and illustrations." This brought him no money; the price was paid and spent long ago; and so, in the meantime, the wants of the hour were supplied by his Grecian History, at which he wrought from day to day. He projected, too, a "Popular Dictionary of Arts and Sciences," to which Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and Dr. Burney promised to contribute, but the publishers will not advance a farthing upon it, for they had but little dependence upon the industry and perseverance of Goldsmith for so great an undertaking. Then, sick at heart and despairing, he falls back upon Garrick, and offers to alter an old comedy and write a new one. Some time, too, before this, his friends endeavoured to procure a pension for him from the Government. Johnson had most deservedly obtained one, and so had Murphy and Kelly upon merits more questionable; and it was hoped that the claims of literature would be acknowledged irrespective of the considerations of party. But such claims were disregarded ; Goldsmith lay under the ban of political independence. "He had refused to become a Ministerial hack when offered a carte blanche by Parson Scott, the Cabinet emissary." Sir John Hawkins called him an idiot for his conduct, and so thought the wise men in power. Pensions are not for fools; so they left him to his folly, poor and unpensioned.

We approach the end. It is terrible to look into the last days of Goldsmith's life: joyless dissipation to stifle mental anguish; the weariness and depression of that drudgery which "lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves" of the literary man, toiling at his labour "when the heart is not in unison with the work upon which it is employed." Bewildered, disheartened, desperate, yet hiding from the true friends that would aid him the extent of his embarrassments, he at last forms the resolution to sell his chambers in the Temple, abandon the town, and seek in the retirement of his favourite Hyde, whither he had now fled, quiet henceforth for his distracted mind, and some chance of retrenchment of his expenses. Alas! it was not to be. His mind was now diseased beyond ministration. The struggle was killing him. He became nervous, absent, irritable, and strangely moody amongst those social scenes into which he rushed in the vain hope of flying from himself. His companions notice all this-notice it often, it is to be feared, but to make him the object of a thoughtless banter or pungent jest, that must have wrung the gentle and loving heart that they knew not was breaking. It was at one of those meetings at St. James's Coffee-house that the last sportive sally against Goldsmith stung him into a retort that showed how bright was still the fire of that genius, which suffering could not dim, and death alone could extinguish. The mind evokes that festive scene to-day with a feeling of profound sadness. The quips, and jibes, and jests of the witty men fall flatly upon our senses; the laughter at the tardily-arrived and moody guest sounds like a painful discord on our ears; and all our feelings and sympathies settle upon that poor heart-broken and kindly

souled man, who, seeking companionship to banish his sorrow, is greeted by the bitter pleasantry of Garrick's lines. Does he not feel the unkindly ridicule of one whose friendship had never been over-cordial? Aye, keenly. And one of the party tells us he was "rather sore," and looked around to see if there was any other hand to fling a shaft at him. But no ponderous distich rolled from the manly-hearted Johnson; no epigram from the classic Burke. Goldsmith grows very thoughtful, for his spirit is wounded; he will not reply-not now, but hereafter he is silent, till the friendly eulogy of Cumberland agitates him, and makes him deprecate a kindness when he scorns to complain of an attack. At home in his lonely chamber he meditates upon his revenge. Revenge! the very word seems unsuited to his nature. He retaliates with a power that shows, with all his gentleness and love, he is not to be assailed with impunity. At intervals (and what moments of depression, and sickness, and anguish must have intervened between those intervals!) he composed that brilliant "Retaliation," which lay unfinished on the desk when his spirit had passed away: a poem which raises the genius of its author to a higher ground in the estimation of posterity than it would otherwise have occupied, as, had he lived, it would undoubtedly have placed him in a higher position amongst his companionsthe safe butt for jokes no more, but the formidable intellect which, however slow to resent, it was not safe to provoke. If a vindication of his genius, wit, depth of observation, and fine perception of character were needed to protect his own from the depreciation of those wise ones in their own conceit, who would call him fool, he has furnished in the poem of "Retaliation" a vindication the most complete. How fine is his revenge upon Garrick !—the vengeance of a Christian gentleman. What coals of fire does he heap upon the head of his assailant! with what critical judgment does he praise! with what a true aim does he thrust home upon the failings of his character! Sharp and trenchant is the wound, but the sting has no poison in it. If "wronged affection" wrung from him the satire that was all the sharper for its truth, we can understand with what unalloyed pleasure he portrayed that most amiable of men, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is a consolation to know that the last lines he ever wrote were those of commendation and of love. Let us go back a little. It is the month of March, 1774. Goldsmith is again in town, ill with a low fever and a complaint of some standing. He struggles against his ailments, and wishes to be at the club in Gerrard Street on the 25th. Before evening he is seriously indisposed, with febrile pulse and violent headache. A kindly surgeon-apothecary and a skilful physician prescribe, but he rejects their remedies, and adheres obstinately to his own. Then he grows worse. Another physician is called in; a week of conflict with the disease ensues; at one time there is a strong hope of recovery; but more than bodily disease is at work; he cannot sleep, he cannot take nourishment, he grows

weaker and weaker. "Your pulse," says Dr. Turton, "is in greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?" The curt answer justifies the sagacious physician's fears, and reveals what is killing him. "No, it is not." Words never revoked, for he never spoke again; words that leave with us a feeling of permanent sorrow; the last confession wrung from the troubled spirit of him who, in his day, had soothed many an aching heart, had instructed and charmed all who came within the sphere of his influence. The rest may be shortly told. Let us do so in the words of Sir James Prior:-" At twelve o'clock on Sunday night, the 3rd of April, he was in a sound and serene sleep, perfectly sensible previous to falling off; his respira tion easy, the skin moist and warm, and the symptoms altogether of a favourable description. A little before four o'clock, the gentleman in attendance, Mr. Hawes not being then employed, was summoned, in consequence of an unfavourable change; he found him in strong convulsions, which continuing without intermission, he expired about half-past four on Monday morning, the 4th April, 1774."

So passed away from the world, in the prime of life, in the full vigour of intellect, one of the greatest geniuses of his country and his day-a man whose fame and popularity have been daily growing deeper, wider, firmer, in the affections of mankind and the literature of England. No public obsequies attended him to his grave, no costly monument marked the spot of his sepulture; but he went to his last resting-place honoured with the tears of Burke, the profound sorrow of Reynolds, and the strong emotion that shook with grief the manly heart of Johnson. Mourners, too, he had, such as the wealthy and the great cannot purchase-mourners unbought and unpurchasable, save by the generous hand and the benevolent heart that were now cold in death. “The staircase of Brick Court," writes Mr. Forster, with genuine pathos, "is said to have been filled with mourners the reverse of domestic: women without a home-without domesticity of any kind—with no friend but him they had come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable." Mourners, too, gentle and loving, whose happy domestic hearths will miss his cheering presence and his unabated love-mourners whose love pursues him to the confines of the grave-who crave that the coffin may be again opened to obtain a lock of his hair, to treasure it to the end of a long life.* They laid him to rest, in the Temple burial-ground, on the 9th of April, 1774, when the sun was low in the west. A stone placed in recent times records his name and the date of his death; but none can say that it is laid over his remains, for the spot where he was interred is unknown. A

"A lady, who was a great friend of Dr. Goldsmith, earnestly desired to have a lock of his hair, to keep as a memorial of him and his coffin was opened again, after it had been closed up, to procure the lock of hair from his head. This relic is still in the possession of the family, and is the only one of the kind which has been preserved of the doctor."-Northcote's Life of Reynolds, i. 327. The lady was Mary Horneck, "the Jessamy Bride," who lived to be nearly seventy.