OLIVER GOLDSMITH:

A BIOGRAPHY.

BY

WASHINGTON IRVING.

NEW-YORK:

G. P. PUTNAM & COMPANY, 10 PARK PLACE.

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by

WASHINGTON IRVING,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern Distric of

New-York.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and parentage.-Characteristics of the Goldsmith race.--Poetical birth-

place.-Goblin house.-Scenes of boyhood.-Lissoy.--Picture of a country

parson.-Goldsmith's schoolmistress.-Byrne, the village schoolmaster.—

Goldsmith's hornpipe and epigram.-Uncle Contarine.-School studies and

school sports.-Mistakes of a night,

17

CHAPTER II.

Improvident marriages in the Goldsmith family.-Goldsmith at the university.-

Situation of a sizer.-Tyranny of Wilder, the tutor.-Pecuniary straits.--

Street ballads.-College riot.-Gallows Walsh.-College prize.--A dance

interrupted,

30

CHAPTER III.

Goldsmith rejected by the bishop.-Second sally to see the world.-Takes

passage for America.-Ship sails without him.-Return on Fiddle-back. -

A hospitable friend.--The counsellor,

45

CHAPTER IV.

Sallies forth as a law student.-Stumbles at the outset.--Cousin Jane and the

valentine.--A family oracle.--Sallies forth as a student of medicine.—

Hocus-pocus of a boarding-house-Transformations of a leg of mutton.-

The mock ghost.--Sketches of Scotland.-Trials of Toryism.-A poet's

purse for a Continental tour,

53

CHAPTER V.

The agreeable fellow-passengers.-Risks from friends picked up by the way-

side.--Sketches of Holland and the Dutch.-Shifts while a poor student at

Leyden.—The tulip speculation.--The provident flute.--Sojourn at Paris.—

Sketch of Voltaire.--Travelling shifts of a philosophic vagabond,

. 6f

CHAPTER VI.

Landing in England.--Shifts of a man without money. The pestle and

mortar.-Theatricals in a barn.-Launch upon London.-A city night

scene.-Struggles with penury.-- Miseries of a tutor.—
Miseries of a tutor.-A doctor in the

suburb.--Poor practice and second-hand finery.-A tragedy in embryo.--

Project of the written mountains,

77

CHAPTER VII.

Life of a pedagogue.-Kindness to schoolboys-pertness in return.-Expensive

charities.-The Griffiths and the "Monthly Review."-Toils of a literary

hack.-Rupture with the Griffiths,

84

CHAPTER VIII.

Newbery, of picture-book memory.-How to keep up appearances.—Miseries

of authorship.-A poor relation.-Letter to Hodson,

89

CHAPTER IX.

Hackney authorship-Thoughts of literary suicide.-Return to Peckham.-

Oriental projects.-Literary enterprise to raise funds.-Letter to Edward

Wells-to Robert Bryanton.-Death of uncle Contarine.-Letter to cousin

Jane,

97