How does the social criticism of Oliver Goldsmith compare to that of Jonathan Swift?

While Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift were both satirists, they targeted different aspects of society in their works.  Goldsmith, like Swift, mocks the society of his day, but his depiction of characters hinges on their representing types of people.  They do not appear to the reader to be individuals in their own right - a method other writers such as Moliere uses.  As such, much of Goldsmith's satirical focus is on society as a whole.  In addition, unlike much of Swift's satirical work, one of Goldsmith's primary motivations was to make people laugh, often making his ridicule more subtle and easier for the reader to swallow.  The gentle nature of Goldsmith's satire is puzzling, because it is often difficult to discern what is truly sentimental and what is truly satirical.

Jonathan Swift, on the other hand, does not run up against the same problem.  In his works, his readers become very aware of Swift's satirical targets.  In "A Modest Proposal"(1729) perhaps the most well-known of Swift's satires outside of Gulliver's Travels (1726), he targets not only the Irish who are lazy and apathetic toward their own lives but also the English who have put the Irish in such a situation.  The very subject matter of the pamphlet alerts the reader to the nature of the work.  Gulliver's Travels, like "A Modest Proposal," targets more specific aspects of society than much of Goldsmith's works.  In his novel, Swift takes the scientific community to task, as well as humanity as a whole.  As such, his satirical work tends to be much more pointed in drawing out its targets and more stinging in his indictment of them.