(1728-1774). Poet, dramatist, and essayist, son of an
Irish clergyman, was b. at Pallasmore in Co. Longford. His
early education was received at various schools at Elphin, Athlone,
and Edgeworthstown. At the age of 8 he had a severe attack of smallpox
which disfigured him for life. In 1744 he went to Trinity Coll.,
Dublin, whence, having come into collision with one of the college
tutors, he ran away in 1746. He was, however, induced to return, and
grad. in 1749. The Church was chosen for him as a
professionagainst his will be it said in justice to him He
presented himself before the Bishop of Elphin for
examinationperhaps as a type of deeper and more inward
incongruenciesin scarlet breeches, and was rejected. He next
figured as a tutor; but had no sooner accumulated £30 than he
quitted his employment and forthwith dissipated his little savings. A
long-suffering uncle named Contarine, who had already more than once
interposed on his behalf, now provided means to send him to London to
study law. He, however, got no farther than Dublin, where he was
fleeced to his last guinea, and returned to the house of his mother,
now a widow with a large family. After an interval spent in idleness,
a medical career was perceived to be the likeliest opening, and in
1752 he steered for Edinburgh, where he remained on the usual
happy-go-lucky terms until 1754, when he proceeded to Leyden. After a
year there he started on a walking tour, which led him through France,
Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. How he lived it is hard to say, for
he left Leyden penniless. It is said that he disputed at University,
and played the flute, and thus kept himself in existence. All this
time, however, he was gaining the experiences and knowledge of foreign
countries which he was afterwards to turn to such excellent
account. At one of the University visited at this time, he is believed
to have secured the medical degree, of which he subsequently made
use. Louvain and Padua have both been named as the source of it. He
reached London almost literally penniless in 1756, and appears to have
been occupied successively as an apothecarys journeyman, a
doctor of the poor, and an usher in a school at Peckham. In 1757 he
was writing for the Monthly Review. The next year he applied
unsuccessfully for a medical appointment in India; and the year
following, 1759, saw his first important literary venture, An
Enquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe. It was
published anonymously, but attracted some attention, and brought him
other work. At the same time he became known to Bishop Percy, the
collector of the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, and he had written
The Bee, a collection of essays, and was employed upon various
periodicals. In 1761 began his friendship with Johnson, which led to
that of the other great men of that circle. His Chinese
Letters, afterwards republished as The Citizen of the
World, appeared in The Public Ledger in 1762, The
Traveller, the first of his longer poems, came out in 1764, and
was followed in 1766 by The Vicar of Wakefield. In 1768 he
essayed the drama, with The Good-natured Man, which had
considerable success. The next few years him busily occupied with work
for the publishers, including The History of Rome (1769), Lives
of Parnell the poet, and Lord Bolingbroke (1770), and in the same year
The Deserted Village appeared; The History of England
was published in 1771. In 1773 he produced with great success his
other drama, She Stoops to Conquer. His last works were The
Retaliation, The History of Greece, and Animated Nature,
all published in 1774. In that year, worn out with overwork and
anxiety, he caught a fever, of which he died April 4. With all his
serious and very obvious faultshis reckless improvidence, his
vanity, and, in his earlier years at any rate, his dissipated
habitsG. is one of the most lovable characters in English
literature, and one whose writings show most of himselfhis
humanity, his bright and spontaneous humour, and the kindest
heart in the world. His friends included some of the best and
greatest men in England, among them Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. They
all, doubtless, laughed at and made a butt of him, but they all
admired and loved him. At the news of his death Burke burst into
tears, Reynolds laid down his brush and painted no more that day, and
Johnson wrote an imperishable epitaph on him. The poor, the old, and
the outcast crowded the stair leading to his lodgings, and wept for
the benefactor who had never refused to share what he had (often
little enough) with them. Much of his workw ritten at high
pressure for the means of existence, or to satisfy the urgency of
dunshis histories, his Animated Nature, and such like,
have, apart from a certain charm of style which no work of his could
be without, little permanent value; but The Traveller and
The Deserted Village, She Stoops to Conquer, and, above all,
The Vicar of Wakefield, will keep his memory dear to all future
readers of English.
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