htful
village. Newbery made all the arrangements. From him Goldsmith's
landlady received her quarterly due for the board and lodging of this
celebrated author. However precautious this plan of payment may have
been, it probably led to Noll spending more on incidental outlays than
he otherwise would have done with a weekly reckoning to meet. His
cares never came from personal profusion or self-indulgence, but from
the warmth and impulse of his too generous heart and lavish love of
giving. With him the purpose of money was not its preservation for a
rainy day, but its distribution on a fine one. He never found much
fun in making guineas come, or hilarity in keeping them. It was a
vast delight to make them fly. At this feat no one was ever more
accomplished. Here we have the man and his mistakes, and the troubles
that came, and came to stay. Some might have grown rich from his
financial opportunities. Whilst making the most and the worst of
his prudential incompetence, it is easy to estimate too highly his
rewards. It is an exaggeration to speak of his having made in his
time thousands of pounds.

All he earned very hardly he squandered most carelessly. This
foreshadows that fierce stream of fatality in which he proved
powerless to the end. Underlying currents of embarrassments were as
constant as the grace and purity and beauty of his heart, and more
close to him than that they could not be. Those men of business who
never had their dues met, were better able to bear the losses than
would have been the poor pensioners whom Goldsmith's compassion
enriched. His was never the philanthropy of reasoned prudence, but
that of impotent prodigality. He scattered guineas as heedless of
himself as he was careless of his creditors. He was at this time most
industrious. In 1763 and 1764 he produced countless miscellaneous
articles and essays. He composed a _History of England_ in a series of
letters written after the manner of a nobleman to his son, and through
this mistakenly attributed to Lord Chesterfield. He may have penned
"Goody Two-Shoes"--it is too late to tell. Subsequently came another
and more responsible _History of England_, used until recently in many
of our public schools. Oliver Goldsmith had become one of the men of
his time.

[Illustration:
_It is agreed between Oliver Goldsmith M. B on one hand
and James Dodsley on the other that Oliver Goldsmith shall
write for James Dodsley a book called a Chro