[BOSWELL] 'You say, Sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' JOHNSON. 'I could not have said more nor less. It is the truth; _eclipsed_, not _extinguished_; and his death _did_ eclipse; it was like a storm.' BOSWELL. 'But why nations? Did his gaiety extend farther than his own nation?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, nations may be said--if we allow the Scotch to be a nation, and to have gaiety,--which they have not. _You_ are an exception, though. Come, gentlemen, let us candidly admit that there is one Scotchman who is cheerful.' BEAUCLERK. 'But he is a very unnatural Scotchman.'" Oliver Goldsmith once wrote a series of playful epitaphs for his friends. These were his first two lines on Garrick: Here lies David Garrick, describe him who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man. FOOTNOTES: [22] The manager of Goodman's Fields theatre. [23] The author whom Johnson had first discovered on the apple-shelf at Lichfield. See p. 7. [24] See p. 28. _Oliver Goldsmith_ Oliver Goldsmith, known best to us as the author of _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and described by Boswell as "one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school" was, like his master, an adventurer in literature. The son of a poor Irish clergyman, he went, after an unhappy time at school, where he was teased by the boys on account of his disfigurement by small pox, to Trinity College, Dublin. Here, like Johnson at Oxford, he was a "lounger at the college-gate" and, in spite of his poverty, a leading spirit in college riots, such as the ducking of a bailiff and the gathering of a dancing party "of humblest sort" in his college room. However, he worked hard enough to get the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and learnt, besides, to write ballads and to play the flute. After three years of idleness he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, the money being provided by a generous uncle. But more of this bounty was spent on fine clothes than on medical books and his restlessness soon drove him abroad to the university of Leyden, where he studied little except in what Johnson calls "the great book of mankind." With the true spirit of the Irish adventurer he now began his wanderings on foot through Flanders, France, Switzerland and Italy. Sometimes he had to depend on the tunes of his flute to get him food and lodging; sometimes he earned a few shillings "by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant." Having thus disputed his passage through Europe, as Boswell says, he landed in England at the age of 28 without a shilling in his pocket. For him, as for Johnson, there was only one kind of life possible--the life of "Grub Street." Here are a few lines from his own _Description of an Author's Bedchamber_: