The cottage which they had hired belonged to a rich shoemaker of
Piccadilly, who had embellished his little domain of half an acre with
statues and jets, and all the decorations of landscape gardening; in
consequence of which Goldsmith gave it the name of The Shoemaker's
Paradise. As his fellow-occupant, Mr. Botts, drove a gig, he sometimes, in
an interval of literary labor, accompanied him to town, partook of a social
dinner there, and returned with him in the evening. On one occasion, when
they had probably lingered too long at the table, they came near breaking
their necks on their way homeward by driving against a post on the
sidewalk, while Botts was proving by the force of legal eloquence that they
were in the very middle of the broad Edgeware road.
In the course of this summer Goldsmith's career of gayety was suddenly
brought to a pause by intelligence of the death of his brother Henry, then
but forty-five years of age. He had led a quiet and blameless life amid the
scenes of his youth, fulfilling the duties of village pastor with
unaffected piety; conducting the school at Lissoy with a degree of industry
and ability that gave it celebrity, and acquitting himself in all the
duties of life with undeviating rectitude and the mildest benevolence.
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