| Summary: | Twenty-eight items in the British Magazine have been attributed to Goldsmith, the majority in Essays and Criticisms by Dr. Goldsmith (1798). The strength of the external evidence depends on the authority of that collection; it is shakier than its editor claimed. Internal evidence comes from a Goldsmith ‘profile’ of stylistic features, established by reference to contemporary essayists, from measures of sentence-length, distinctive features of the attributed essays, and parallels of word and thought. We conclude that most of the attributed essays, including those proposed since 1798, are unlikely to be Goldsmith's.
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