Goldsmith, OLIVER, was born at Pallas, in Longford, Ireland, on the 10th November 1728, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a clergyman of the established church, being at that time curate to the rector of Kilkenny West. When six years old Goldsmith was placed under Thomas Byrne, the schoolmaster described in the Deserted Village. After an attack of smallpox, he went successively to various local schools, ultimately entering Trinity College, Dublin, as a 'sizar,' or poor scholar, on the 11th June 1744. As yet he had shown no exceptional ability, nor did he show any at the university. His tutor was rough and unsympathetic; he himself was pleasure-loving and poor. His father died, and his circumstances grew worse. In 1747 he was involved in a college riot, and, escaping from the consequences of this only to fall into further disgraces, finally ran away from his Alma Mater. Matters being patched up by his elder brother, he returned, taking his B.A. degree, 27th February 1749. His uncle, the Rev. Mr Contarine, now his chief friend, wished him to qualify for orders, but he was rejected by the bishop of Elphin. Thereupon he made a false start for America. Getting no farther than Cork, he was next equipped with £50 to study law in London. This disappeared at a Dublin gaming-table. In 1752 he started for Scotland to study physic. Reaching Edinburgh, he stayed there nearly two years, leaving, however, behind him more legends of his social gifts than his professional acquirements. From Edinburgh he drifted to Leyden, again lost at play what little money he had, and finally set out to make the 'grand tour' on foot. After wandering through Flanders, France, Germany, and Italy, and obtaining, either at Louvain or Padua, a dubious degree as M.B., he returned to England in February 1756, with a few halfpence in his pockets. It is thought he tried strolling; it is certain that he was assistant to an apothecary. Then, with the aid of an Edinburgh friend, he practised as a poor physician in Southwark—a profession which he speedily quitted for that of proof-reader to Richardson, in turn abandoning this to be usher in Dr Milner's 'classical academy' at Peckham. At Dr Milner's he became acquainted with Griffiths, the proprietor of the Monthly Review, who engaged him as author-of-all-work. His bondage to Griffiths lasted only a few months. His next mode of subsistence is obscure, but in February 1758 appeared his first definite work, a translation in two volumes of the Memoirs of Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a 'Protestant condemned to the galleys of France for his religion.' For this he used the name of a schoolfellow, James Willington, but the book is known to have been his own. After its appearance he went back to Peckham, to wait for an appointment on a foreign station, which Dr Milner had promised to obtain for him. To procure the funds for his outfit he set about an Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. From some unexplained cause, however, his nomination, when received, fell through, and in December we find him endeavouring to pass at Surgeons' Hall for the humbler post of hospital mate, but without success. What was worse, the clothes he went up in had been obtained on the security of his old employer Griffiths; to pay his landlady he pawned them, and the angry bookseller threatened him with a debtor's prison.
Shortly afterwards, in April 1759, the Enquiry was published. It attracted some notice, and better days at length dawned on Goldsmith. He started the periodical called The Bee (1759), and contributed to The Busy Body and The Lady's Magazine. Then came to his miserable lodging in Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, overtures from Smollett, and John Newbery, the bookseller. For the British Magazine of the former he wrote some of his best essays; for the Public Ledger of the latter the celebrated Chinese Letters (afterwards published as The Citizen of the World), which appeared in 1760-61. In May of the latter year he moved to 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, where, on the 31st of the same month, he was visited by Johnson. In 1762, among other things, he published a Life of Richard Nash, the Bath master of the ceremonies; and he sold to Benjamin Collins, a Salisbury printer, a third share in the yet-unpublished Vicar of Wakefield. In 1764 the 'Club,' known many years afterwards as the 'Literary Club,' was founded; and he was one of its nine original members. His next work was an anonymous History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son. This was followed in December 1764 by The Traveller, a poem which at once raised him to a foremost place among the minstrels of the day. Two years later, in March 1766, appeared The Vicar of Wakefield, by which his reputation as a novelist was secured. The stage alone remained untried, and this, after two more years of preface writing and journey-work, he attempted with The Good Natur'd Man, a comedy, produced at Covent Garden in January 1768. It was a moderate success. But he again escaped from enforced compilation (Histories of Rome and England, History of Animated Nature) with his best poetical effort, The Deserted Village (1770); and three years afterwards achieved the highest dramatic honours by She Stoops to Conquer, still one of the most popular of English acting comedies. A year later (April 4, 1774) he died in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, of a fever, aggravated by the obstinacy with which he had relied upon the popular remedy known as 'James's powder.' He was buried on the 9th, in the burial-ground of the Temple Church, in the triforium of which is a tablet to his memory. The club erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. In the year of his death was published the unfinished series of rhymed sketches of his friends, called Retaliation, and in 1776 the jeu d'esprit, entitled The Haunch of Venison; an Epistle to Lord Clare.
Poor in his youth, Goldsmith was not prudent in his more prosperous middle age. He died £2000 in debt, and there is reason for supposing that his difficulties embittered his latter days. When his doctor asked him on his deathbed if his mind was at ease, he replied that it was not. As a man, Goldsmith had some constitutional disadvantages and many obvious faults, mostly of a harmless kind. But he was thoroughly warm-hearted and generous, and full of unfeigned love and pity for humanity. As a writer, in addition to the most fortunate mingling of humour and tenderness, he possessed that native charm of style which neither learning nor labour can acquire. In the felicitous phrase which Johnson borrowed from Fénelon for his epitaph, he touched nothing which he did not adorn. Prior first collected the material for his biography in 1837; in 1848 Forster prepared from this (not without expostulation on Prior's part) his well-known life. Washington Irving's genial sketch of 1849 was based upon Forster. Later memoirs are that by W. Black in the 'Men of Letters' series (1879), and by the present writer in the 'Great Writers' (1888). The last contains a bibliography; and a special bibliography of The Vicar of Wakefield is prefixed to the fac-simile edition of that book issued in 1885. The most modern edition of Goldsmith's complete works is that by Gibbs (5 vols. 1884-86).