Authors, Irish -- 18th century -- Biography; Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774
In the warm feeling of the moment, while the remains of the poet were
scarce cold, it was determined by his friends to honor them by a public
funeral and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. His very pall-bearers were
designated: Lord Shelburne, Lord Lowth, Sir Joshua Reynolds; the Hon. Mr.
Beauclerc, Mr. Burke, and David Garrick. This feeling cooled down, however,
when it was discovered that he died in debt, and had not left wherewithal
to pay for such expensive obsequies. Five days after his death, therefore,
at five o'clock of Saturday evening, the 9th of April, he was privately
interred in the burying-ground of the Temple Church; a few persons
attending as mourners, among whom we do not find specified any of his
peculiar and distinguished friends. The chief mourner was Sir Joshua
Reynolds' nephew, Palmer, afterward Dean of Cashel. One person, however,
from whom it was but little to be expected, attended the funeral and
evinced real sorrow on the occasion. This was Hugh Kelly, once the dramatic
rival of the deceased, and often, it is said, his anonymous assailant in
the newspapers. If he had really been guilty of this basest of literary
offenses, he was punished by the stings of remorse, for we are told that he
shed bitter tears over the grave of the man he had injured. His tardy
atonement only provoked the lash of some unknown satirist, as the following
lines will show:
"Hence Kelly, who years, without honor or shame,
Had been sticking his bodkin in Oliver's fame,
Who thought, like the Tartar, by this to inherit
His genius, his learning, simplicity, spirit;
Now sets every feature to weep o'er his fate,
And acts as a mourner to blubber in state."
One base wretch deserves to be mentioned, the reptile Kenrick, who, after
having repeatedly slandered Goldsmith while living, had the audacity to
insult his memory when dead. The following distich is sufficient to show
his malignancy, and to hold him up to execration:
"By his own art, who justly died,
A blund'ring, artless suicide:
Share, earthworms, share, since now he's dead,
His megrim, maggot-bitten head."
This scurrilous epitaph produced a burst of public indignation that awed
for a time even the infamous Kenrick into silence. On the other hand, the
press teemed with tributes in verse and prose to the memory of the
deceased; all evincing the mingled feeling of admiration for the author and
affection for the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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