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Notes
Oliver Goldsmith Bibliographically and Biographically Considered (1928), p. 157. Scott's statement that "most of the editions which followed it [1765B] have the engraved title" is inaccurate. For the edition of 1766 the complete title-page plate engraved for 1765A was discarded, probably because to have used it as a whole would have necessitated not only the addition of "The SECOND EDITION, corrected" and of a Roman numeral to the date but also a change of the address of Griffin's shop from Fetter Lane to Catharine Street. The engraved picture above the imprint in the plate, however, was cut out and used alone as a vignette for the title-page of 1766; the rest of the 1766 title-page was printed from type. This correction of Scott is not intended to weaken his argument; 1765B, if it is the later edition, might be expected to have the engraved title, since the wording of the two 1765 title-pages is identical.
The later of the editions dated 1765 was almost certainly printed from the first edition, because there is no known edition that could have served as an intermediary; the only other recorded editions published during Goldsmith's lifetime are the edition of 1766, which contains corrections and additions that do not appear in the 1765 texts, and Dublin editions of 1767 and 1772.
The essays in which the variants listed below occur had originally appeared in the Public Ledger of 1760, but the 1765 text of these essays was derived from the revised version in The Citizen of the World (1762).
The 1765 text of Essay XVIII, in which the following variant occurs, was derived from the Public Ledger rather than from the revised version in The Citizen of the World.
I have listed only the substantive variants because the evidence from accidentals is less conclusive. (For an example from an earlier period of the treacherous nature of accidentals in determining priority see A. H. Carter, Studies in Philology, XLIV [1947], 497-503.) Here I give a summary of the variants in accidentals for four essays (Nos. III, XVI, XXI, XXVI) from four different periodicals, from which 1765A is again seen to be much closer to the periodical texts than is 1765B. In the presence or absence of a comma there is no significant difference between the two editions; 1765A agrees with the periodical texts seventeen times against 1765B, and 1765B agrees thirteen times against 1765A. In more important variations in punctuation—an exclamation mark for a period or semicolon, a question mark for a comma, and so on—1765A agrees with the earlier texts against 1765B in thirteen cases; 1765B agrees against 1765A in only two cases. In capitalization alone 1765B is closer to the periodical texts than is 1765A; it agrees with them in four cases against 1765A, whereas 1765A agrees in only two cases against 1765B. In all other differences —five in the use or absence of a hyphen and two in spelling—the agreement is uniformly on the side of 1765A. For all variants in accidentals in the four essays, then, 1765A agrees with the periodical texts thirty-nine times against 1765B; 1765B agrees with them nineteen times against 1765A.
In Lloyd's Evening Post the Essays was first advertised in the number for 3-5 June 1765, and a brief account of the work appeared in the same journal for 5-7 June. In the London Chronicle and St. James's Chronicle it was first advertised in the number for 11-13 June; in the Critical Review it was promptly noticed in the June number. 1765B, if the statement in the imprint that it was "Printed for W. Griffin, in Fetter-Lane" is to be believed, must have been published before the first of December 1765, for sometime between the middle of October and the end of November Griffin moved his shop from Fetter Lane to Catharine Street. In the advertisement of Daphne and Amintor in the London Chronicle for 12-15 October 1765 Griffin's address still appears as Fetter Lane, but in the advertisement of R. Boote's An Historical Treatise of an Action or Suit at Law in the same paper for 26-28 November—and in all later advertisements of Griffin's publications that I have seen—his address is given as Catharine Street. H. R. Plomer is in error in his statement that "In 1767 Griffin moved to Catherine Street in the Strand" (Dictionary, p. 111).
If 1765B is a piracy, it might appear that authority could be given to its readings on the hypothesis that it was printed—possibly later than 1765—from a lost revised edition subsequent to 1765A; but nothing would really be gained by such a hypothesis. This lost edition, if it were authoritative, would have to be prior to the edition of 1766, since as copy for 1765B it could not contain the revisions and additions of 1766; its distinctive readings, consequently, would seem not to be revisions by Goldsmith for the same reasons that those of 1765B appear to lack authority; and—unless its title-page were printed from the 1756A engraved plate or had the 1766 vignette—it would be suspected of being a piracy because it was not advertised in the newspapers or called the second edition. The hypothetical edition would thus have the same status as 1765B. I am greatly indebted to Professor Fredson Bowers for assistance in the preparation of this paper.
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