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the manners, fashions, and foibles of London life. By the 
time “ The Citizen ” was published, Goldsmith’s circumstances 
were much improved and he was able to move to more spacious 
quarters in Wine Office Court. He could not, however, long 
remain possessed of what he earned. He 'exhibited in a 
marked degree the natural preference for generosity before 
justice. His pockets were ever open at the call of the needy, 
and what was due to landladies, butchers, and grocers, went 
to friends and beggars and the indiscriminate relief of real 
or fictitious distress. His only personal extravagance was in 
dress, but he could never forego the pleasures of entertaining 
and giving and lending. One day, in response to an urgent 
message, Dr. Johnson sent a guinea and followed in person 
to find his friend arrested by his landlady for rent. For 
means of extrication Goldsmith searched his papers and 
produced the manuscript of “ The Vicar of Wakefield,” which 
Johnson read, approved, and sold to a bookseller for sixty 
pounds. The novel, however, remained unpublished until 
“The Traveller” had appeared and raised its author to the 
highest rank amongst his literary contemporaries. In writing 
this poem Goldsmith’s wanderings gave him food for thought, 
and he made very happy use of his experiences abroad. “ The 
Vicar of Wakefield ” appeared in 1766. The sweet air of 
the country and the flowing easy style of the narrative made 
the novel immediately popular. 
The year afterwards Goldsmith’s first play, “ The Good 
Natured Man,” was produced at Covent Garden, and after 
a further interval of two years, appeared his second poem 
“ The Deserted Village,” perhaps the happiest effort of its 
author’s muse. With its delightful suggestions of country 
life and scenes and sounds we are all familiar. Goldsmith’s 
second play, “ She Stoops to Conquer,” was triumphantly 
produced in 1773. 
In addition to his greater works, Goldsmith put forth 
during his literary career an unceasing flow of verses, bio- 
graphies, essays and histories. The characteristics of all 
his work are his easy command of a flowing familiar style, 
and matter compact less of invention than of reminiscence 
touched by the alchemy of a rich and lively mind. Youthful 
memory and maturer observation provide his chief material — 
the common things of life viewed by one gifted with that 
luminous perception which distinguishes the true holder-up 
of Nature’s mirror. 
At the age of thirty-six, when his “ Traveller ” was published, 
Goldsmith passed into the highest intellectual society of his 
