Excerpt from The Deserted Village, And, the Traveller: And Other Poems There were two sets of people who looked upon Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and each saw correctly enough what each was capable of seeing. One saw in him a shiftless, vain, awkward, homely fellow, thrust ing himself into good company, blundering, blurting out nonsense or malapropos sayings, a gooseberry fool. The other, containing men of genius, laughed at poor Goldy, but never failed to seek his com pany and to receive him as' their equal. When Burke was told of his death, he burst into tears. Reynolds was painting When the news was brought to him; he laid his pencil aside and would not go back that day to his studio, a sign of grief never shown in times of deep family distress. Johnson never ceased to mourn him, and cast his profoundest conviction of the poet's genius into the monumental lines which form one of the noblest of elegies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.