oat to save his landlord from gaol: when he was a
school-usher, he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the
good-natured schoolmaster's wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr.
Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. When he met his pupils
in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them
still. "Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?" he asked
of one of his old pupils. "Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your
picture had been published, I'd not have been without it half an hour."
His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his friends' as much as his
own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of
Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be
of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, and
not himself, to the great man. "My patrons," he gallantly said, "are the
booksellers, and I want no others."(180) Hard patrons they were, and hard
work he did; but he did not complain much: if in his early writings some
bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he
withdrew these expressions when his works were republished, and better
days seemed to open for him; and he did not care to complain that printer
or publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face
was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronized Beattie; the fashion
did not shine on him--fashion adored Sterne.(181)

Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A
little--not ill humour, but plaintiveness--a little betrayal of wounded
pride which he showed render him not the less amiable. The author of the
_Vicar of Wakefield_ had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the MS.
for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne; a little
angry when Colman's actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy,
when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced
its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him; but he
had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon,
and the great Burke, and the great Fox--friends and admirers illustrious
indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope's
table.

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper kept no account of
all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary
career. Should any man of letters in