is a candid commentary upon some of the best men of that day. Garrick
is treated more elaborately than the rest. He had been the prime
offender, and naturally came foremost for the fire of the reply. The
poem was never finished. The kind words about Sir Joshua were
practically the last the poet penned. Reynolds, to the very end trying
to cheer Goldsmith and be with him whenever he could, proved now, as
he had ever been, the sweetest of friends--a true and loving, tender
man.

Home at the Temple, and in the dear London he loved, Goldsmith grew
ill very rapidly, and in his illness fell into a deep sleep. He slept
to wake; he stooped to conquer. This, instead of being the sleep of
restoring strength, was that in which disease takes its last, firm
grasp. One struggle with the feeble frame, and the wrestle for life
was over for ever. His biographers write of this sleep, that was
watched with so much anxiety by his physicians: "It was hoped that a
favourable crisis had arrived." It had. It marked the advent of the
last reprieve, that release that can never be recalled. The clouds
have passed away for ever, and in the sunshine came the solace of all
cares, the finality of pain, and the soothing and the solution of all
sorrow. Heaven had sent its last call and its greatest message to the
heart. In all, only forty-seven years had been given, and all that may
have been ill in the time is forgotten and forgiven, and the fairest
part of all that was well and high and true is with us even now, and
the radiance must last for long, cheering many hearts, brightening
souls that are failing, and blessing homes that are and will be. The
night of passing death has led on to the day of unpassing life.

On April 4, 1774, the spirit of Oliver Goldsmith conquered that which
men call death. Burke burst into tears at the news of the passing of
the man and the friend he cherished and revered. Reynolds laid his
work aside and rose, shaken in his great sorrow, and trembling with
the sense of an untold loss. Looking back upon the fading figure, so
dear to so many, and a light for years to come, shining still in many
homes and many hearts and many lands, Johnson, in his sacred
solemnity, said: "Poor Goldsmith! He was a very great man."

The body of Oliver Goldsmith was buried in the quiet Temple
churchyard. There is a tablet to his memory in the church itself, but
no one now knows exactly where the mortal remnant was laid, for no
memorial marked