coloured clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black-velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled the little account in Hades.[1]
They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young Sizar's who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:[2] he learned his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads they say for the street singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and
- ↑ "When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William Filby (amounting in all to 79l.) was for clothes supplied to this nephew Hodson."—Forster's Goldsmith, p. 520.
As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page} "a prosperous Irish gentleman," it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off Mr. Filby's bill. - ↑ "Poor fellow! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table."—Cumberland's Memoirs.
