From the character of the man, we turn to the character of the author—from the life to the works of Goldsmith. What we said of the well-known events of his career would apply equally to his writings; it would be a tedious and superfluous office to pass in formal review performances so familiar, and which appear to be as justly appreciated as they are widely circulated. All that we propose doing, is to add a few miscellaneous observations, hints, and fragments of criticism, which may be interesting to those who like to examine also, as well as to admire. For these we could find no space in our previous Number: we throw them together here in the best order their miscellaneous nature permits. In the _Citizen of the World_, Goldsmith tells us of a man who earned his livelihood by making wonders—curiosities of nature or of art—and exhibiting them to the world. “His first essay in this way was to exhibit himself as a wax-work figure, behind a glass door at a puppet-show. Thus, keeping the spectators at a proper distance, and having his head adorned with a copper crown, he looked extremely natural, and very like the life itself.” This would be no bad illustration of what his critics have often pointed out as Goldsmith’s own proceeding, in the manufacture of his literary wonders and curiosities. When he wanted a fictitious character for his novel, or his play, he sate himself down behind the glass door, with some copper crown, or other slight disguise upon his head, and all the world confessed that it “looked extremely natural, and very like the life itself!” His Good-natured Man, in the comedy of that name; Young Marlow in _She Stoops to Conquer_, the Philosopher Vagabond, the Man in Black, and others that could be named, are all Goldsmith sitting behind the glass door. There is a strong personal resemblance in all his characters; they are portraits of himself, drawn with the features widened into broad humour, or elongated into saturnine wisdom. His Beau Tibbs seems to have been created by looking at, and magnifying, some of his own foibles; his Dr Primrose, by drawing forth those grave and kindly feelings, which, notwithstanding those foibles, lay, he knew, at the bottom of his heart.