The writings of Goldsmith are distinguished in English literature, and, indeed, in the literature of the world, by their sweet pure humor, fresh and clear and sparkling as a fountain whose edges the satyr's hoof has never trampled. They charm by their humanity, by their tender charity, by the nobility of their lesson, a nobility only heightened by the intense sympathy with the struggles, and sorrows, and errors of mankind. A new St. Martin of letters, he was ever ready to share his mantle of pity with the sad and sinning. He had himself suffered so much, and been so tempted and tested, and had retained throughout his trials so much of the serenity of a child, that all his writings breathe compassion for frailty and failure with something of a schoolboy sense of brotherhood which softens even his satire. The flames of London's fiery furnace had blazed and raged about him, but he passed through them unconsumed. The age in which he lived was not an age of exalted purity, the city wherein he dwelt was scarcely saintly. He lived in some of the most evil days of the eighteenth century, but his writings and his life escaped pollution. He was not a saint, indeed; he was a spendthrift and he loved his glass, but he was never tainted with the servile sins of cities. Through all the weltering horror of Hogarth's London we seem to see him walk with something of the freshness of his boyhood still shining on his face. The reflection of the Irish skies was too bright upon his eyes to let them be dimmed by the squalor and the shame of a squalid and shameful city. [Sidenote: 1774--The friends of Goldsmith] With the true instinct of his fine nature he made his friends and companions among the wisest and highest of his time. His intimates and companions were Edmund {169} Burke, and Dr. Johnson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He had women friends too, as wisely chosen as the men--women who were kind to him and admired him, women whose kindness and admiration were worth the winning, women whose friendship brightened and soothed a life that was darkened and vexed enough. Mary Horneck and her sister were the stars of his life, his heroines, his idols, his ideals. He has made Mary Horneck immortal as the "Jessamy Bride." In his hours of poverty he was cheered by the thought of her; while he lived he worshipped her, and when he died a lock of his hair was taken from his coffin and given to her. Thackeray tells a touching little story of the Jessamy Bride. She lived long after the death of the man of genius who adored her, lived well into the nineteenth century, and "Hazlitt saw her, an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote's painting-room, who told the eager critic how proud she was always that Goldsmith had admired her."