er Goldsmith loved anyone, he loved the Jessamy
Bride. The sweet girl was bewitching, gentle, and innocent, bright,
and very young, and that chivalrous and tender soul that honoured her
with his devotion a prematurely bent and aged man of more than forty
summers. Her wifely affections were early destined for another heart.
From the beginning, come what may, she could never be Oliver
Goldsmith's wife. The Jessamy Bride was a pure and lovely spirit. No
poet was ever moved in reverence for a fairer personification of a
pure ideal.

It was a most stately, graceful, gracious, and fascinating very old
lady whom, when years, and many years, had come and gone, Hazlitt met
and greeted. Still she remembered and still she revered the loved and
moving heart of Oliver Goldsmith. It is his greatness, and it is his
glory that his soul could and did appeal to the sublime spirit of pure
womanhood. Of none could greater, or more than this be said. Man need
not crave for more, or aspire on earth to purer heights. It was
beautiful to know, and to be the friend of, and it was divine to be
remembered by, the Jessamy Bride. These two made merry when they met.
Laughing eyes danced. All was pure, spontaneous revelry. These two
were the source and centre of mirth and cheerfulness. Partly he
amused, and partly enticed reverence and respect. The outward laughter
moved, but depth of life and love drew heart to heart. This sunshine
was most fair. As it was, Goldsmith knew the last loneliness of
things, and lived a single life and died in solitude. In Oliver
Goldsmith, Washington Irving says: "Eminent ability was allied with
spotless virtue." He sympathetically suggests how home, wife, and
children would have softened those ills that came from solitude and
enriched what was at once an abundant, and yet still, in some
respects, an impoverished nature.

LIST OF THE WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH

MEMOIRS OF A PROTESTANT--A TRANSLATION (1758).
ENQUIRY INTO THE STATE OF POLITE LEARNING (1759).
THE BEE (1759).
THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD (1762).
THE LIFE OF RICHARD NASH (1762).
A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN A SERIES OF LETTERS (1764).
THE TRAVELLER--A POEM (1765).
COLLECTED ESSAYS (1765).
EDWIN AND ANGELINA--A POEM (1765).
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD (1766).
MEMOIRS OF VOLTAIRE (1760).
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY--TRANSLATION (1766).
BEAUTIES OF ENGLISH POESY--EDITED (1767).
THE GOOD-NATURED MAN--PRODUCED AT COVENT GARD