Goldsmith writes to Hodson to confirm the safe arrival of his son, William, in London. As Hodson, alongside Oliver's beloved brother Henry, had given him financial support in his earlier life, notably in Edinburgh, Goldsmith was pleased to reciprocate.

The letter is also noteworthy for the expression of Goldsmith's ambiguity towards the stage. Although it is clear from Boswell's records that theatre was of great interest not only to Goldsmith but to his circle more broadly, Goldsmith also ‘recounted all the disagreeable circumstances attending a dramatic author’. The difficulties attending getting The Good Natur’d Man performed and its modest success seem to be preying on his mind. On the other hand, dismissing the stage in this letter to a worried father would also have helped to assuage Daniel's fears. As to where William might have ‘contracted so beggarly an affection’, Goldsmith is surely being disingenuous, perhaps even writing with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

The date is conjectural. Following Balderston, we agree that it must fall approximately a year before Letter 36, and must allow sufficient time after Letter 29 to Maurice for a second exchange of letters between Maurice and Oliver, and for Maurice's visit.

The copy-text is the manuscript in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. It was first published in Austin Dobson's Life of Goldsmith (1888). It was addressed to ‘Danl: Hodson Esqr’.