414 
OLIVER, GOLDSMITH. 
him money, be would often keep at an inn more than a w'eek, and 
then pay all their expenses, and dismiss them without receiving a 
shilling. He lived well in his house, frequently gave to the poor, 
always ate from large joints of meat, never saw any thing twice at 
table; and at Christmas divided a certain sum of money among the 
necessitous of the town. He seemed to be afraid of two things only, 
one, being killed for his riches, the other, being infected with disease ; 
for which reasons he would send his maid sometimes to borrow half-a- 
crown from his neighbours, to hint he was poor ; and always received 
the money which was paid him in a bason of water, to prevent taking 
infection from those who paid him. He did not keep his money 
locked up, but piled it on the shelves before the plates in his kitchen. 
In his chamber, which no servant had entered during the time of his 
remaining at home, he had two thousand guineas on the top of a low 
chest of drawers, covered with dust, and live hundred on the floor, 
where it lay five and twenty years ; this last sum a child had thrown 
down, which he was fond of playing with, by oversetting a table that 
stood upon one foot ; the table continued in the same situation also: 
through this money he had made two paths, by kicking the pieces on 
one side, one of which led from the door to the window, the other 
from the window to the bed. When he quitted the Temple in London, 
he left an old portmanteau over the portal of the antechamber, where 
it had continued many years, during which time the chambers had 
passed through several hands : at length a gentleman who posses- 
sed them ordered his servant to pull it down ; it broke, being rotten, 
and out fell four or five hundred pieces of gold, which were found to 
belong to him, from the papers enclosed. It was generally supposed 
at his death, that he had put large sums in the hands of a banker, or 
lent it to some tradesman in London, without taking any memoran- 
dum ; all which was lost to his heirs, as he would never say to whom 
he lent it, through fear, perhaps, lest he should hear it was lost ; 
which some minds can bear to suspect, though not to know positively. 
After more than thirty years living a recluse, he was at last found 
dead in his bed, covered with vermin. Thus ended the life of this 
whimsical being, at the age of seventy. 
The gentleman who accompanied him to the town-hall, when he 
went to take the oath of allegiance, talked with him on every subject 
he could recollect, without discovering in him the least tincture of 
madness. He rallied himself on the perpetual motion, laughed at 
the folly of confining himself in-doors, and said he believed he should 
come abroad again like other men. He was always esteemed a per- 
son of good understanding before his shutting himself up. At the 
time of his death, he was building a house, the walls of which were 
seven feet thick. 
Oliver Goldsmith. 
This celebrated writer was born at Roscommon in Ireland, in 1729. 
His father, who possessed a small estate in that county, had nine sons, 
of whom Oliver was the third. After being well instructed in the classics, 
he was, with his brother the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, placed in Trinity 
