presently he turned to writing again,
to pay his debts to the booksellers. He produced several superficial and
grossly inaccurate schoolbooks,--like his _Animated Nature_ and his
histories of England, Greece, and Rome,--which brought him bread and more
fine clothes, and his _Vicar of Wakefield, The Deserted Village_, and _She
Stoops to Conquer_, which brought him undying fame.

After meeting with Johnson, Goldsmith became the object of Boswell's magpie
curiosity; and to Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ we are indebted for many of
the details of Goldsmith's life,--his homeliness, his awkward ways, his
drolleries and absurdities, which made him alternately the butt and the wit
of the famous Literary Club. Boswell disliked Goldsmith, and so draws an
unflattering Portrait, but even this does not disguise the contagious good
humor which made men love him. When in his forty-seventh year, he fell sick
of a fever, and with childish confidence turned to a quack medicine to cure
himself. He died in 1774, and Johnson placed a tablet, with a sonorous
Latin epitaph, in Westminster Abbey, though Goldsmith was buried elsewhere.
"Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man," said
Johnson; and the literary world--which, like that old dictator, is kind
enough at heart, though often rough in its methods--is glad to accept and
record the verdict.

WORKS OF GOLDSMITH. Of Goldsmith's early essays and his later school
histories little need be said. They have settled into their own place, far
out of sight of the ordinary reader. Perhaps the most interesting of these
is a series of letters for the _Public Ledger_ (afterwards published as
_The Citizen of the World_), written from the view point of an alleged
Chinese traveler, and giving the latter's comments on English
civilization.[204] The following five works are those upon which
Goldsmith's fame chiefly rests:

_The Traveller_ (1764) made Goldsmith's reputation among his
contemporaries, but is now seldom read, except by students who would
understand how Goldsmith was, at one time, dominated by Johnson and his
pseudo-classic ideals. It is a long poem, in rimed couplets, giving a
survey and criticism of the social life of various countries in Europe, and
reflects many of Goldsmith's own wanderings and impressions.

_The Deserted Village_ (1770), though written in the same mechanical style,
is so permeated with honest human sympathy, and voices so perfectly the
revolt of the ind