our day have to bear up against such,
Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure
kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The
insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of--slander,
contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest
motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused
at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child
assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full
of love, should have had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to
undergo--to own to fault, and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a
letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor
Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in
the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money.
"He was wild, sir," Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with
his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart, "Dr.
Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is so no more." Ah! if we pity the good
and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him
from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame; let us think humbly
and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low.
Whose turn may it be tomorrow? What weak heart, confident before trial,
may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has
been vanquished--cover his face and pass on.

For the last half-dozen years of his life, Goldsmith was far removed from
the pressure of any ignoble necessity: and in the receipt, indeed, of a
pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a
few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private
reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which
his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has
touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he
did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession,
and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which
trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength
of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends
the most illustrious literary men of his time,(182) fame and prosperity
might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it; and, at