288 



GOLDSMITH 



GOLF 



of Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a ' Protestant con- 

 demned to the galleys of France for his religion.' 

 For this he used the name of a schoolfellow, James 

 Willington, but the book is known to have been 

 his own. After its appearance he went back to 

 Peckham, to wait for an appointment on a foreign 

 station, which Dr Milner had promised to obtain 

 for him. To procure the funds for his outHt 

 he set about an Enquiry into the Present State 

 of Polite Learning in Europe. From some unex- 

 plained cause, however, his nomination, ' when 

 received, fell through, and in December we find 

 him endeavouring to pass at Surgeons' Hall for the 

 humbler post of hospital mate, but without success. 

 What was worse, the clothes he went up in had 

 been obtained on the security of his old employer 

 Griffiths ; to pay his landlady he pawned them, 

 and the angry bookseller threatened him with a 

 debtor's prison. 



Shortly afterwards, in April 1759, the Enquiry 

 was published. It attracted some notice, and 

 better days at length dawned on Goldsmith. He 

 started the periodical called The Bee (1759), and 

 contributed to The- Busy Body and The Lady's 

 Magazine. Then came to his miserable lodging in 

 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, overtures from 

 Smollett, and John Newbery, the bookseller. For 

 the British Magazine of the former he wrote some 

 of his best essays ; for the Public Ledger of the 

 latter the celebrated Chinese Letters (afterwards 

 published as The Citizen of the World), which 

 appeared in 1760-61. In May of the latter year he 

 moved to 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, where, 

 on the 31st of the same month, he was visited by 

 Johnson. In 1762, among other things, he pub- 

 lished a Life of Richard Nash, the Bath master of 

 the ceremonies ; and he sold to Benjamin Collins, a 

 Salisbury printer, a third share in the yet-unpub- 

 lished Vicar of Wakefield. In 1764 the 'Club,' 

 known many years afterwards as the ' Literary 

 Club,' was rounded ; and he was one of its nine 

 original members. His next work was an anony- 

 mous History of England, in a Series of Letters 

 from a Nobleman to his Son. This was followed in 

 December 1764 by The Traveller, a poem which at 

 once raised him to a foremost place among the 

 minstrels of the day. Two years later, in March 

 1766, appeared The Vicar of Wakefield, by which 

 his reputation as a novelist was secured. The 

 stage alone remained untried, and this, after two 

 more years of preface writing and journey-work, he 

 attempted with The Good Natur'd Man, a comedy, 

 produced at Covent Garden in January 1768. It 

 was a moderate success. But he again escaped from 

 enforced compilation ( Histories of Rome and Eng- 

 land, History of Animated Nature) with his best 

 poetical effort, The Deserted Village (1770); and 

 three years afterwards achieved the highest dram- 

 atic honours by She Stoops to Conquer, still one of 

 the most popular of English acting comedies. A 

 year later (April 4, 1774) he died in his chambers 

 at 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, of a fever, 

 aggravated by the obstinacy with which he had 

 relied upon the popular remedy known as ' James's 

 powder. He was buried on the 9th, in the burial- 

 ground of the Temple Church, in the triforium of 

 which is a tablet to his memory. The club erected 

 a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. In the 

 year of his death was published the unfinished 

 series of rhymed sketches of his friends, called 

 Retaliation, and in 1776 the jeu d" esprit, entitled 

 The Haunch of Venison; an Epistle to Lord 

 Clare. 



Poor in his youth, Goldsmith was not prudent in 

 his more prosperous middle age. He died 2000 in 

 debt, and there is reason for supposing that his 

 difficulties embittered his latter days. When his 

 doctor asked him on his deathbed if his mind was 



at ease, he replied that it was not. As a man, 

 Goldsmith had some constitutional disadvantages 

 and many obvious faults, mostly of a harmless 

 kind. But he was thoroughly warm-hearted and 

 generous, and full of unfeigned love and pity for 

 humanity. As a writer, in addition to the most 

 fortunate mingling of humour and tenderness, he 

 possessed that native charm of style which neither 

 learning nor labour can acquire. In the felicitous 

 phrase which Johnson borrowed from Fenelon for 

 his epitaph, he touched nothing which he did not 

 adorn. Prior first collected the material for his 

 biography in 1837 ; in 1848 Forster prepared from 

 this (not without expostulation on Prior's part) 

 his well-known life. Washington Irving's genial 

 sketch of 1849 was based upon Forster. Later 

 memoirs are that by W. Black in the ' Men of 

 Letters' series (1879), and by the present writer in 

 the 'Great Writers' (1888).' The last contains a 

 bibliography ; and a special bibliography of The 

 Vicar of Wakefield is prefixed to the fac-simile 

 edition of that book issued in 1885. The most 

 modern edition of Goldsmith's complete works is 

 that by Gibbs (5 vols. 1884-86). 



Goidstttcker, THEODOR, Sanskrit scholar, 

 was born of Jewish parents on 18th January 1821, 

 at Konigsberg, studied there, at Bonn, and at 

 Paris, and established himself as privat-docent at 

 Berlin. He came to England in 1850 on the 

 invitation of Professor H. Wilson, and in 1852 

 was appointed professor of Sanskrit, University 

 College, London, a post he held till his death, 

 6th March 1872. Founder of the Sanskrit Text 

 Society, he was an active member of the Philo- 

 logical and Royal Asiatic Societies. He wrote all 

 the most important articles on Indian mythology 

 and philosophy (67 in number) in the first edition 

 of this Encyclopaedia, and contributed to the Athen- 

 ceum and Westminster Review. Of his separately- 

 published works the most notable are Pdnini: his 

 Place in Sanskrit Literature ( 1861 ) ; the Sanskrit 

 text of the Jauninlya-Nyaya-Mala-Vistara (com- 

 pleted by Professor Cowell ) ; and part of a great 

 Sanskrit Dictionary. He projected numerous other 

 works, including a text of the Mahabharata, for 

 which he had made vast collections of materials. 

 His Literary Remains (2 vols. 1879) comprises, 

 with other papers, the articles contributed to 

 Chambers } s Encyclopaedia. 



Gold-thread, the popular name in America 

 for Coptis trifolia, a ranunculaceous plant found 

 from Denmark to Siberia, and over the North 

 American continent through Canada into the 

 United States. The leaves are evergreen and 

 like those of the strawberry, but smaller ; the 

 flowers are small and white. The name ' gold- 

 thread ' is given to the abundant silk-like root- 

 stocks, still a popular remedy among the French 

 Canadians for ulcerated throats. 



Goletta ( Fr. La Goulette ), the port of the city 

 of Tunis, from which it is 11 miles N. by rail or 

 canal. In the new quarter are the bey's palace, a 

 large dock, and an arsenal defended by a battery. 

 The population, usually about 3000, is trebled 

 during the visit of the bey in the bathing season ; 

 the proportion of Europeans has greatly increased, 

 and many of the houses are now built in the Euro- 

 pean style. The harbour, though by no means 

 secure, was long the most frequented in Tunis ; but 

 after the establishment of a French protectorate 

 some of the trade passed to Bona, in Algeria ; and 

 since the completion of the ship canal to Tunis 

 (q.v.), and the deepening of the harbour therein 

 1893, La Goletta has greatly decayed. 



Golf, a Scottish pastime (also go/ or gowf the 

 latter the vernacular pronunciation ; the name being 

 usually connected with the Dutch kolf, 'club'), is 



