Goldsmith and the British Magazine

More than twenty items in the British Magazine have been posthumously attributed to Goldsmith. A stylometric study of these doubtful pieces, based on samples from his authentic journalism, suggests that only four essays appear to deserve a place in the canon. We use a variety of statistical techniques - first, to identify, from a whole battery of tests, those tests which are sufficiently discriminatory as between Goldsmith and non-Goldsmith, and, secondly, to classify the doubtful texts across the range from 'very probably' Goldsmith's to 'very unlikely'to be his. Looking again at the Goldsmith essays, we were able to extract ten more large samples of material from them than were examined in our previous study. These extra samples enable a more unified treatment