Edue T&34.510,140 Harvard University Dept. of Education Library MAY 10 1911 TRANSFERCED TO JUN 13 1921 Copyright, 1895, 1906, and 1911, by VICAR OF WAKEFIELD W. P. 1 INTRODUCTION. LIVER GOLDSMITH was born of English stock, in Pallas, OLIV County Longford, Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, was, at the time of Oliver's birth, "passing rich on forty pounds a year" in the poor village which formed his parish. Two years afterwards, however, he succeeded to a more lucrative living in the county of West Meath. He was distinguished rather for kindliness and tender generosity towards others than for the prudence that looks out for self. "Neither his practice nor his precepts were those which make rich men," wrote Oliver later of another, doubtless with his father in mind; for he showed his children "the art of giving away thousands before they were taught the more necessary qualification of getting a farthing.” Oliver's mother, Ann Jones, was also of a clerical family, which had migrated to Ireland. The son who was to bring the family fame was fifth of a family of eight children. "Never was so dull a boy," said Elizabeth Delap, a relative who taught the child his letters. From Paddy Byrne's school, to which he went when he was six years old, his report is little different, a stupid, heavy blockhead." But here was one good fortune Byrne was a character. He had been a soldier, and he liked to alk of his wanderings. Besides this he had a host of Irish 5 tales of banshees and fairies and ghosts and old chiefs; and also a love for versifying. Perhaps by this very instructor Goldsmith's imagination was awakened, and from him he caught his love of poesy as well as of wandering adventure. At any rate, from this time Oliver had the grace of rhyme, and such love of English poetry that he even attempted verses of his own, which helped his mother to hope for her boy against the hostile verdict of others. Then there was the music of a blind harper—for Irish minstrels were not yet wholly passed away—to awaken his love of music, and singing Peggy Golden, his father's dairymaid. "If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out mazes of melody," he wrote, years after, when struggling for recognition in London, “I sit and sigh for Lissoy's fireside, and 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night' from Peggy Golden.” From Byrne's care Oliver passed to other schools,—to Elphinstone, to Athlone, and to that at Edgeworthstown. In each he left nearly the same character,-active and athletic in all exercises among his playmates, but heavy, dull, and obtuse. It seems that the Edgeworthstown master alone was able to penetrate the overlying stupidity, and see the delicate, painfully sensitive nature hiding itself beneath an outward stolidity. So early was Oliver aware of what he termed, years after, "an exquisite sensibility of contempt." About his fifteenth year, when journeying either to or from school, he had an adventure which, towards the end of his life, served him well in his comedy "She Stoops to Conquer." Proud of the possession of a golden guinea, and feeling the exultation produced by a long ride and unwonted liberty, he hailed a man of the place through which he was passing, and asked the way to the "best house." The stranger chanced to be a wag, and he directed the boy to the house of the squire. Thither Oliver hastened. On the strength of the solitary guinea he put up his horse and ordered supper. Moreover, he invited the landlord and his wife and daughter to join him in the supper room. The squire, who knew Oliver's father, caught the spirit of the joke, and evidently enjoyed the youthful swagger, for it was not till the next morning, when the lad called for his reckoning, that he found he had been entertained at a private house. His boldness disappeared in embarrassment, and confidence gave way to diffidence. How Perhaps it was well that he could keep his guinea whole, for he was shortly to become a sizar in Trinity College, Dublin. A sizar was a student who wore a stuff gown and red cap, and did the work of a menial in return for instruction and board. the spirit of the sensitive youth must have recoiled at the thought of such humiliation! But his Uncle Contarine had been a sizar, and was he the worse for it? His uncle's judgment and good will were of value. Again and again he interfered in Oliver's checkered youth, not unlike the godmother who intervenes in behalf of ill-fated favorites in sweet old fairy tales. Uncle Contarine said Oliver should go. In a list of June, 1745, from Trinity College, his name is the last of six sizars. Among those then in college was Edmund Burke; but in after years, when they sat round the same club table in London, Burke could hardly recall Goldsmith's student figure. From his class room we have no echo of his real merit. He was probably too thriftless and miserable and dependent to excel. Poverty oppressed him, and also an able-bodied brute named Wilder, who served as tutor, and on one occasion, if not oftener, collared and thrashed his pupil. He found relief from such companionship in the joy of writing ballads and selling them to a certain bookshop for five shillings apiece; and in stealing from his garret by night, to listen, on the skirts of the crowd, to his own verses from the lips of the wandering street singer. These ballads are unfortunately lost; but one writing of that day still remains. Goldsmith scrawled his signature once on a pane of his garret. At the dismantling of the house, sixty years ago, this treasure was removed to the manuscript collection of the college. He took his degree in 1747. His father had died during his college course. The foreshadowing of Goldsmith's career begins now to be more plainly seen. He was a happy-go-lucky creature, ever ready for an idle hour and game and song; morbidly sensitive concerning his ugly face and uncouth figure; working by fits and starts— no turnspit dog ever gets up to his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write;" tender towards every living thing, and most of all towards the miserable of men; spending before he had earned, and giving money to chance beggars when owing his landlady and tailor. For two years after he left college he led a vagabond life among his relatives. He tried for the ministry, but the bishop refused to ordain him, one reason given being that Oliver appeared before his Grace in flaming red breeches. He became a tutor. He started for America; but the ship sailed while he was making merry, and he returned to his poor mother, having invested all that was left of his patrimony in a bony roadster, which he had dubbed Fiddleback. And now, my dear mother," he cried, "after having struggled so hard to come back to you, I wonder you are not more rejoiced to see me !" The good woman was in despair. But the fairy godmother, |