THE GOOD-NATURED MAN SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND THOMAS H. DICKINSON INTRODUCTION Goldsmith's Life. Oliver Goldsmith was born into a home of genteel poverty at Pallasmore, in County Longford, Ireland, November 10, 1728. His father, the Reverend Charles Goldsmith, held livings successively at Pallasmore and at Lissoy in Westmeath, and it was in the schools of the surrounding hamlets that Oliver Goldsmith received his first instruction. He passed from the lax tuition of his masters to Trinity College, Dublin, and took his Bachelor of Arts degree Fébruary 27, 1749, without having distinguished himself in any way except as an independent and rather irregular student. The Reverend Charles Goldsmith died during his son's college days. In 1753 Oliver Goldsmith left the home of his widowed mother for the last time, to seek his fortune in the world. Thenceforward we have legends of him in prison at Newcastle, studying medicine at Louvain, playing the flute in Switzerland and in Italy, and conversing with Voltaire and Diderot in Paris. His talents matured slowly; at twenty-three he was projecting a new life in the new world; at twenty-eight he was under-master in the school of Dr. Milner at Peckham; at twenty-nine he was at last definitely enlisted in the struggle for bread in the garrets of eighteenth century Grub Street. Even here his advance was slow, but against the odds of poverty, su |