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The works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. by P. Cunningham
The works of Oliver Goldsmith ed by P Cunningham Author:Oliver Goldsmith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society, inscriled to the Rev. Mr. Henry Goldsmith by Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.," was first published in December, 1764, price 1.... more » (/., and was the earliest production to which Goldsmith prefixed his name. It went through nine editions in Goldsmith's lifetime, and is here reprinted from the ninth edition, 4 to, 1774, compared with the first edition 4fr, 1705, and with the u sixth edition, corrected," 4to, 1770. This poem is founded on Addison's " Letter from Italy to the Right Honourable Charles Lord Halifax," of which Goldsmith himself says : "Few poems have done mure honour to English genius than this. There is in it a strain of political thinking, that was, at that time [1701], new in our poetry. Had the harmony of this been equal to that of Pope's versification, it would be inconU-stably the finest poem in our language ; but there is a dryness in the numbers which greatly lessens the pleasure excited both by the poet's judgment and imagination." ' All that Goldsmith would appear to have received for this poem was twenty guineas.—Nacbcry AffttSC, Prior, ii. 58. Beauties of English Poesy, 177, voL I p. 111. THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.' Dear Sir, I am sensible that the friendship betwcen us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication ; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man, who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year. I now percei...« less