STERNE AND GOLDSMITH.
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most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door.[1] Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn—
"Here as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangled walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my heart, and turns the past to pain.
Amidst thy tangled walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my heart, and turns the past to pain.
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs—and God has given my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose;
I still had hopes—for pride attends us still—
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
In all my griefs—and God has given my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose;
I still had hopes—for pride attends us still—
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
- ↑ "When Burke was told [of Goldsmith's death] he burst into tears. Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him; but at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family-distress he had not been known to do; left his painting-room, and did not re-enter it that day. . . .
"The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, the reverse of domestic; women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic mourners, too. His coffin was re-opened at the request of Miss Horneck and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them!) that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she died, after nearly seventy years."—Forster's Goldsmith.
