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clay. He became the associate and friend of Johnson, Burke, 
Reynolds, Gibbon, and the rest of the brilliant circle whose 
fame is enshrined in the pages of Boswell. 
In society Goldsmith was bashful and painfully modest, 
hopelessly unequal to taking part in the conversation in which 
Johnson and his friends excelled. His figure and appearance 
were insignificant and he was nothing of a social success. 
His seemingly effortless command of language, the unerring 
touch which distinguished him as a writer, forsook him utterly 
when he opened his mouth to talk. Men who were his hopeless 
inferiors made sport of his imperfections, but his discerning 
friends loved and admired him for his modest unselfishness 
and his shining merits as a writer. 
By the time he was forty he had grown famous, and with 
care might have been rich. He struggled, however, always 
under a load of debts, having no heart to resist the importunate. 
He was still struggling, still writing to order, when he was 
taken suddenly sick of a fever. He dosed and doctored 
himself with disastrous effect. Skilled assistance was called 
too late and on 4th April, 1774, he died, in his forty- 
seventh year. 
We have travelled far since Goldsmith’s day and the world 
of letters is sworn to newer traditions than his, yet in his 
writings there still remains much of real and permanent value 
that takes and will keep no mean position among the classics 
of English literature. 
