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GOLDSMITH'S

POETICAL WORKS.

THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE life of Goldsmith has of late been written by various authors of distinguished name. We do not profess, in our succeeding sketch, to add any new facts to those which have been laboriously collected by Prior and Forster, and gracefully narrated by Washington Irving. It is our purpose first to state rapidly some of the well-known incidents in his strange story, and then to analyse his character and genius.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was born on the 25th November 1728, at Lishoy, near Elphin, county of Roscommon, Ireland. His father, the Reverend Charles Goldsmith, was the incumbent of that parish. His character is delineated by his son in the exquisite picture of the parish priest, in "The Deserted Village" -a description where the picturesque and the tender glow at last into the sublime. He was distinguished alike by learning and simplicity, by studious habits, and by attention to his flock. His family consisted of five sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Henry, to whom "The Traveller" was dedicated, made an imprudent marriage, which darkened his originally bright prospects, and forced him to retire to a curacy worth "forty pounds a year"! His brother seems to have cherished the amiable delusion that he had "retired to happiness and obscurity," and we have not Henry's per contra. Oliver was the second son, born after an interval of seven years. The master of the village school, to which he was sent,

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