Authors, Irish -- 18th century -- Biography; Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774
The simple heart of Goldsmith was touched; but, alas! he had but half a
guinea in his pocket. It was unfortunate, but after a pause his friend
suggested, with some hesitation, "that money might be raised upon his
watch; it would but be the loan of a few hours." So said, so done; the
watch was delivered to the worthy Mr. Pilkington to be pledged at a
neighboring pawnbroker's, but nothing further was ever seen of him, the
watch, or the white mice. The next that Goldsmith heard of the poor
shifting scapegrace, he was on his deathbed, starving with want, upon
which, forgetting or forgiving the trick he had played upon him, he sent
him a guinea. Indeed, he used often to relate with great humor the
foregoing anecdote of his credulity, and was ultimately in some degree
indemnified by its suggesting to him the amusing little story of Prince
Bonbennin and the White House in the Citizen of the World.
In this year Goldsmith became personally acquainted with Dr. Johnson,
toward whom he was drawn by strong sympathies, though their natures were
widely different. Both had struggled from early life with poverty, but had
struggled in different ways. Goldsmith, buoyant, heedless, sanguine,
tolerant of evils and easily pleased, had shifted along by any temporary
expedient; cast down at every turn, but rising again with indomitable
good-humor, and still carried forward by his talent at hoping. Johnson,
melancholy, and hypochondriacal, and prone to apprehend the worst, yet
sternly resolute to battle with and conquer it, had made his way doggedly
and gloomily, but with a noble principle of self-reliance and a disregard
of foreign aid. Both had been irregular at college, Goldsmith, as we have
shown, from the levity of his nature and his social and convivial habits;
Johnson, from his acerbity and gloom. When, in after life, the latter heard
himself spoken of as gay and frolicsome at college, because he had joined
in some riotous excesses there, "Ah, sir!" replied he, "I was mad and
violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. _I was
miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my
wit_. So I disregarded all power and all authority."
Goldsmith's poverty was never accompanied by bitterness; but neither was it
accompanied by the guardian pride which kept Johnson from falling into the
degrading shifts of poverty. Goldsmith had an unfortunate facility at
borrowing, and helping himself along by the contributions of his friends;
no doubt trusting, in his hopeful way, of one day making retribution.
Johnson never hoped, and therefore never borrowed. In his sternest trials
he proudly bore the ills he could not master. In his youth, when some
unknown friend, seeing his shoes completely worn out, left a new pair at
his chamber door, he disdained to accept the boon, and threw them away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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