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THE GOOD-NATURED MAN

AND

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

BY

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

THOMAS H. DICKINSON
Editor, Chief Contemporary Dramatists

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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press Cambridge

A

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
GAMALIEL BRADFORD W
MAY 24, 1942

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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 February 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

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