and was buried in the burial ground of the Temple Church.  His unfinished poem, Retaliation, a series of epigrams in epitaph form on some of his distinguished literary and artistic friends, was issued a few days after his death, and added greatly to his reputation as a wit and humorist, a reputation which was still further enhanced when, in 1776, The Haunch of Venison made its appearance.  In the latter year a monument, with a medallion and Johnson’s celebrated Latin epitaph attached, was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Goldsmith’s renown, great in his own day, has never since diminished.  His essays, his novel, and his poems are still read with avidity and pleasure; his comedy is still acted.  It is his statue that stands along with Burke’s at the entrance gate to Trinity College, Dublin, the alma mater seeking to commemorate in a striking manner two of her most distinguished sons by placing their effigies thus in the forefront of her possessions and in full view of all the world.  Personally, Goldsmith was a very amiable and good-hearted man, dear to his own circle and dear to that “Mr. Posterity” to whom he once addressed a humorous dedication.  He had his faults, it is true, but they are hidden amid his many perfections.  Everyone will be disposed to agree with what Johnson wrote of him:  “Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man.”

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), born in Dublin, the son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother whose name was Nagle, was educated first at a Quaker school in Ballitore, Co.  Kildare, and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin.  He became a law student in London, but he did not eventually adopt the law as a profession.  He brought out in 1756 a Vindication of Natural Society, in which he so skilfully imitated the style and the paradoxical reasoning of Bolingbroke that many were deceived into the belief that the Vindication was a posthumously published production of the viscount’s pen.  In the following year Burke published in his own name A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which attracted widespread attention, was translated into German and French, and brought its author into touch with all the leading literary men of London.  He was instrumental with Dodsley the publisher in starting the Annual Register in 1759, and for close on thirty years he continued to supply it with the “Survey of Events.”  He entered public life in 1760 by accompanying “Single-Speech” Hamilton to Dublin when the latter was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland.  In 1765 he was made private secretary to the prime minister, the Marquis of Rockingham, and, as member for Wendover, entered parliament, where he speedily made a name for himself.  During Lord North’s long tenure of office (1770-1782) Burke was one of the minority and opposed the splendid force of his genius to the corruption, extravagance, and