APPENDIX.
Biographical particulars as to the members of Oliver Goldsmith’s family, partly from unpublished sources.
Oliver Goldsmith died on 4 April, 1774. Although there was some talk of a biography of him being undertaken by Johnson, it appears to have become a common understanding, soon after the death, amongst the members of The Club and their associates that the work of collecting and preparing the materials for the biography would be done by Thomas Percy. At that time Percy had achieved a certain reputation in literary circles, but was by no means the important person in the ecclesiastical sense that he afterwards became. He was then mainly resident in London as Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland and as one of the Chaplains of the King. It was not until 1778 that he was made Dean of Carlisle, from which position he was promoted in 1782 to the Bishopric of Dromore in Ireland.
Percy had already written out in his own hand a Memorandum dictated to him by Goldsmith himself “one rainy day at Northumberland House” (28 April, 1773) giving dates and many interesting particulars relating to his life, and this Memorandum is still in existence. Too much importance must not be attached to it. Percy no doubt regarded it as a Memorandum only, which might prove useful under future conditions that had not then arisen, and how much of it is Goldsmith and how much Percy must for ever remain unknown. The Statement was communicated to Johnson; not used by him: returned by his executors to the wrong person (Malone), sent by him to Percy, and apparently not used textually by him for the purpose of his Memoir of his friend. In any case, there is not much in it about the members of Oliver’s family.
Sir James Prior was ignorant of the existence of this Memorandum, when preparing his Life of Goldsmith (Murray, 1837): but with his praiseworthy carefulness, he set about whilst he was in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century to dig up such particulars as he could discover about Oliver’s parentage; and what he says concerning “the Goldsmith Family” in his first Chapter is the fullest and most authoritative history of the poet’s forebears that was capable of being written within half a century of Goldsmith’s death and with the information at that time available.
It is not necessary for present purposes to go further back than Oliver’s grandfather, whose name was Robert Goldsmith of Ballyoughter (not John, as in Dr. Percy’s Statement). The following facts are known about this ancestor of the poet.