A note
in Forster's 'Life', 1871, ii. 329-30, speaks of Goldsmith as a frequent
visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent's house in Great George Street,
Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host's daughter, Mary,
afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.
Scott and others regarded 'The Haunch of Venison' as autobiographical.
To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say. That it
represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an actual
present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to Reynolds,
is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is also clear
that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some of its
details from Boileau's third satire; and that, in certain of the lines,
he had in memory Swift's 'Grand Question Debated', the measure of which
he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth of the whole.
'His genius' (as Hazlitt says) 'was a mixture of originality and
imitation'; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably in his work.
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