Lettered inside plate, lower left: "Published at 47 Queen's Road and 8 Clare Street Bristol by Frost & Reed Dec. 1st 1897; lower center: "Oliver Goldsmith's Tomb"; lower right: "Percy Thomas 1898"; lettered on verso, center: "GOLDSMITH'S GRAVE. | OLIVER GOLDSMITH died in this Chambers, No. 2, Brick | Court, Middle Temple, early in the morning of April 4th, | 1774, at the age of forty-five. At five o'clock in the evening of | Saturday, April 9th, he was laid to rest in the Burial ground of the | Middle Temple, on the north side of the Church. No monument | or even flat grave-stone, at least bearing any name by which it could be identified, appears to have been placed over the grave at the time. | It was not until some forty years since that the present stone, with | the inscription" "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith" was placed by the | Bench of the Middle Temple in the situation shewn in the Etching. | On almost all days in the year and notably on Sundays, pilgrims, | not only of the English-speaking races, may be seen standing | reverently round the grave. | The reclining figure, and the Bust, against the wall of the | Master's House, and those respectively ofJohn Miles Hiccock (1726), | and Samuel Mead (1733).
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art; Gift of John W. Davis