characters it cannot be denied, that while he was stoutly combating for the cause of legitimate comedy and the regular novel, Cumberland manifested something of personal feeling in his zeal against those contemporaries who had found new roads, or by-paths, as he thought them, to fame and popularity, and forestalled such as were scrupulously treading the beaten highway, without turning to the right or to the left. These imperfections, arising, perhaps, from natural temper, from a sense of unmerited neglect, and the pressure of disadvantageous circumstances of fortune, or from the keen spirit of rivalry proper to men of an ardent disposition, rendered irritable by the eagerness of a contest for public applause, are the foibles rather of the profession than the individual; and though the man of letters might have been more happy had he been able entirely to subdue them, they detract nothing from the character of the man of worth, the scholar, and the gentleman.'

["Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts,
The Terence of England, the mender of hearts;
A flattering painter, who made it his care

To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
His gallants are all faultless, his women divine,
And Comedy wonders at being so fine;
Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out,
Or rather, like tragedy giving a rout.

His fools have their follies, so lost in a crowd
Of virtues and feelings, that Folly grows proud,
And coxcombs, alike in their failings alone,
Adopting his portraits are pleased with their own:
Say, where has our poet this malady caught,

Or, wherefore his characters thus without fault?

Say, was it that mainly directing his view

To find out men's virtues, and finding them few,

Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf,

He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself?"-GOLDSMITH.]

We believe Cumberland's character to have been justly, as well as affectionately, summed up in the sermon preached on occasion of his funeral, by his venerable friend, Dr Vincent, then Dean of Westminster. "The person you now see deposited, is Richard Cumberland, an author of no small merit ; his writings were chiefly for the stage, but of strict moral tendency-they were not without their faults, but these were not of a gross description. He wrote as much as any, and few wrote better; and his works will be held in the highest estimation, so long as the English language is understood. He considered the theatre as a school for moral improvement, and his remains are truly worthy or mingling with the illustrious dead which surround us. In his subjects on Divinity, you find the true Christian spirit; and may God, in his mercy, assign him the true Christian reward!"

To this formidable list there remain yet to be added the critical papers written by the author for the London Review; Retrospection, a poem, in blank verse, on the author's own past life; and perhaps other publications, unknown to the Editor.

Abbotsford, December, 1824.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

OUR biographical notices of distinguished Novelists were in some degree proportioned to the space which their labours occupy in the Collection for which these sketches were originally written. On that principle, the present subject, so interesting in every other point of view, could not be permitted long to detain us. The circumstances also of Dr Goldsmith's life, his early struggles with poverty and distress, the success of his brief and brilliant career after he had become distinguished as an author, are so well known, and have been so well and so often told, that a short outline is all that ought here to be attempted.1

Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 29th November, 1728, at Pallas, (or rather Palice,) in the parish of Farney, and county of Longford, in Ireland, where his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a minister of the Church of England, at that time resided. This worthy clergyman, whose virtues his celebrated son afterwards rendered immortal, in the character of the Village Preacher, had a

2

[It is understood that Mr Prior, the author of the Life of Burke, has prepared for the press Memoirs of Goldsmith, on a very extensive scale, and enriched with many new and important details, and original documents. 1834.]

[See the Deserted Village.]

family of seven children, for whom he was enabled to provide but very indifferently. He obtained ultimately a benefice in the county of Roscommon, but died early; for the careful researches of the Rev. John Graham of Lifford have found his widow nigra veste senescens, residing with her son Oliver in Ballymahon, so early as 1740. Among the shop accounts of a petty grocer of the place, Mrs Goldsmith's name occurs frequently as a customer for trifling articles; on which occasions Master Noll appears to have been his mother's usual emissary. He was recollected, however, in the neighbourhood, by more poetical employments, as that of playing on the flute, and wandering in solitude on the shores, or among the islands of the river Inny, which is remarkably beautiful at Ballymahon.

Oliver early distinguished himself by the display of lively talents, as well as by that uncertainty of humour which is so often attached to genius, as the slave in the chariot of the Roman triumph. An uncle by affinity, the Rev. Thomas Contarine, undertook the expense of affording to so promising a youth the advantages of a scholastic education.1 He

1

["This benevolent man," says Mr Campbell, "was descended from the noble family of the Contarini of Venice. His ancestor having married a nun in his native country, was obliged to fly with her into France, where she died of the small-pox. Being pursued by ecclesiastical censures, Contarini came to England; but the puritanical manners, which then prevailed, having afforded him but a cold reception, he was on his way to Ireland, when, at Chester, he met with a young lady, of the name of Chaloner, whom he married. Having afterwards conformed to the Established Church, he,