forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather
than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into
his affairs or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It
must be remembered that he owed 2,000_l._ when he died. "Was ever poet,"
Johnson asked, "so trusted before?" As has been the case with many another
good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted
by crowds of hungry beggars, and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky
time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and
watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money: if they begged on
empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills: or he treated them to
a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with an order upon honest
Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until
the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load
of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running
from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the
hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the
morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes,
flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into
pleasure--at last, at five-and-forty, death seized him and closed his
career.(183) I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which
were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, and
Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith--the
stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
door.(184) Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow
sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of
all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn--

Here as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangled walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my heart, and turns the past to pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of care
In all my griefs--and God has given my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at t