Goldsmith, Oliver: The Inspired Idiot

Oliver Goldsmith:

(1728-1774)

Anglo-Irish poet, novelist and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith was born in Ireland in 1728. He was the son of a Protestant Clergyman. After his education at various schools and Trinity College, Dublin, he failed to settle down to any regular professional career. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and Leyden, but never took a medical degree from either university. Indeed, he appears to have been too irresponsible to fit himself for any regular profession. The combination of his literary work and his dissolute lifestyle led Horace Walpole to give him the name of  "Inspired Idiot".

For sometime during his twenties he rambled the continent leading hand to mouth existence and often, according to the stories he told later , lived on the the alms he was given for playing the flute. At the age of thirty he settled penniless. In London, he tried to earn a living by writing. He did an immense amount of sheer hack-work. As a writer, he had an easy and graceful style of  expression that was quite individual and ran through everything he wrote. 

He emerged from obscurity and entered the intellectually brilliant circle of  Dr. Johnson and his friends. In 1764, he achieved fame and success with his long poem, 'The Traveler', This was the first of his writings under his own name. Johnson called it the best poem Pope. In 1764, his deservedly popular novel, 'The Vicar of Wakefield' was published long after it had been written and sold to the publisher.

In 1768, his first play, 'The Good natured Man' was first performed. Although it was not very well received, Goldsmith sold its copyrights for a handsome price. His finest poem 'The Deserted Village' was published in 1770 and was dedicated to Joshua Reynolds, another of Goldsmith's lifelong friend. Then in 1773 he triumphed with his second comedy, 'She stoops to Conquer'. The next year he died. He was buried in the temple, one the old old Inns of court, and his admirers created a monument to him in Westminster Abbey, bearing a Latin inscription composed by Dr. Johnson, whose generous support had meant so meant so much to his life.

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