The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1812 Excerpt: ... 'THE life of a scholar,' our author observes in the account prefixed to the works of Parnell, 'seldom abounds with adventures. His fame is acquired in solitude. And the historian who only views him at a distance, must be content with a dry detail of actions by which he is scarcely distinguished from the rest of mankind.'--This is indeed true with respect to the generality of writers, whose lives, marked with few incidents, and those of an uninteresting nature, are passed in study, and too frequently in obscurity.--Very different indeed was the fate of Dr. Goldsmith the events of whose life were various and checquered, / and whose memoirs are replete with curious and en tertaining matter. Oliver Goldsmith was born on the twentyninth day of November, 1728, at a place called Pallas, in the parish of Forney and county of Longford in Ireland. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a native of the county of Roscommon, was a Clergyman of the established Church, and had been educated at Dublin College. Though he afterwards Vol. i. B obtained obtained the living of Kilkenny West in the county of Westmeath, yet before he had acquired any preferment, he married Anne, daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the Diocesan School of Elphin. Her mother's brother the Rev. Mr. Green at that time Rector of Kilkenny West, lent the young couple the house in which our poet was born; and at his death the Rev. Charles Goldsmith succeeded him in his benefice. It was a tradition in our poet's family, that they were descended from a Spanish gentleman named JuanRomeiro, who had sometime in the sixteenth century come into Ireland, with a Spanish nobleman; to whom with modern ideas they supposed him to have been tutor or guardian; and then settling in Ireland, from a marriage wit...