His ready smile a parent’s warmth exprest;
    Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest: 
    To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
    But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 
    As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
    Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
    Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
    Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

Goldsmith’s last great work was a comedy named She Stoops to Conquer.  It is said that the idea for this play was given to him by something which happened to himself when a boy.

The last time that Goldsmith returned home from school he made his journey on horseback.  The horse was borrowed or hired, but he had a guinea in his pocket, and he felt very grown up and grand.  He had to spend one night on the way, and as evening came on he asked a passing stranger to direct him to the best house, meaning the best in the neighborhood.  The stranger happened to be the village wag, and seeing the schoolboy swagger, and the manly airs of sixteen, he, in fun, directed him to the squire’s house.  There the boy arrived, handed over his horse with a lordly air to a groom, marched into the house and ordered supper and a bottle of wine.  In the manner of the times in drinking his wine he invited his landlord to join him as a real grown-up man might have done.  The squire saw the joke and fell in with it, and not until next morning did the boy discover his mistake.  The comedy founded on this adventure was a great success, and no wonder, for it bubbles over with fun and laughter.  Some day you will read the play, perhaps too, you may see it acted, for it is still sometimes acted.  In any case it makes very good reading.

But Goldsmith did not long enjoy the new fame this comedy brought him.  In the spring of 1774, less than a year after it appeared, the kindly spendthrift author lay dead.  He was only forty-five.

The beginning of Goldsmith’s life had been a struggle with poverty; the end was a struggle with debt.  By his writing he made what was in those days a good deal of money, but he could not keep it.  To give him money was like pouring water into a sieve.  “Is your mind at ease,” asked his doctor as he lay dying.  “No, it is not,” answered Goldsmith.  Those were his last words.

“Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith,” wrote Johnson, “there is little to be told more than the papers have made public.  He died of a fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind.  His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted.  Sir Joshua* is of opinion that he owed not less than two thousand pounds.  Was ever poet so trusted before?”

Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous painter.

Goldsmith was buried in the graveyard of the Temple church, but his tomb is unmarked, and where he lies no one knows.  His sorrowing friends, however, placed a tablet to his memory in Westminster, so that his name at least is recorded upon the roll of the great dead who lie gathered there.