Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

branches, are too well known to require any thing to be said on the present occasion; he has particularly patronized Mr. Martin, a very ingenious young Artist, who has resided with him seven years, and who is at this time forming a Foundry, by which he will shortly be enabled to offer to the world a Specimen of Types, that will in a very eminent degree unite utility, elegance, and beauty.

The ornaments are all engraved on blocks of wood, by two of my earliest acquaintances, Messrs. Bewicks, of Newcastle upon Tyne and London, after designs made from the most interesting passages of the Poems they embellish. They have been executed with great without being care, and I may venture to say, supposed to be influenced by ancient friend

ship, that they form the most extraordinary

effort of the art of engraving upon wood, that ever was produced in any age, or any country. Indeed it seems almost impossible that such delicate effects could be obtained from blocks of wood.

Of the Paper it is only necessary to say, that it comes from the manufactory of Mr.Whatman.

W. B.

THE

LIFE

OF

O. GOLDSMITH,

M. B.

LIFE OF DOCTOR GOLDSMITH.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was the third son of the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a divine of great respectability, though but in narrow circumstances. He was born at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, in the kingdom of Ireland, in the year 17 29, and was instructed in the classicks, at the school of Mr. Hughes. On the 11th of June, 1744, he was admitted a Sizer of Trinity College, Dublin, under the tuition of Dr. Radcliffe, where he was contemporary with Mr. Edmund Burke. At college he exhibited no specimens of that genius which distinguished him in his maturer years. According to his own whimsical account of himself," though he made no great figure in mathematicks, which was a study much in repute there, he could turn an ode of Horace into English better than any of them." On the 27th of February, 1749, O. S. (two years after the regular time,) he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts. At this period of his life he turned his thoughts to the profession of physick; and after attending some courses of anatomy in Dublin, he proceeded to Edinburgh, in the year 1751, where he pursued the study of the several branches of medicine, under the different professors in that university. At this period of his life, the same want of thought and circumspection, and the same heedless beneficence operated, that in his latter years continued to involve him in difficulties. He, imprudently engaging to pay a considerable sum of money for a fellow student, who failed to exonerate him from the demand, found himself under the necessity of hastily quitting Scotland, to avoid the horrours of a jail.

Sunderland was the place in which he took refuge, and there he arrived in the beginning of the year 1754. His sudden flight had left him no means of providing for his present wants, and he was driven to the greatest

« VorigeDoorgaan »