The Project Gutenberg EBook of Goldsmith, by William Black

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Title: Goldsmith
English Men of Letters Series

Author: William Black

Editor: John Morley

Release Date: July 27, 2006 [EBook #18917]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLDSMITH ***

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

English Men of Letters

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY

GOLDSMITH

BY

WILLIAM BLACK

London

MACMILLAN AND CO

1878

* * * * *

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE

CHAPTER III.

IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY STRUGGLES.--HACK-WRITING

CHAPTER V.

BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.--THE BEE

CHAPTER VI.

PERSONAL TRAITS

CHAPTER VII.

THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.--BEAU NASH

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ARREST

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRAVELLER

CHAPTER X.

MISCELLANEOUS WRITING

CHAPTER XI.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD

CHAPTER XII.

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN

CHAPTER XIII.

GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE

CHAPTER XV.

OCCASIONAL WRITINGS

CHAPTER XVI.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

CHAPTER XVII.

INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.--THE END

* * * * *

GOLDSMITH

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

"Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom."
So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned the
world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a
conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly
avoids the darker problems of existence--if the mystery of the tragic
and apparently unmerited and unrequited suffering in the world is
rarely touched upon--we can pardon the omission for the sake of the
gentle optimism that would rather look on