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.
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