We have already had occasion to speak of our author's poetry. His prose possesses nearly the same excellencies; it is, as Dr. Johnson observes, "capacious without exuberance, exact without restraint, and easy without weakness." His Vicar of Wakefield has a just title to be ranked among the best novels in our language, as well from the nature and variety of its characters, as from what in general is less attended to, the sufficiency of its moral. It possesses another rare merit-that of not being too long.

Though Goldsmith's reputation

rest chiefly upon his poems,

it is re

markable that he did not reap from

them a profit equal to that produced by his other writings, and that it was by no means the best among the latter which redounded most to his emolument.

He, it seems, greatly resembled, in his literary career, the portrait that Pope has drawn of Atticus, "who could bear no rival near the throne." He is said likewise to have had no settled system of conduct; and yet the whole tenor of his writings is favourable to the cause of virtue and morality; so easy it is for the human mind to unite the strangest inconsistencies; and so true it is that those who are any ways elevated above humanity will always be found al

lied to it by failings, which serve in some degree to reconcile the rest of mankind to their superiority.

With a little attention to prudence and economy, Goldsmith might easily have raised himself to a state above want and dependence. He is said to have acquired 18001. in one year, and the advantages arising from his writings were very considerable for many years before his death. But these were rendered useless by an improvident liberality, which prevented his distinguishing the proper object of his generosity, and by an unhappy attachment to gaming, with the arts of which he was very little acquainted. He therefore remained, at times, as much embarrassed in his

circumstances as when his income was at its lowest and most precarious state.

He had, for some years, been afflicted at different times with a violent strangury, which, united to the deranged state of his affairs, brought on a kind of habitual despondency. » In this unhappy condition he was attacked by a nervous fever, which put a period to his existence on the 4th of April 1774, in the 43d year of his age.

His friends, who were very numerous and respectable, had determined to bury him in WestminsterAbbey. His pall was to have been supported by Lord Shelburne, Lord Louth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Hon. Mr. Beauclerc, Mr. Edmund Burke,

and Mr. Garrick: this design was however dropped; and his remains were deposited in the Temple burialground on the 9th of April; when Mr. Hugh Kelly, Messrs. John and Robert Day, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Etherington, and Mr. Hawes, gentlemen who had been his friends through life, attended his corpse as mourners, and paid the last tribute to his memory.

A subscription has since been raised, to defray the expense of a marble monument, which is now executed by Mr. Nollikens, and placed in Westminster-Abbey, between Gay's monument and the duke of Argyle's, in Poet's corner. It consists of a large medallion, exhibiting a good likeness of our author, with literary

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