I have little money: The Pocket University 10-11 August 2023
Called "one of the most delightful and irresponsible friends that Dr. [Samuel Johnson] had," Oliver Goldsmith shows his poverty and peppery wit in two letters.
The famous fellows of 18th Century English literature continue apace in the Pocket University’s volume of letters.
This time, two by Oliver Goldsmith.1 We last ran into him running into Samuel Johnson in an event narrated by biographer Boswell.2
Now, we have two letters, one to read one day, one the next.
It got me thinking how letters used to be a very big deal. They were the window into famous folks’ hearts and minds, the parts of themselves they only revealed to opponents, enemies, lovers and friends. Now, we’ll all be subsumed in a grotesquely large tidal wave of social media posts, pictures, videos and, of course, emails from every single person who’s living now. Eventually, the power required to keep all the data farms alive to hold on this nonsense will become too much, and we’ll all have to start shaving off bits of our digital selves.
But once upon a time, there were just letters recipients kept in boxes until they were captured, years later, by home buyers, historians, librarians or biography writers.
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