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EDWARD O. JENKINS, PRINTER, 114 Nassau Street, N. Y.

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nity for forming a thorough acquaintance with both than has been afforded us before.

There was an anomaly in Goldsmith's character which has existed in no other celebrated personage in an equal degree. An Irishman by birth, he had most of the virtues and not a few of the failings which distin

MR. CUNNINGHAM, whose scrupulous exactness is generally known, has furnished the first complete and accurate reprint of the miscellaneous writings of Oliver Goldsmith. Numerous errors which had crept into previous editions are corrected, omitted passages are restored, and entire pieces have been added. By a fortunate coincidence Mr. Fors-guish many of his nation-their love of low ter at the same moment has reproduced, with great additions, his well-known" Life of Goldsmith," in which he has collected, from an infinity of sources, every particular which could illustrate the career of his hero, and by his acute and genial comments, has assigned to the mass of disjointed facts their true significance. Much as has been written upon the man, and often as his works have been republished, we have now a better opportu

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festivities, their blundering, their gullibility, their boastfulness, their vanity, their improvidence, and, above all, their hospitality and benevolence. But with this Hibernian disposition he was an author after the purest and soberest models-chaste in his style and language, and calm and rational in his opinions. Those who lived with him found it hard to believe that one so weak in his conduct and conversation could display much power in his writings, and, as we learn from Dr. Johnson, "it was with difficulty that his friends could give him a hearing." Posterity, on the other hand, who reverse the process and judge him from his books, have been reluctant to acknowledge that the man "who wrote like an angel could have talked like poor Poll ;" and there has been a tendency of late years to accuse his contemporaries of combining to exaggerate his absurdities. But whatever be

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accounts, he was rejected for appearing in scarlet breeches. The story was probably a jocose invention suggested by his love of gaudy clothes, and the only intelligible expla nation of the transaction, as Mr. Forster remarks, is that his knowledge was found deficient. Instead of preparing for his examination he had employed his two years in country rambles, in playing whist and the flute, and in telling stories and singing songs at a club which met at the Ballymahon public-house. His own predilections had never been in favor of the clerical profession, and he made no further efforts to enter the church. Mr. Contarine, a clergyman who had married the sister of Oliver's father, now procured

the explanation of the contradiction, there is abundant evidence that it was real. His works remain to speak for themselves and the account of his foibles comes to us from such a variety of quarters, that to deny the likeness would be to undermine the foundations of biography itself. Even if traits originally ludicrous were made broader in the repetition, the general temptation to indulge in a caricature of his weaknesses is itself a proof that the qualities existed in excess. This distinct recognition by Mr. Forster of the blended nature of Goldsmith, of the Irish temperament which he derived from his parents, his training, and his early associates, and of the taste in composition which he derived from the study of books, has dissi-him the situation of tutor in the house of a pated the doubts and difficulties which recent discussions were beginning to raise about one of the most strongly marked and transparent characters that ever existed in the world. On the appearance in 1837 of Mr. Prior's Life of Goldsmith, we related in detail the earlier, and at that time the least known, part of his career. * The son of a poor clergyman he was sent at seventeen to Dublin University, and for cheapness was compelled to enter as a sizar. If poverty is the stimulus to industry, industry is equally the solace of poverty. Study furnishes the mind with occupation, and removes the necessity for costlier and less worthy entertainment; but idleness aggravates penury, and is the parent of low diversions, lassitude, and debt. Such, from the indications which remain to us, appears to have been the college existence of Goldsmith. Any chance of his being drawn into the studies of the place was destroyed by the brutal-nished by Mr. Contarine, he set out for Lonity of a tutor, who ridiculed his awkwardness and his ignorance, and who once knocked him down for giving a humble dance at his rooms to celebrate the small but solitary honor of having gained an exhibition worth thirty shillings. After nearly four years passed at Dublin without pleasure, profit, or distinction, he took his degree of bachelor of arts the 27th February, 1749.

His father died while he was at college, and his mother lived in reduced circumstances at a cottage in Ballymahon. He was urged by his family to take orders, but, wanting two years of the canonical age, he spent the interval at his new home. When he at last presented himself before the Bishop of Elphin he was refused ordination. According to a tradition which rests upon indifferent authority, and which is contradicted by other

* 66 Quarterly Review," vol. lvii. p. 273.

Mr. Flinn. Here he remained a twelvemonth,
when he taxed one of the family with cheat-
ing at cards and lost his office. He went back
to Ballymahon with thirty pounds and a
horse, started afresh in a few days, and re-
appeared at the end of six weeks with a worse
horse and no money.
His mother being very
angry, he wrote a letter to pacify her, in which
he professed to have gone to Cork, to have
paid his passage in a ship which was bound
to America, and to have been left behind by
an unscrupulous captain who "never inquired
after me, but set sail with as much indiffer-
ence as if I had been on baard." A train of
adventures followed, the whole of which bear
evident marks of invention, and show how
early he began to display the talents which
produced the "Vicar of Wakefield." The
church and emigration had failed. It was
resolved to try law. With fifty pounds fur-

don to keep his terms, gambled away his little fund with an acquaintance at Dublin, and was once more thrown back penniless upon his friends. The law was given up; but after a short interval they were hopeful enough to think that medicine might be attended with better luck. The money was again supplied by Mr. Contarine, and this time the reckless Oliver contrived to reach his destination, though it was no less distant than Edinburgh. He arrived there in the autumn of 1752, when he was twenty-four years of age.

It may be inferred from the previous and subsequent proceedings of Oliver, that he was neither very diligent nor very prudent at Edinburgh, but little is known with certainty. He remained there till the spring of 1754, when, led more by his love of roving than by his devotion to science, he resolved to visit the continental schools. "I shall carry," he wrote to Mr. Contarine in announcing that he

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