Chapter Gleig to Goldsmith of G by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

wrote an imperishable epitaph on him. The poor, the old, and the outcast crowded the stair leading to his lodgings, and wept for the benefactor who had never refused to share what he had (often little enough) with them. Much of his work—w ritten at high pressure for the means of existence, or to satisfy the urgency of duns—his histories, his Animated Nature, and such like, have, apart from a certain charm of style which no work of his could be without, little permanent value; but The Traveller and The Deserted Village, She Stoops to Conquer, and, above all, The Vicar of Wakefield, will keep his memory dear to all future readers of English.

Summary.—B. 1728, educated Trinity Coll., Dublin, went to Edinburgh 1752, and to Leyden 1754, travelled on foot over large part of Continent, reached London 1756, and wrote for magazines, etc., and after publishing various other works produced The Citizen of the World in 1762, published Vicar of Wakefield 1766, Deserted Village 1770, and She Stoops to Conquer 1773, died 1774.

There are many editions of Goldsmith’s works by Prior, 1837, Cunningham, 1854, Professor Masson (Globe), 1869, Gibb (Bohn’s Standard Library), 1885. Biographies by Prior, 1837, Foster, 1848-71, Washington Irving, and others. See also Boswell’s Johnson, and Thackeray’s English Humorists.