CCLXXX A Dedication to Charles Dickens of the Life of Oliver Goldsmith
Genius and its rewards are briefly told
A liberal nature and a niggard doom,
A difficult journey to a splendid tomb.
New writ, nor lightly weighed that story old
In gentle Goldsmith’s life I here unfold: 5
Through other than lone wild or desert gloom,
In its mere joy and pain, its blight and bloom,
Adventurous. Come with me and behold,
O friend with heart as gentle for distress,
As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind 10
The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind,
That there is fiercer crowded misery
In garret toil and London loneliness
Than in cruel islands mid the far-off sea.
John Forster.