Оливер Голдсмит

This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.

Dean Swift <…> perceived that there was a spirit of romance mixed with all the works of the poets who preceded him; or, in other words, that they had drawn nature on the most pleasing side. There still therefore was a place left for him, who, careless of censure, should describe it just as it was, with all its deformities; he therefore owes much of his fame, not so much to the greatness of his genius, as to the boldness of it.^[1]

There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.^[3]

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath is made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride.
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine;..

… the first blow is half the battle.

They say women and music should never be dated.

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

And what is friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep?

It has been a thousand times observed, <…> that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view, are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first case we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter nature cooks it for us.

He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But <…> he was a very great man.^[3]

Goldsmith's incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was the occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one should hardly have supposed possible in a man of his genius. When his literary reputation had risen deservedly high, and his society was much courted, he became very jealous of the extraordinary attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson.
<…> Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential and important.^[3]

He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea.
<…> the admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing truth with which the principal characters are designed, make the Vicar of Wakefield one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed. <…> We return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature.^[9]

An 'inspired idiot,' Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him. <…> Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the 'gooseberry-fool,' but rather much good; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's; and all the more genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it,—though unhappily never cease attempting to become so: <…> nill he will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine manhood.

He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one bright, the other blundering; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the "good people" who haunted this birth-place <…>.
His fairy gifts are of no avail at school, academy, or college: they unfit him for close study and practical science, and render him heedless of everything that does not address itself to his poetical imagination, and genial and festive feelings; they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy in quest of odd adventures. <…>
Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for humour, and for the study of character <…> brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings.

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done more to make the first steps in the laborious road to knowledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely distinguished from the compilations of ordinary book-makers. He was a great, perhaps an unequaled, master of the arts of selection and condensation.