The vicar of Wakefield. (Marcus Ward's educ. lit.).

20NOV83

OXFOertisement.

HERE
HERE are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred

things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth-he is a priest, a husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey: as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement, whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fireside. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have been taught to deride religion will laugh at one whose chief stores of comfort are drawn from futurity.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was born on the 10th of November,

1728, at the small village of Pallas, Co. Longford, Ireland. His father was the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, Protestant clergyman of that parish; but in 1730 the family removed to Lissoy, where Oliver received some scanty education in a school kept by a retired quartermaster. In 1745 he was sent as a sizar to Trinity College, Dublin, with no better reputation than that of being an awkward dunce; and at Trinity College he did not improve his prospects much. He was always in debt, and under the displeasure of the authorities in consequence of some prank or other. A good-natured uncle kept him supplied with money from time to time, and at length the scapegrace managed to take his B.A. degree in 1749. After one or two further escapades, he was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine. Subsequently he proceeded to Leyden, and from Leyden he set out on a tour through Flanders, France, Switzerland, and Italy, gaining his living on the way by playing the flute. In 1756 he reached London, and then became a hack writer for the Monthly Review. His "Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe" (1759) gave him his real start in literature; and when Smollett's British Magazine appeared, one of the chief contributors was Goldsmith, who at the same time was contributing to the Public Ledger a series of social articles, afterwards republished under the title of The Citizen of the World. In 1764 he made a great hit with his poem called "The Traveller," and

when, a year later, Dr. Johnson went to visit him when he was arrested by his landlady for debt, Goldsmith handed him the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, which Johnson was at once able to sell to a bookseller named Newbery for £60. Newbery, however, kept it by him a year before publishing it. The work went through several editions in the author's lifetime, exercised a wide influence throughout France and Germany in the form of translations, and to this day is one of the most popular novels in our literature. In 1767 Goldsmith brought out a comedy called "The Good-natured Man." His beautiful poem, "The Deserted Village," appeared in 1770; and in 1773 his other comedy, entitled "She Stoops to Conquer," was acted with great success. With the exception of the short poem entitled "Retaliation," published in 1774, the other works of Goldsmith are of inferior merit, and were produced hastily for the sake of money.

Goldsmith was a heedless, extravagant, and somewhat vain man; but his heart was full of tenderness, and his intimate friends loved him better than they did wiser men. The simple but inimitable charms of his style as a writer have given him one of the most enduring names in the history of our literature. In the last years of his life his literary labours brought him a very considerable income; nevertheless, he was swallowed up in embarrassments with regard to money. A fever carried him off on April 4th, 1774, and he rests in the burying-ground of the Temple Church, London.

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