The story of the incubation, preparation and final publication of the Edition of 1801 is long, complicated and tedious. It does not however particularly concern us here, except in so far as we are indebted to Bishop Percy for having collected practically all the original letters written by Goldsmith to members of his family, and for having in his disappointment after they were published, put them away with the other documents concerning the publication, in a bundle which has been practically unexplored ever since. Setting aside therefore any questions as to the merits or demerits of what has been consistently labelled by subsequent commentators as the “Percy Memoir,” we are left with the consideration of the point to which I had intended to address myself exclusively, the epistolary style of Oliver Goldsmith himself. Percy could not resist the temptation of editing his friend’s letters--not much, it is true, but still enough to induce us to turn to the originals, as we are now enabled to do through the kindness of their present possessor, Miss Constance Meade.
Now whilst Percy, as I have indicated, was an ardent and industrious letter writer, Oliver Goldsmith emphatically was not.
One of Percy’s most frequent correspondents, James Grainger, M.D. (1724-1766), who was, as already mentioned, the first to introduce Percy and Goldsmith to each other, wrote to the former on 24 March, 1764: “When I taxed little Goldsmith for not writing as he promised me, his answer was that he never wrote a letter in his life, and faith, I believe him, except to a bookseller for money.” (Nichols’ _Literary Illustrations_, Vol. VII, 286.) The letters written by Goldsmith to members of his family and Irish friends of his youth which were collected from various quarters at the instance of Percy after the poet’s death show him to have had a great power of expressing his feelings in simple and moving language, all the more interesting as the writer could not possibly have imagined that they would ever be seen in the cold light of print. Such letters divide themselves naturally into three categories, viz.: those written (1) whilst he was a student in Scotland and abroad; (2) after he had returned to England and was a struggling hack-writer; (3) when he had achieved success in the literary world. It will be convenient to consider these three series of letters separately.