Daniel Hodson, the son of ‘a gentleman of good property’ from St John's in Roscommon, near Athlone, was Goldsmith's brother-in-law. He eloped with Catherine Goldsmith in 1744, and in so doing occasioned a withdrawal of financial support for Goldsmith's studies at Trinity College Dublin. Hodson was at the time of the elopement a young student of Goldsmith's brother Henry, then curate and teacher at Pallas. Both families were initially aggrieved at the elopement, but would eventually make a settlement. Charles Goldsmith legally engaged himself on 7 September 1744 to pay Hodson ￡400 in dowry. The Hodsons would earn ￡40 a year in income from the Lissoy farmland, and ￡12 in tithes until the Goldsmiths could pay the ￡400. As a result of this diversion of funds, Goldsmith was admitted to Trinity as a sizar rather than as a pensioner. This letter appears to be the first that Goldsmith sent home to Ireland following his entry to the medical school at the University of Edinburgh in October 1752. It also indicates that, while studying at Edinburgh, Goldsmith's uncle Thomas Contarine would furnish him with ￡10 a year. The Hodsons and Henry Goldsmith would supply him with ￡15 between them.

The copy-text is the manuscript in the Huntington Library, California. It was first published by Balderston in 1928. The manuscript is in very bad condition, substantially torn and obscured (see Figure 2). Missing passages were conjecturally added by Balderston, based on the amount of space obscured and the context. We include her suggested insertions.