CHRONOLOGY OF GOLDSMITH'S LIFE Published The Voyages of the Companions of Columbus Published The Alhambra Returned home. Purchased Sunnyside Published The Crayon Miscellany Published Astoria Published The Adventures of Captain Bonneville Was Minister to Spain Published Life of Goldsmith Published Mahomet and his Successors Published Wolfert's Roost. Published The Life of Washington Died. Returned to England Published Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe Published The Traveller Published The Vicar of Wakefield Completed The Good-natured Man Was made Professor of History in Royal Academy Published The Deserted Village. BOOKS FOR REFERENCE For the study of Irving's life the student must go, of course, to the authorized biography, Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by Pierre M. Irving, in three volumes, published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons. He will find a briefer, and perhaps, therefore, more serviceable, biography in the American Men of Letters Series, by Charles Dudley Warner. Thackeray has written briefly of him in his Round-about Papers, and Curtis in his Literary and Social Essays. Those who would go farther into the life of Goldsmith will consult Dobson's Life of Goldsmith, in the Great Writers Series; William Black's Goldsmith, in the English Men of Letters Series; Forster's Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith; and Prior's Life of Oliver Goldsmith. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is full of information concerning Goldsmith and his contemporaries. PREFACE In the course of a revised edition of my works I have come to a biographical sketch of Goldsmith, published several years since. It was written hastily, as introductory to a selection from his writings; and, though the facts contained in it were collected from various sources, I was chiefly indebted for them 5 to the voluminous work of Mr. James Prior, who had collected and collated the most minute particulars of the poet's history with unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity; but had rendered them, as I thought, in a form too cumbrous and overlaid with details and disquisitions, and matters uninteresting to the 10 general reader. When I was about of late to revise my biographical sketch, preparatory to republication, a volume was put into my hands, recently given to the public by Mr. John Forster, of the Inner Temple, who, likewise availing himself of the labors of the inde- 15 fatigable Prior, and of a few new lights since evolved, has produced a biography of the poet, executed with a spirit, a feeling, a grace, and an eloquence, that leave nothing to be desired. Indeed it would have been presumption in me to undertake the subject after it had been thus felicitously treated, did I not 20 stand committed by my previous sketch. That sketch now appeared too meagre and insufficient to satisfy public demand; yet it had to take its place in the revised series of my works unless something more satisfactory could be substituted. Under these circumstances I have again taken up the subject, and gone 25 into it with more fulness than formerly, omitting none of the facts which I considered illustrative of the life and character of the poet, and giving them in as graphic a style as I could command. Still the hurried manner in which I have had to do this amidst the pressure of other claims on my attention, and with 30 |