34 
hold the stage to this day. His essays were the best since the 
Tatler and Spectator. His Histories of Greece and Rome, though 
sketchy and incomplete, according to our modern notions of school 
history, were very superior to anything of that day, and conveyed 
to many generations of schoolboys their first knowledge of classic 
story. ‘‘Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “he had the art of compiling, and 
saying anything he had to say in a pleasing manner.” 
Most of you may remember the history of the publication 
of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” as told by Johnson to Boswell; but 
at the risk of repetition I will read it, for it presents a lifelike 
portrait of the two men—a portrait more flattering to Johnson 
than to Goldsmith—but a real likeness withal :— 
“‘T received one morning 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 dressed, and found 
that his landlady had arrested him for his tent, 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 putacork 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 merits; told the landlady I should soon 
return ; and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for £60. 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.” 
Poor Goldsmith’s tendency to borrow guineas from his friends 
and to change them for bottles of Madeira overwhelmed him with 
debts and trouble, and finally with disease, which carried him off at 
forty-six, in the year 1774. He is buried in the Temple, where 
the memorial over his grave marks the disappointment of the hope 
he so pathetically expresses in the “Deserted Village” :— 
** And as a hare whom hounds and horse pursue, 
Pants to the place from which at first she flew, 
I still had hopes—my long vexations past— 
Here to return, and die at home at last.” 
Dr. Johnson himself is sometimes classed as a novelist in respect 
of his authorship of ‘‘Rasselas ;” but whatever the merits of that 
