Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish doctor without patients who lived by hack writing in London until Johnson, who became his friend, sold The Vicar of Wakefield to pay his rent. The Deserted Village mourns the clearing of a rural community by enclosure; She Stoops to Conquer is the one comedy of its decade still played. He was vain, improvident and generous, and the club that Johnson, Burke and Reynolds belonged to loved him. Johnson’s epitaph said he touched nothing he did not adorn, and Garrick’s said he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.