“Hence Kelly, who years, without honor or shame,
Had been sticking his bodkin in Oliver’s fame,
Who thought, like the Tartar, by this to inherit
His genius, his learning, simplicity, spirit;
Now sets every feature to weep o’er his fate,
And acts as a mourner to blubber in state.”
One base wretch deserves to be mentioned, the reptile Kenrick, who, after having repeatedly slandered Goldsmith while living, had the audacity to insult his memory when dead. The following distich is sufficient to show his malignancy, and to hold him up to execration:
“By his own art, who justly died,
A blund’ring, artless suicide:
Share, earthworms, share, since now he’s dead,
His megrim, maggot-bitten head.”
This scurrilous epitaph produced a burst of public indignation that awed for a time even the infamous Kenrick into silence. On the other hand, the press teemed with tributes in verse and prose to the memory of the deceased; all evincing the mingled feeling of admiration for the author and affection for the man.
Not long after his death the Literary Club set on foot a subscription, and raised a fund to erect a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Nollekins, and consisted simply of a bust of the poet in profile, in high relief, in a medallion, and was placed in the area of a pointed arch, over the south door in Poets’ Corner, between the monuments of Gay and the Duke of Argyle. Johnson furnished a Latin epitaph, which was read at the table of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where several members of the club and other friends of the deceased were present. Though considered by them a masterly composition, they thought the literary character of the poet not defined with sufficient exactness, and they preferred that the epitaph should be in English rather than Latin, as “the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be perpetuated in the language to which his works were likely to be so lasting an ornament.” These objections were reduced to writing, to be respectfully submitted to Johnson, but such was the awe entertained of his frown that every one shrank from putting his name first to the instrument; whereupon their names were written about it in a circle, making what mutinous sailors call a Round Robin. Johnson received it half graciously, half grimly. “He was willing,” he said, “to modify the sense of the epitaph in any manner the gentlemen pleased; but he never would consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.” Seeing the names of Dr. Wharton and Edmund Burke among the signers, “he wondered,” he said, “that Joe Wharton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool; and should have thought that Mund Burke would have had more sense.” The following is the epitaph as it stands inscribed on a white marble tablet beneath the bust:
OLIVARII GOLDSMITH,
Poetae, Physici, Historici,
Qui nullum ferè scribendi genus
Non tetigit,
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit
Sive risus essent movendi,
Sive lacrymae,
Affectuum potens ac lenis dominator:
Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis,
Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus:
Hoc monumento memoriam coluit
Sodalium amor,
Amicorum fides,
Lectorum veneratio.
Natus in Hibernia Forniae Longfordiensis,
In loco cui nomen Pallas,
Nov. xxix. MDCCXXXI.;
Eblanse literis institutus;
Obiit Londini,
April iv. MDCCLXXIV.
The following translation is from Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Johnson:
OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH—
A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,
Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,
And touched nothing that he did not adorn;
Of all the passions,
Whether smiles were to be moved or tears,
A powerful yet gentle master;
In genius, sublime, vivid, versatile,
In style, elevated, clear, elegant—
The love of companions,
The fidelity of friends,
And the veneration of readers,
Have by this monument honored the memory.
He was born in Ireland,
At a place called Pallas,
[In the parish] of Forney, [and county] of Longford,
On the 29th Nov., 1731,[*]
Educated at [the University of] Dublin,
And died in London,
4th April, 1774.