Oliver Goldsmith Born

Some credit November 10^th, others, like Sir Walter Scott, the 29^th, as the day on which Oliver Goldsmith was born.  The year is just as uncertain.  Goldsmith himself said the date was November 29^th, in either 1731, or 1730.  Scott took the month and day as per Goldsmith, but published a year of 1728 in his brief biography of Goldsmith, which is part of his Miscellaneous Prose Works.

Historian John Plumb, in his biography, sums Goldsmith up fairly succinctly (with birth date of November 10, 1728): ‘Dr. Oliver Goldsmith was a very great man. This his contemporaries agreed on, yet none of them knew quite why. He baffled Dr. Johnson with his absurdities; Horace Walpole dismissed him as "an inspired idiot"; David Garrick immortalized him in the biting lines:

Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,

Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.

And even Sir Joshua Reynolds, who saw further and deeper into Goldsmith's character than anyone else, realised that no man could get such a reputation for absurdity without there being reason for it..’.

Scott begins his biography of Nolly at the beginning:  ‘Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 29th November 1728, at Pallas, (or rather Palice,) in the parish of Farney, and county of Longford, in Ireland, where his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a minister of the Church of England, at that time resided. This worthy clergyman, whose virtues his celebrated son afterwards. rendered immortal, in the character of the Village Preacher, had a family of seven children, for whom he was enabled to provide but very indifferently. He obtained ultimately a benefice in the county of Roscommon, but died early; for the careful researches of the Rev. John Graham of Lifford have found his widow "nigra veste senescens," residing with her son Oliver in Ballymahon, so early as 1740. Among the shop accounts of a petty grocer of the place, Mrs. Goldsmith's name occurs frequently as a customer for trifling articles; on which occasions Master Noll appears. to have been his mother's usual emissary. He was recollected, however, in the neighbourhood, by more poetical employments, as that of playing on the flute, and, wandering in solitude on the shores, or among the islands of the river Inny, which is remarkably beautiful at Ballymahon.

Oliver early distinguished himself by the display of lively talents, as well as by that uncertainty of humour which is so often attached to genius, as the slave in the chariot of the Roman triumph…’

Oliver Goldsmith

'Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now have as an authour, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right.'

- Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell in his "Life of Johnson"

The author of "The Traveler", and "The Vicar of Wakefield" died on April 4, 1774.  Walter Scott wrote a short biography of Goldsmith, contained in his "Miscellaneous Prose Works."  Goldsmith was known for his foibles as well as his talents, and Scott recognizes the influence of Samuel Johnson on Goldsmith's work:

"..Still, however, though subsisting thus precariously, he was getting forward in society; and had already, in the year 1761, made his way as far as Dr. Johnson, who seems, from their first acquaintance, till death separated them, to have entertained for Goldsmith the most sincere friendship, regarding his genius with respect, his failings with indulgence, and his person with-affection.


It was probably soon after this first acquaintance, that Necessity, the parent of so many works of genius, gave birth to the Vicar of Wakefield. The circumstances attending the sale of the work to the fortunate publisher, are too singular to be told in any other words than those of Johnson, as reported by his faithful chronicler, Boswell.


" I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress; and as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated.- He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."..."

Laurence Sterne

" Any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing," said Johnson, "will be very generally invited in London. The man Sterme, I am told, has had engagements for three months." Johnson's feelings of morality, and respect for the priesthood, led him to speak of Sterne with contempt; but when Goldsmith added, " And a very dull fellow," he replied with his emphatic, " Why, no, sir."

Walter Scott included this snippet of conversation between Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith to portray the Anglican clergyman and novelist Laurence Sterne as his contemporaries saw him.  The text is part of Scott's article on Laurence Sterne in his "The Lives of the Novelists".  The dialogue above captures something of the moral discomfort people felt at the time, about the novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman"; especially as this work came from the pen of a clergyman.  Scott comments in his lives that:

"...Tristram Shandy is no narrative, but a collection of scenes, dialogues, and portraits, humorous or affecting, intermixed with much wit, and with much learning, original or borrowed. It resembles the irregularities of a Gothic room, built by some fanciful collector, to contain the miscellaneous remnants of antiquity which his pains have accumulated, and bearing as little proportion in its parts, as there is connexion between the pieces of rusty armor with which it is decorated..."

Tristam Shandy was much better appreciated after Sterne's death, up to the current time.  As was the author, Laurence Sterne, who died on March 18, 1768.