of his style and the easy flow of his
narrative, have given his books currency as manuals of instruction. And
although as a writer of fiction, or of truth gracefully veiled in the
garments of fiction, he stands unrivalled in his beautiful and touching
story of the incorruptible _Vicar_, yet this is his only complete story,
and presents but one side of his literary character. Considering him first
as a poet, we shall find that he is one of the Transition School, but that
he has a beautiful originality: his poems appeal not to the initiated
alone, but to human nature in all its conditions and guises; they are
elevated and harmonious enough for the most fastidious taste, and simple
and artless enough to please the rustic and the child. To say that he is
the most popular writer in the whole course of English Literature thus
far, is hardly to overstate his claims; and the principal reason is that,
with a blundering and improvident nature, a want of dignity, a lack of
coherence, he had a great heart, alive to human suffering; he was generous
to a fault, true to the right, and ever seeking, if constantly failing, to
direct and improve his own life, and these good characteristics are
everywhere manifest in his works. A brief recital of the principal events
in his career will throw light upon his works, and will do the best
justice to his peculiar character.

Oliver Goldsmith was born at the little village of Pallas, in Ireland,
where his father was a poor curate, on the 10th of November, 1728. There
were nine children, of whom he was the fifth. His father afterwards moved
to Lissoy, which the poet described, in his _Deserted Village_, as

Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain.

As his father was entirely unable to educate so numerous a family,
Goldsmith owed his education partly to his uncle, the Rev. Thomas
Contarini, and in part to his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, whom he
cherished with the sincerest affection. An attack of the small-pox while
he was a boy marked his face, and he was to most persons an
unprepossessing child. He was ill-treated at school by larger boys, and
afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar, by his
tutor. He was idle, careless, and improvident: he left college without
permission, but was taken back by his brother, and was finally graduated
with a bachelor's degree, in 1749. His later professional studies