women, poor objects of his charity, to whom he had never turned a deaf ear, even when struggling himself with poverty!

But there was one mourner, whose enthusiasm for his memory, could it have been foreseen, might have soothed the bitterness of death. After the coffin had been screwed down, a lock of his hair was requested for a lady, a particular friend,

advice on the previous night. Mr. Forster's account of the last days of the illness, and of the conflicting statements, is very clear and comprehensive.

who wished to preserve it as a remembrance. It was the beautiful Mary Horneck-the Jessamy Bride. The coffin was opened again, and a lock of hair cut off, which she treasured to her dying day. Poor Goldsmith! could he have foreseen that such a memorial of him was to be thus cherished!

This lady survived upwards of sixty years. Hazlitt relates that he met her at Northcote's painting-room, as Mrs. Gwyn, the widow of a General Gwyn. She was at that time upwards of seventy years of age. Still, he said, she was beautiful, beautiful even in years. After she was gone, Hazlitt remarked how handsome she still was. "I do not know," said Northcote, "why she is so kind as to come and see me, except that I am the last link in the chain that connects her with all those she most esteemed when young-Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith-and remind her of the most delightful period of her life." "Not only so," observed Hazlitt, "but you remember what she was at twenty; and you thus bring back to her the triumphs of her youth-that pride of beauty, which must be the more fondly cherished as it has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly in the bosom of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the graces had triumphed over time she was one of Ninon de l'Enclos's people, of the last of the immortals. I could almost fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, looking round with complacency."

The Jessamy bride survived her sister upwards of forty years, and died in 1840, within a few days of completing her eighty-eighth year. "She had gone through all the stages of life," says Northcote, "and had lent a grace to each."

FUNERAL OF GOLDSMITH.

In the warm feeling of the moment, it was determined by Goldsmith's friends, to honour his remains by a public funeral; but when it was ascertained that he had died in debt, and had not left funds to pay for such expensive obsequies, the idea was relinquished. Five days after his death, therefore, at five o'clock, on Saturday evening, the 9th of April, he was privately interred in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. Lord Macaulay states Burke and Reynolds to have followed: they directed the funeral arrangements, but did not attend the remains to their resting-place. The chief mourner was Sir Joshua Reynolds's nephew, Palmer, after

wards Dean of Cashel. Judge Day was another mourner. He tells us :

"I also also attended his funeral, along with a few others who were summoned together rather hastily for the purpose. It had been intended that this ceremony should be of an imposing kind, and attended by several of the great men of the time, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and others. This determination was altered, I imagine, from the pecuniary embarrassments of the deceased poet; the last offices were therefore performed in a private manner, without the attendance of his great friends. He was interred in the Temple burial-ground. Hugh Kelly, with whom he had not been on terms of intercourse for some years, shed tears over his grave, which were no doubt sincere; he did not then know that he had been slightingly mentioned in Retaliation; nor would he have been so noticed there, could the deceased have anticipated this proof of good feeling. Slight circumstances often separate even the most deserving persons; nor are they perhaps conscious of the worth of each other until accidental circumstances produce the discovery.”—Prior's Life.

The poet rests at a short distance from the brick wall, on the north side of the burial-ground, immediately opposite the door of the vestry. Formerly a tree shaded the spot; but this has been removed some time.

MEMORIALS OF GOLDSMITH.

Not long after his death, the Literary Club set on foot a subscription, and raised a fund to erect a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Nollekens: it consists of a bust of the poet in profile, in high relief, in a medallion, and is placed within a pointed arch, over the south door in Poets' Corner, between the monuments of Gay and the Duke of Argyle. Johnson furnished a Latin epitaph, which was read at the table of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where several members of the Club, and other friends of the deceased, were present. Though considered by them a masterly composition, they thought the literary character of the poet not defined with sufficient exactness, and they preferred that the epitaph should be in English rather than Latin, as "the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be perpetuated in the language to which his works were likely to be so lasting an ornament."

These objections were reduced to writing, and were submitted to Johnson, the names being written about it in a round robin. Johnson received it half graciously, half

* It was this cold neglect which gave colour to Walpole's severe reproach of Goldsmith's great friends.