is that Goldsmith, though he was ready to bless his "honest
little man" when he received from him sixty pounds in advance for a
comedy not begun, never took quite so kindly to Garrick as to some of
his other friends. There is no pretence of discrimination at all, for
example, in the lines devoted in this poem to Reynolds. All the
generous enthusiasm of Goldsmith's Irish nature appears here; he will
admit of no possible rival to this especial friend of his:--

"Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind."

There is a tradition that the epitaph on Reynolds, ending with the
unfinished line

"By flattery unspoiled ..."

was Goldsmith's last piece of writing. One would like to believe that,
in any case.

Goldsmith had returned to his Edgware lodgings, and had, indeed,
formed some notion of selling his chambers in the Temple, and living
in the country for at least ten months in the year, when a sudden
attack of his old disorder drove him into town again for medical
advice. He would appear to have received some relief; but a nervous
fever followed; and on the night of the 25th March, 1774, when he was
but forty-six years of age, he took to his bed for the last time. At
first he refused to regard his illness as serious; and insisted on
dosing himself with certain fever-powders from which he had received
benefit on previous occasions; but by and by as his strength gave way,
he submitted to the advice of the physicians who were in attendance on
him. Day after day passed; his weakness visibly increasing, though,
curiously enough, the symptoms of fever were gradually abating. At
length one of the doctors, remarking to him that his pulse was in
greater disorder than it should be from the degree of fever, asked him
if his mind was at ease. "No, it is not," answered Goldsmith; and
these were his last words. Early in the morning of Monday, April 4,
convulsions set in; these continued for rather more than an hour; then
the troubled brain and the sick heart found rest for ever.

When the news was carried to his friends, Burke, it is said, burst
into tears, and Reynolds put aside his work for the day. But it does
not appear that they had visited him during his illness; and neither
Johnson, nor Reynolds, nor Burke, nor Garrick followed his body to the
grave. It is true, a public funeral was talked of; and, among others,
Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick were to have carried the pa