Preface
CHAPTER ONE — I. Birth and Parentage—Characteristics of the Goldsmith Race—Poetical Birthplace—Goblin House—Scenes of Boyhood—Lissoy—Picture of a Country Parson—Goldsmith’s Schoolmistress—Byrne, the Village Schoolmaster— Goldsmith’s Hornpipe and Epigram—Uncle Contarine—School Studies and School Sports—Mistakes of a Night
CHAPTER TWO — II. Improvident Marriages in the Goldsmith Family—Goldsmith at the University—Situation of a Sizer—Tyranny of Wilder, the Tutor—Pecuniary Straits—Street Ballads—College Riot—Gallows Walsh—College Prize—A Dance Interrupted
CHAPTER THREE — III. Goldsmith rejected by the Bishop—Second Sally to see the World—Takes Passage for America—Ship sails without him—Return on Fiddleback—A Hospitable Friend—The Counselor
CHAPTER FOUR — IV. Sallies forth as a Law Student—Stumbles at the Outset—Cousin Jane and the Valentine—A Family Oracle—Sallies forth as a Student of Medicine—Hocus-pocus of a Boarding-house—Transformations of a Leg of Mutton—The Mock Ghost—Sketches of Scotland—Trials of Toryism—A Poet’s Purse for a Continental Tour
CHAPTER FIVE — V. The agreeable Fellow-passengers—Risks from Friends picked up by the Wayside—Sketches of Holland and the Dutch—Shifts while a Poor Student at Leyden—The Tulip Speculation—The Provident Flute—Sojourn at Paris— Sketch of Voltaire—Traveling Shifts of a Philosophic Vagabond
CHAPTER SIX — VI. Landing In England—Shifts of a Man without Money—The Pestle and Mortar—Theatricals in a Barn—Launch upon London—A City Night Scene—Struggles with Penury—Miseries of a Tutor—A Doctor in the Suburb—Poor Practice and Second-hand Finery—A Tragedy in Embryo—Project of the Written Mountains
CHAPTER SEVEN — VII. Life as a Pedagogue—Kindness to Schoolboys—Pertness In Return—Expensive Charities—The Griffiths and the “Monthly Review”—Toils of a Literary Hack—Rupture with the Griffiths