Oliver Goldsmith, famous Irish poet, dramatist, novelist, historian, and writer on natural history, was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, and died in 1774. He was a "sizar" or poor scholar in Trinity College, Dublin, from 1744 to 1749, and a medical student in Edinburgh in 1752. Afterwards he strolled through Europe, supporting himself mainly by flute playing. He returned to England in 1756, and was successively an actor, hack writer, chemist's assistant, and a writer on Griffith's Monthly Review in London. The "Vicar of Wakefield" is, perhaps, his best known work.

Waverley Library (quarto). No. 118