of any malicious act which required contrivance and disguise.

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of genius, cruelly
treated by the world, and doomed to struggle with difficulties which at
last broke his heart. But no representation can be more remote from the
truth. He did, indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done
anything considerable in literature. But, after his name had appeared on
the title-page of the "Traveller," he had none but himself to blame for
his distresses. His average income, during the last seven years of
his life, certainly exceeded 400 pounds a year; and 400 pounds a year
ranked, among the incomes of that day, at least as high as 800 pounds a
year would rank at present. A single man living in the Temple with 400
pounds a year might then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the young
gentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had so much.
But all the wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir
Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed
for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He wore fine clothes,
gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beauties. He had
also, it should be remembered, to the honour of his heart, though not of
his head, a guinea, or five or ten, according to the state of his purse,
ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress
or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, that his
chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a gambler, and at once the
most sanguine and the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off
the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained advances
from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he never began.
But at length this source of supply failed. He owed more than 2000
pounds; and he saw no hope of extrication from his embarrassments. His
spirits and health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous fever, which
he thought himself competent to treat. It would have been happy for him
if his medical skill had been appreciated as justly by himself as by
others. Notwithstanding the degree which he pretended to have received
at Padua, he could procure no patients. "I do not practise," he once
said; "I make it a rule to prescribe only for my friends." "Pray, dear
Doctor," said Beauclerk, "alter your rule; and prescribe only for your
enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, pr