Continuing his studies in Edinburgh, then Holland, he later embarked on a walking tour of Europe, arriving two years later in London
in 1756, virtually penniless but possessing a “dubious” Italian medical degree gained at Padua. He found work as a physician,
strolling player, usher and pharmacy assistant. In 1758 the British Navy rejected his application as surgeon’s mate stating,
“found not qualified.”
He then turned to authorship, years of hack work ensuing. But Goldsmith ascended to the top
rung on the ladder of fame with his first important poem, “The Traveller”, regarded as one of the finest in the English language.
“The Vicar of Wakefield” (1766) remains a classic of great charm. His last farce play, “She Stoops to Conquer,” (1773) was a
London stage success beyond his wildest expectation.
In a life of poverty and hardship, Goldsmith, both generous and a gambler,
seemed improvident and ineffectual. He died in great debt, financial worries likely aggravating the fever that felled him.
His
epic lament, “The Deserted Village,” is a remarkable vignette of desolated 18th century Ireland; his clear, rich, forceful language
in eloquent contrast with the stilted, laborious and weighty prose of his English contemporaries.
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest
of the lawn
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen
And desolation saddens all
thy green
One only master grasps the whole domain
And half the village stints thy smiling plain
No more thy glassy brook reflects the
day
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way
Along thy glades a solitary guest
The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest
Amidst
thy desert walks the lapwing flies
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all
And the long
grass o’er-tops the mouldering wall
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand
Far, far away thy children leave the land”
