to attend and to discharge other menial duties.* To educate, even on such terms, those who could not afford to pay, was not undeserving of praise; but, to the credit of the college, everything degrading in the position of a sizar has been dispensed with, and to-day it is looked on as an honourable evidence of superior scholarship. As a sizar, then, must Oliver enter. So distasteful was the proposition to him, that for a year, he refused to obey, and was only persuaded at last by one who had been himself a sizar-that "Uncle Contarine" who appears so often in his after life as his best friend; and so, on the 11th June, 1744† he was admitted a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin. It is deeply interesting to look over the names that occur in the records of the college as contemporary students with Goldsmith: Barnard, afterwards Bishop of Limerick; Marlay, who filled the See of Water

O Goldsmith March 11

FAC-SIMILE Of pane of glASS TAKEN FROM GOLDSMITH'S ROOM.

ford; Richard Malone; and the learned Dr. Michael Kearney, who became a senior Fellow of his college and Professor of History; and above all, the great Edmund Burke, who was destined in after years to be his friend and companion in the Literary Club. The poor boy knew none of these at the time. Another Edgworthstown pupil, John Beatty, obtained a sizarship at the same time, and the two were occupants of the same garrets in No. 35, the extreme southern chambers of a range of buildings that formed the eastern side of Parliament Square, which has long since been taken down. On one of the window panes Goldsmith cut his name, and the relic is still preserved in the college. A couple of relatives, too, there were; and these, with Beatty and

I can find no evidence of the sizars having ever worn red caps, as stated by Mr. Forster; and the universal belief of the authorities is against it.

+ Sir James Prior has fallen into an error (adopted by Mr. Forster) in assuming that the entry of June, 1744, in the college books, represents the year 1745. Though for some purposes the college year commenced in July, the date of the civil year was invariably followed in all entries in the books. At that period, and until 1752, the civil year commenced on the 25th March. The entry in the register, which I have carefully examined, is, therefore, correct both as to the year of Goldsmith's admission into college, 1744, and as to his age, "Annum agens, 15." He was not sixteen till the November following.

Mr. Forster erroneously states, in his "Life of Goldsmith" (in which he is followed by Macaulay), that the name may still be seen in the room, and quotes Prior as his authority. What was correct when Prior wrote in 1836, was not so when

48

Bob Bryanstone, afterwards, seem to have been his only friends. The college life of Goldsmith is not one on which we dwell with pleasure. His tutor, the Rev. Theaker Wilder, a man of some mathematical ability, was violent in temper, insolent, and overbearing in manners, and of a harsh, vicious, and brutal nature. Oliver detested mathematics, and so incurred the wrath of his tutor, which the indolence and thoughtlessness of the pupil gave too many occasions to gratify. He was subjected to taunts, ridicule, and insults almost daily, sometimes even to personal chastisement from one who, exercising over him the rights of a master over a servant, persecuted him with unremitting rancour. Still Oliver was not without some white days in his college career. More than once he received "the thanks of the house" for his attendance at morning lecture, and this, too, in midwinter, at seven o'clock. It is useless to speculate what the young man's progress might have been under kindlier treatment. Brutality first outraged and then discouraged a sensitive nature. He sought relief from his wretchedness sometimes in dissipation, often in reckless disrespect of discipline-he wasted his time, neglected his studies, and dissipated the scanty supplies which his father could afford him. But even those supplies were soon to cease. Early in 1747, that father was snatched from him. How truly the son loved and revered the parent is proved in that enduring and pious monument which, in after years, he reared to his memory. The image of that father seems ever present when he would portray humanity in its loveliest aspects. First sketching him, with all his pleasant foibles and large-heartedness, in the "Citizen of the World," then recurring to the subject for a fuller treatment and a more accurate delineation in the "Vicar of Wakefield," and at last lavishing all the riches and all the power of his love in the production of that portrait of the pastor in the "Deserted Village," so exquisite, so pathetic, so finished, and so lovely, that it seems to this hour unrivalled in its excellence. Scant as were the young man's resources before, they now become scantier. His widowed mother leaves the parsonage, and takes a lodging in Ballymahon, living "in low circumstances and indifferent health, nigra veste senescens;" and he is cast pretty much on his own ways and means. The genius that brutality checked was quickened at the call of “squalid poverty." To supply the pressing wants of daily life, he wrote ballads for street minstrels. There was a printer of the name of Hicks who

Forster adopted it. The building was taken down in 1837, when the portion of the pane on which the name was written was preserved, and is now in the manuscript room of the college. My friend, the Rev. Dr. Todd, F.T.C.D., the learned librarian, has kindly permitted me to give a fac-simile of it (the only one ever published) in this work, and communicated to me the history of its preservation. When the buildings were about being taken down, Provost Lloyd, at the suggestion of Dr. Todd, had the sash of the window on which the name was written removed to the library. "On examining it," writes the Doctor, "I thought it was not the genuine scratch, which I well remembered, and I mentioned my suspicions to the Provost. Shortly afterwards the last occupant of the rooms sent to the Provost the bit of glass which contained the genuine name, which you have seen. He had attempted to cut the piece out of the window, but, owing to the thickness of the glass, he broke it in several places, and to repair the accident, he had the fragments put together and imbedded in a piece of wood." The counterfeit pane was long shown in the library as the original, which all the time lay safely locked up in the MS. room.

*

published broadsides at the sign of the Reindeer, far away in Mountrath Street, at the other side of the city. Queer things they were-dying declarations and last speeches of wretches going to be hanged; sacred songs with grotesque illustrations; elegies on defunct celebrities; and popular songs to boot. Thither he brought his songs, and sold them for a crown apiece, often spending the money on his way home, yielding to some sudden impulse of sensibility awakened by the sight of real or feigned distress. Then in the evening he would steal out of college, and, with all the vanity of an author, follow the steps of the ballad singers and listen to his own songs.

Who shall tell what visions of future fame filled the brain of "the poor scholar" of Trinity as he made his way back to the college? The dreams that visited his pillow in the garret may have transformed the humble auditory of the darkly-lighted street into an admiring throng of the fair and the great and the learned, listening in brilliant saloons to the muse of the world's favourite. Ah! who knows? Surely no man ever attained to intellectual greatness, above all to literary greatness, who has not been vouchsafed, to comfort him in his struggles and keep his hope from dying out utterly, these prophetic glimpses of "coming events," which cast not "their shadows" but their lustre "before," upon the gloomy foreground of the present. And so he struggles on-now penniless, pawning books and other property for the exigencies of existence; now flinging away his scanty shillings with the recklessness of a millionaire; now studying fitfully, now joining in some daring breach of discipline, led on by a love of fun and an exuberance of spirits that prudence could not repress, nor poverty extinguish. Under such an impulse it was that, with other wild lads, he followed "Gallows Walsh" into the haunts of the city bailiffs, and dragged forth the offender who dared to arrest a student, bore their victim within the walls, and soused him in the cistern. That was but a trifle; who cared about a bum-bailiff? But they went further. Wild with excitement, they rushed to Newgate Prison, which they attempted to force, were repulsed by the fire of the gaoler, resulting in the death of two and the wounding of several more. The college authorities. visited the offenders with well-merited punishment; four were expelled, and Goldsmith, with others, was "publicly admonished." The admonition was not without its fruits. Oliver took it to heart and read for a scholarship. He failed, but the same page of the college books that records the successful candidates, under date of June 15th, 1747, gives his name amongst those who were comforted for their failure by an "exhibition" of trifling value. It was, possibly, to celebrate this solitary honour† that Goldsmith assembled in his

* I have searched through all the volumes of broadsides in Trinity College for one of Goldsmith's songs, but without success, though I found many of Hicks' publications.

↑ In a letter with which Sir James Prior has recently favoured me, he says, "As to the premium, I fear there is no proof now in existence that he obtained it. Dr. Kearney, indeed, was an excellent authority, as being once a fellow-student and