regard as a genuine poet. Immediately a desire is excited to learn his physiognomy, to be made acquainted with the details of his private history, and if possible to be admitted to more confidential intercourse. How is this to be accounted for? Is the poet, necessarily, a more elevated and interesting character than the prose-writer? On the contrary, is it not too often found, that the imagination has been cultivated or indulged, at the expense of the proportionate development of the other faculties, and at the expense of those moral habits which have so important an influence on the conduct in after-life? Is not that combination of genius and practical imbecility, of exalted faculty and indecision or incapacity of action, which marks too many of those characters, the natural result of a partial, and therefore imperfect, cultivation of the mental powers? How often is our curiosity to be made acquainted with the author of works of fascinating beauty and tenderness, gratified to the loss or the diminution of the pleasure which they at first awakened! But the fact is, that the very name of the poet appeals to the imagination in a way in which that of no other writer does. His works present to us an ideal character, framed of the elements of sentiment and feeling scattered through his works; and it is with this ideal character, from the strong sympathy his sentiments have awakened, that we desire to hold more intimate intercourse. Yet knowledge the most extensive-feeling the most refined and rectitude of principle, are often dissociated so widely, as to appear to have no necessary connexion with each other: and when we find this practically illustrated in the memoirs of the poet, it is not easy to renew the pleasing illusion, and to recover the features of the imaginary portrait which the reality has displaced.

Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 29th of November, 1728. The place of his birth has been controverted. Dr. Johnson, in the epitaph for his monu

mental stone, states it to have been Pallas, in the parish of Forney, county of Longford; which is sanctioned by his biographer, the Bishop of Dromore. The record of his admission at college, describes him as born in the county of Westmeath, which may have arisen from his father having, subsequently to his birth, obtained the living of Kilkenny West, in that county. Another account states him to have been born at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, where his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Oliver Jones, resided, as master of the Diocesan School. Here he received part of his education. Oliver was the second among five sons, and born unexpectedly, after an interval of seven years from the birth of the former child. Of his elder brother, Henry, their father had formed the most sanguine hopes from the early promise he gave of distinguishing himself; and the liberal education which Mr. Goldsmith was bestowing upon him, bearing hard upon his small income, he could only propose to bring up Oliver to some mercantile employment. Henry, according to the account given by his elder sister, Mrs. Hodson, "unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen; which confined him to a curacy, and prevented his rising to preferment in the church."

Mrs. Hodson describes her brother Oliver as exhibiting, even in childhood, all the waywardness, as well as the intellectual signs of genius. At the age of seven or eight, he amused his friends with his poetical attempts. He was the infant EDWIN, as portrayed in the Minstrel-in every respect but his personal appearance. This, it seems, was so far removed from grace and beauty, that when being but nine years old, he was one day required to dance a hornpipe before a large assembly at his uncle's, the musician, very archly as he supposed, compared him to Esop dancing. The fiddler, however, had suddenly, as we are informed by Mrs. Hodson, the laugh

turned against him, by Oliver's stopping short in the dance with this retort:

"Our herald hath proclaim'd this saying,

See Æsop dancing, and his monkey playing."

This smart reply, it is said, decided his fortune, for from that time his friends determined to send him to the university. After passing some years in the schools of Athlone, and at Edgeworth's Town, under the Rev. Patrick Hughes, he was entered as a sizer at Dublin College, on the 11th of June, 1744, under the Rev. Theaker Wilder, one of the fellows; a man of harsh temper and violent passions, with whom Goldsmith, by his irregularities, was soon involved in most disagreeable broils, and from whom he experienced the most irritating treatment, and unremitting persecution. Once he left college, having disposed of his books and clothes, with the resolution to leave the country; but he was soon driven back, like the prodigal, by necessity. While he was at college, soon after this event, his worthy father died, of whom he gives an account in the Citizen of the World, under the character of the man in black. His uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine, who had contributed to support him at college, pressed him to prepare for holy orders; but an unsettled turn of mind, an unquenchable desire of visiting other countries, and perhaps an ingenuous sense of his unfitness for the clerical profession, conspired to disincline him to the church; and when at length he offered himself as a candidate to Bishop Synge, he was on some account or other refused ordination. The ill treatment and mortifications, indeed, to which he was subjected at college from his savage tutor, completely discouraged him; and from despondence he sunk into habitual indolence: yet his genius, it is said, sometimes dawned through the gloom; and "translations from the classics, made by him at this period," were long

"remembered by his contemporaries with applause.' He was not however admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, till February 27, 1749, O.S. two years after the regular time.

At length it was decided that he should be sent to Edinburgh, to be bred to the study of physic, where he was fixed by the persevering kindness of his uncle Contarine about the end of the year 1752. Here again poor Oliver became the hero of many an adventure, of many a tale of blunders and difficulties, and displayed all the weakness of his character. The desire to amuse, and the love of display, seduced him into buffoonery: his knowledge was not equal to his genius, and he did not endeavour by regular study to add to his acquisitions. His health was considerably injured by dissipation, and his pocket not unfrequently drained by his extravagance. He went however through the usual courses at Edinburgh ; and then, with the consent of his beneficent uncle, removed to Leyden, in order to complete his medical studies. The story of his leaving Edinburgh precipitately, in order to avoid being arrested for a debt contracted by a fellow student, for which it is said he had become security, is discountenanced by a letter written by himself to his uncle from Leyden, in which he ascribes his detention in prison at Newcastleupon-Tyne to a very different cause-his being found in company with some Scotchmen in the French service, and he expresses his gratitude to God for the interposition, as the vessel in which he would otherwise have sailed, was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and all the crew were lost.

He resided at Leyden about a year, where he suffered all the vicissitudes of fortune at play, till at length, stripped of every shilling by this fatal passion for the gaming table, he determined to quit Holland; and he accordingly set out on his travels with only one clean shirt, and pennyless. His method of travelling, and the means to which he resorted for sub

sistence, have been already detailed. He travelled in this way through Flanders, and some parts of France and Germany; he passed some time in Switzerland; from thence he went to Padua, where he staid six months, and visited all the northern part of Italy. In the mean while, he lost his good uncle and generous benefactor, the Rev. Mr. Contarine; and he landed at Dover about the breaking out of the war in 1766, destitute of any other resources than his talents. He arrived in London in the extremity of distress," without," as he himself expresses it, "friends, recommendation, money, or impudence." The first situation which he obtained was that of assistant in an academy; but the circumstances attending this irksome employment soon rendered it intolerable. The want of present subsistence, subsequently led him to apply to several apothecaries, to be admitted as a journeyman; but his thread-bare coat, uncouth figure, and broad Irish dialect, exposed him to repeated insult and unfeeling repulse. At length a chemist near Fish Street Hill, moved by his forlorn condition, and perhaps surprised at his medical knowledge, employed him in his laboratory, where he was discovered by an old fellow-student of his at Edinburgh, Dr. Sleigh, who affectionately received him into his family, and offered him the use of his purse.

Thus assisted, we are informed, he commenced medical practitioner at Bankside, from whence he afterwards removed to the vicinity of the Temple; but although he had plenty of patients, he confessed he got no fees. Here however he had leisure to have recourse to his pen; and by his combined exertions in literature and medicine, “by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet," he made "shift to live." While thus endeavouring to support himself, he received an offer from the son of the Rev. Dr. Milner, a dissenting minister who kept a classical school, of some eminence, at Peck