OLIVER, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in Ireland, on the 29th of November, 1728, at Smith-hill, in the county of Roscommon, at the house of his maternal grandfather; and not in the year or at the place mentioned in Johnson's epitaph on him. By another mistake made in the note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have been a native of the county of Westmeath. Both these errors, which appear to have been caused by the changes in his father's residence, have been rectified in a letter addressed by Dr. Strean, a clergyman in the diocese of Elphin, to Mr. Mangin, and inserted by that gentleman in his entertaining book called An Essay on Light Reading.

His father removed from Smithhill to Pallas, in the parish of Forney and county of Longford, and afterwards to his rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the latter of these parishes, at Lissoy, or Auburn, he built the house described as the Village-preacher's modest mansion in The Deserted Village. His mother was daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin. Their faVOL. V.

mily consisted of five sons and two daughters.

In a letter from his elder sister, Catherine, the wife of Daniel Hodson, Esq. inserted in the Life of Goldsmith, which an anonymous writer, whom I suppose to have been Cowper's friend, Mr. Rose, from a passage in Mr. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works, wonders are told of his early predilection for the poetical art; but those who have observed the amplification with which the sprightly sallies of childhood are related by domestic fondness, will listen to such narrations with some abatement of confidence. It seems probable, that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell, with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle were acquainted.

He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a quarter-master during the war of the Succession in Spain; and from the romantic accounts which this man de

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lighted to give of his travels, Goldsmith is supposed, by his sister, to have contracted his propensity for a wandering life. From hence he was removed successively to the school at Elphin, of which Oliver Jones was master, and to that of Athlone; and, lastly, was placed under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, of Edge worthstown, in the county of Longford, to whose instruction he acknowledged himself to have been more indebted than to that of his other teachers.

It was probably that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull boy, fit only to be the butt of their ridicule.

On his last return after the holidays to the house of his master, an adventure befel him, which afterwards was made the groundwork of the plot in one of his comedies. Journeying along leisurely, and being inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house in the place, he was directed to a gen tleman's habitation that literally an swered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that enter tained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn; and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without ceremony. The master of the house, aware of the mistake, resolves to favour it ; and is still less inclined to undeceive his guest, when he finds out from his discourse that he is the son of an acquaintance and a neighbour. A good supper and a bottle or two of wine are called for, of which the host, with his wife and daughter, are invited to partake; and a hot cake is providently ordered for the morrow's breakfast. The young traveller's surprise may be conceived, when, in calling for his bill, he finds under what roof he has been lodged, and with whom he had been putting himself on such terms of familiarity.

In June, 1744, he was sent a sizer to Trinity College, Dublin, and placed under the tuition of Mr. Wilder, one of the fellows, who is re

presented to have been of a temper so morose as to excite the strongest disgust in the mind of his pupil. He did not pass through his academical course without distinction. Dr. Kearney (who was afterwards provost), in a note on Boswell's Life of Johnson, informs us, that Goldsmith gained a premium at the Christmas examination, which, according to Mr. Malone, is more honourable than those obtained at the other examinations, inasmuch as it is the only onethat determines the successful candidate to be the first in literary merit. This is enough to disprove what Johnson is reported to have said of him, that he was a plant that flowered late; that there appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young; though, when he had got in fame, one of his friends began to recollect something of his being distinguished at college. Whether he took a de→ gree is not known. On one occasion he narrowly escaped expulsion for having been concerned in the rescue of a student, who, in violation of the supposed privileges of the University, had been arrested for debt within its precincts: but his supe→ riors contented themselves with passing a public censure on him.

Having been deprived, by death, of his father, who had with difficulty supported him at college, he became a dependant on the bounty of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine; and after fluctuating in his choice of an employment in life, was at length established as a medical student at Edinburgh, in his twenty-fifth year.

Dr. Strean mentions, that he was at one time intended for the church, but that appearing before the Bishop, when he went to be examined for orders, in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected.

From Edinburgh, when he had completed his attendance on the usual course of lectures, he removed to Leyden, with the intention of continuing his studies at that University.

Johnson used to speak with coarse contempt of Goldsmith's want of veracity." Noll," said he to a lady of much distinction in literature, who repeated to me his words, "Noll, madam, would lie through an inch board." In this instance, Johnson's known partiality to Goldsmith fixes the stigma

so deeply, that we can place no reliance on the account he gave of what befel him, when he imagined himself to be no longer within reach of detection. In a letter to his uncle he relates that, before going to Holland, he had embarked in a vessel for Bourdeaux, that the ship was driven by a storm into Newcastle-uponTyne, that he was there seized on suspicion of being engaged with the rebels, and thrown into prison; that the vessel, meanwhile proceeding on her voyage, was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, where all the crew perished; and that, at the end of a fortnight, being liberated, he set sail in a vessel bound for Holland, and in nine days arrived safely at Rotterdam. After a residence of about a twelvemonth at Leyden, he was involved in difficulties, occasioned by his love of gambling, a ridiculous inclination that adhered to him for the remainder of his life. He now set out with the resolution of visiting the principal parts of the Continent on foot; and, according to his own report of himself, made his way by a variety of stratagems, sometimes recruiting his finances by the acquisition of small sums proposed in the foreign universities to public dispus tants; at others, securing himself a hospitable reception by the exercise of a moderate share of skill in play ing the flute-his "tuneless pipe," as he calls it, in that passage of The Traveller where he alludes to this method of supplying his wants.

Thus, if we are to believe him, he passed through the Netherlands, France, and Germany, into the Swiss Cantons; and in that country, so well suited to awaken the feelings of a poet, he composed a part of The Traveller, and sent it to his elder brother, a clergyman in Ireland. Continuing his journey into Italy, he visited Venice, Verona, Florence, and Padua; and having spent six months at the University in the last mentioned city, returned through France to England in 1756. From his Inquiry into the Present State of Learning, we collect, that when at Paris, he attended the Chemical Lectures of Rouelle.

In the meantime his uncle had died; and he found himself, on his arrival in London, so destitute even of a friend

to whom he could refer for a recommendation, that he with difficulty obtained first the place of an usher to a school, and afterwards that of assistant in the laboratory of a chemist. At last, meeting with Doctor Sleigh, formerly his fellow-student at Edinburgh, he was enabled, by the kindness of this worthy physician, who appears in so amiable a light as the patron of Barry, in the Memoirs of that painter, to avail himself more effectually of his knowledge in medicine, and to earn a subsistence, however scanty, by the practice of that art.

The Bankside in Southwark, and the Temple, or its vicinity, were successively the places where he fixed his residence. To his professional gains he soon added the emoluments arising from his exertions as an author. In 1758, he took a share in the conduct of the literary journal called the Monthly Review; and for the space of seven or eight months, while the employment lasted, lodged in the house of Mr. Griffiths, the proprietor of it. The next year he contributed several papers to the Bee, a collection of essays, and pub lished his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, in which he speaks of the Monthly Review in terms not very respectful. There is, I doubt, in this little essay more display than reality of erudition. would not be easy to say where he had discovered" that Dante was persecuted by the critics as long as he lived." The complaints he made of the hard fate of authors, and his censure of odes and of blank verse, were well calculated to conciliate the good will, and to excite the sympathy of Johnson, with whom he soon became intimate.

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Poverty and indiscretion were other claims, by which the benevolent commiseration of Johnson could scarcely fail to be awakened; and his acquaintance with Goldsmith had not subsisted long, when an occasion presented itself for rescuing him from the consequences of those evils. One day, calling on our poet, at his lodgings in Wine-office Court, Fleetstreet, he found him under arrest for debt, and engaged in violent altercation with his landlady. Taking from him the Vicar of Wakefield, then just written, Johnson proceed

ed with it to Newbery the bookseller, from whom he obtained sixty pounds for his friend; and Gold smith's good humour, and the complaisance of his hostess, returning with this accession of wealth, they spent the remainder of the day together in harmony. In this novel, like Fielding and Smollett, he exhibits a very natural view of familiar life. Inferior to the first in the art ful management of this story, and to the latter in the broader traits of comic character, and not equal to either in variety and fertility, he is, nevertheless, to be preferred to both for his power of passing from the ludicrous to the tender, and for his regard to moral decency. It was not printed till some years after, in 1766, when his reputation had been in some degree established by The Traveller. Meanwhile he published, in a periodical work called the Ledg er, his Letters from a Citizen of the World to his Friend in the East, in which, under the character of a Chinese philosopher, he describes the customs and manners of Europeans. But this assumed personage is an awkward concealment for the goodhumoured Irishman, with his neverfailing succession of droll stories. Of these there are too many; and the want of like continued interest thing sensibly felt. I do not know of any book, on the same plan, that is to be compared with the Persian Letters of Montesquieu.

In the spring of 1763, he had lodgings in Islington; and continuing there till the following year, he revised several petty publications for Newbery, and wrote the Letters on Eng lish History, which, from their being published as the letters of a nobleman to his son, have been at tributed by turns to the Earl of Orrery and Lord Lyttelton.

His next removal was to the Temple, where he remained for the rest of his life, not without indulging a project, equally magnificent and visionary, of making a journey into the East, in order to bring back with him such useful inventions as had not found their way into Britain. He was ridiculed by Johnson for fancying himself competent to so arduous a task, when he was utterly unacquainted with our own mecha

nical arts. He would have brought back a grinding barrow, said Johnson, and thought that he had furnished a wonderful improvement. The more feasible plan of returning with honour and advantage to his native country, was held out to him through the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland. That nobleman, who was then the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, sent for him, and made him an offer of his protection. Goldsmith, with his characteristic simplicity, replied, that he had a brother there, a clergyman, who stood in need of help; that, for himself, he looked to the booksellers for support. This reliance happily did not deceive him. By the rewards of his literary labours, he was placed in a compa rative state of opulence, in which his propensity for play alone occasioned a diminution.

*In 1765, appeared The Hermit, The Traveller, and the Essays.

About this time a club was formed, at the proposal of Reynolds, which consisted, besides that eminent pamter and our poet, of Johnson, Burke, Burke's father-in-law, Doctor Nugent, Sir John Hawkins, Langton, Beauclerk, and Chamier, who met and supped together every Friday night, at the Turk's Head, in Gerard-street, Soho. The bookseller's shop belonging to Dr. Griffiths, called the Dunciad, in the neighbourhood of Catherinestreet, was another of his favourite haunts.

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His comedy of the Good Natured Man, though it had received the sanction of Burke's approval, did not please Garrick sufficiently to induce him to venture it on his theatre. It was, therefore, brought forward by Colman, at Covent Garden, on the 29th of January, 1769; but having been represented for nine nights, did not longer maintain its place on the stage, though it is one of those comedies which afford most amusement in the closet. For his conception of the character of Croaker, the author acknowledged that he was indebted to Johnson's Suspirius, in the Rambler. That of Honeywood, in its undistinguishing benevolence, bears some resemblance to his own.

In the next year he published his Deserted Village; and entered into an agreement with Davies, to com