success, joy and
pain, endlessly devoted.

From the earliest days to the last, throughout the whole career of
Oliver Goldsmith, there were deep emotions in the mind and high
motives in the life and character of this great man that few in his
own times even dimly perceived. Impenetrable love was hidden in that
laughter-laden heart, with its outward concealing and dissimulating
vanities.

When the time came, and he might have left his work in London and gone
home to Ireland for a while, it was too late, for his dear and gentle
mother, old Uncle Contarine, and brother Henry had passed away. It may
be hard to think that an indolent boy who squanders without scruple
the money you have with great embarrassment raised for his benefit
loves you devotedly, and has dedicated his whole heart, and life, and
love to yours. It is difficult, too, to think that a vain little man
is, in his soul, an earnest great one. Yet all this must be achieved
if the heart would know Oliver Goldsmith rightly, and give at least
one faithful life its due.

There is no period in which the moving mind of genius is not
receptive. In those days of wayward adolescence, Goldsmith found books
somewhere, and many, and read them to the depths. Some men have left
lists of the works they studied--even Burns and Byron did. Noll was
never at any time systematic enough to have done this. Often the
spirit is more influenced by the things that are read and not greatly
heeded, than by those that become the subject of fixed study.
Goldsmith was always a lover of Latin poetry and classic models. In
this perplexing youthful time of transition, he had imbued his mind
with romance and with those higher aspirations of the poets of all
ages and eras in which their utterances, growing religious, pertain to
life in its love and light and lofty purity. Literature yields
nothing more enthralling than those passages in which sublimity is
seized, and the mind of man is commanded to rise above the pressing
issue and the material care.

Prudence has many advantages. It makes men rich and respectable, but
it is the death of poetry. Prudence has no genius. It cannot perceive
its own deplorable delimitations. It may not fathom the vagaries of
high minds. Goldsmith was not meant to make his own fortune. He was
intended to make what is far dearer and better than prosperity--hope
and happiness for many and many a heart, and many and many a home.
Burns was not prudent, Byron was not;