PREFACE.

printed in the Percy Memoir (27-32); and the same
silence is preserved (138) in regard to a letter printed,
though with less satisfactory completeness, at pp. 22-26 of
the same most authentic narrative. Let me add, that though
Dr. Percy omits some valuable points in this letter, Mr.
Prior is not entitled to say that all copies of iu hitherto
printed have been taken from "imperfect transcripts,"
saving only that which " has been submitted to the present
" writer/" &c., &c. In the 25th volume of the ^European
Magazine (332-333) there is a copy, postscript and all,
word for word the same as Mr. Prior's, except that the
close is more characteristic than his, of the writer's spirit
in those boyish days.

At p. 169-170 there is much parade about certain dis-
coveries in connexion with Dr. Ellis, and we are told that
" from accounts given by this gentleman in conversation in
" various societies in Dublin, it appears that, &c; " but
what appears is literally no more than had been told far
more characteristically at p. 33-34 of the Percy Memoir> to
which no allusion is made, either here or a few pages on
(174), when one of the prettiest of all the stories of
Goldsmith's improvidence is given on Dr. Ellis Y authority,
without a hint of the book (Percy Memoir, 33-34) in which
it first appeared.

At p. 176, the same sort of parade is made about a lost
letter of Goldsmith's descriptive of his travels " communi-
t( cated to the writer by &c. &c. &c. to whose father &c. &c."
—the fact of the letter, as well as of the accident that
destroyed it, having been published nearly half a century
before by Dr. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of
Ireland (286-289), and referred to not only at p. 37 of thetters is printed without the slightest hint that it had been. that I have corrected