P&EFACE.

have been first set forth, by him, Ms title as its discovered
could as little be proved, as his right to any exclusive
property or ownership in it. I found myself obliged to
assert, that the most important particulars of Goldsmith's
life, except as to bibliography, where the books them-
selves furnished easy hints for the supply of every defect,
had been published long before by Cooke, Glover, Percy,
Davies, Hawkins, Boswell, and their contemporaries or
commentators ;. and that were each fact again expressly
assigned to its original authority, what Mr. Prior might
claim for his would be found ridiculously small compared
with the bulk of his volumes.

In support of that assertion I now place before the
public the present book. Not only are very numerous
corrections to every former publication on the subject here
made, and a great many new facts brought forward, but
each fact, whether new or old, .is given from its first
authority, and no quotation has been made at second
hand.

The gravest defect in my first edition is thus remedied.
I no longer, from a strained sense of the courtesy due to
a living writer, and an immediate predecessor on this
ground, confine my acknowledgments chiefly to him. The
reader is enabled to see exactly the extent of my obliga-
tions to Mr. Prior, and also, for the first time, the extent
of Ms obligations to books which he has largely copied,
and never remembered or cared to name. For, nothing
is so noteworthy in this stickler for a property in facts
originally derived, as the perpetual false assumption of an
original air, by quoting as from the communication of
individuals, information derived from printed sources. Hiso, an expression, a view of character, a con