00000015.htm

PEEFACJB.

described as from the communication of a reverend gentle-
man,, who had already communicated it to all the world, at
'a public meeting fifteen years before (Gent. Mag, xc. 620).

At p. 76Ycoupled with, a previous intimation at p. 63,
.the reader is left to infer that Dr. Wilson's account of the
college riot in which Goldsmith took part is laid before
him from unpublished letters, whereas all the facts, on the
special authority of Dr. Wilson, are stated in the Percy
Memoir (16-17), to which no allusion is made; and iii like
manner the characteristic expression in that memoir, that
"on.0 of his contemporaries describes him as perpetually
^(t lounging about the college gate'³ (15), is appropriated as a
piece of original information at p. 92, and assigned to
Dr. Wolfen.

At p. 98 much is made of the loss of the formal registry
proving Goldsmith to have taken his bachelor's degree (all
which is in the Percy Memoir, 17, though Mr. Prior dpes
not tell his readers so), and a self-glorifying announcement
is made of the satisfactory settlement of that interesting
question, even in the absence of so important a piece of
'proof,' by the fact that "his name was first found byfhepre-
? sent writer in the list of such as had right of access to
" the college library, to which by the rules graduates oiily
" are admissible/³ Yet Mr. Prior had before him Mr. Shaw
Mason's Statistical Account or Survey, published nearly
.twenty years before, where, for satisfactory evidence th.at
'Goldsmith had taken his bachelor's degree, Mr, Mason
expressly describes . his name as " in the roll of those
•" qualified for admission to the college library " (iii. 358).

At pp. 159-164, one of the best of all Goldsmith/s
letters is printed without the slightest hint that it had been.



	PEEFACJB. described as from the communication of a reverend gentle- man,, who had already communicated it to all the world, at 'a public meeting fifteen years before (Gent. Mag, xc. 620). At p. 76Ycoupled with, a previous intimation at p. 63, .the reader is left to infer that Dr. Wilson's account of the college riot in which Goldsmith took part is laid before him from unpublished letters, whereas all the facts, on the special authority of Dr. Wilson, are stated in the Percy Memoir (16-17), to which no allusion is made; and iii like manner the characteristic expression in that memoir, that "on.0 of his contemporaries describes him as perpetually ^(t lounging about the college gate'³ (15), is appropriated as a piece of original information at p. 92, and assigned to Dr. Wolfen. At p. 98 much is made of the loss of the formal registry proving Goldsmith to have taken his bachelor's degree (all which is in the Percy Memoir, 17, though Mr. Prior dpes not tell his readers so), and a self-glorifying announcement is made of the satisfactory settlement of that interesting question, even in the absence of so important a piece of 'proof,' by the fact that "his name was first found byfhepre- ? sent writer in the list of such as had right of access to " the college library, to which by the rules graduates oiily " are admissible/³ Yet Mr. Prior had before him Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account or Survey, published nearly .twenty years before, where, for satisfactory evidence th.at 'Goldsmith had taken his bachelor's degree, Mr, Mason expressly describes . his name as " in the roll of those •" qualified for admission to the college library " (iii. 358). At pp. 159-164, one of the best of all Goldsmith/s letters is printed without the slightest hint that it had been.