1738. Et. 10. 66 "of the family and name," he said, "live near Elphin, who, as well as the poet, were, and are, remarkable for their worth, but of no cleverness in the common affairs of the 66 world." * 66 If cleverness in the common affairs of the world is what the head should be always versed in, to be meditating what it ought, poor Oliver was a grave defaulter. We are all of us, it is said, more or less related to chaos; and with him, to the last, there was much that lay unredeemed from its void. Sturdy boys who work a gallant way through school, and are the picked men of their colleges, and grow up to thriving eminence in their several callings, and found respectable families, are seldom troubled with this relationship till chaos reclaims them altogether, and they die and are forgotten. All men have their advantages, and that is theirs. But it shows too great a pride in what they have, to think the whole world should be under pains and penalties to possess it too; and to set up so many doleful lamentations over this poor, weak, confused, erratic, Goldsmith nature. Their tone will not be taken here, the writer having no pretension to its moral dignity. Consideration will be had for the harsh lessons this boy so early and bitterly encountered; it will not be forgotten that feeling, not always rightly guided or controlled, but sometimes in a large excess,t must almost of necessity be his who +"A lad whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from "that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance probably obtains every advantage and "honour his college can bestow. I forget whether the simile has been used before, "but I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity "of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and consequently con"tinue always muddy. Passions may raise a commotion in the youthful breast, "but they disturb only to refine it. However this be, mean talents are often "rewarded in colleges with an easy subsistence." Inquiry into the Present State of 1739. has it in charge to dispense largely, variously, and freely to others; and in the endeavour to show that the heart Et. 11. of Oliver Goldsmith was indeed rightly placed, it may perhaps appear that his head also profited by so good an example. At the age of eleven he was removed from Mr. Griffin's, and put to a school of repute at Athlone, about five miles. from his father's house, and kept by a reverend Mr. Campbell.* At about the same time his brother Henry went as a pensioner to Dublin University, and it was resolved that in due course Oliver should follow him: a determination, his sister told Doctor Percy, which had replaced that of putting him to a common trade,t on those evidences of a certain liveliness of talent which had broken out at uncle John's being discussed among his relatives and friends. He remained at Athlone two years; and, when Mr. Campbell's ill-health obliged him to resign his charge, was removed to the school of Edgeworthstown, kept by the reverend Patrick Hughes. Here he stayed more than three years, and was long remembered by the school acquaintance he formed; among whom were Mr. Beatty, Mr. Nugent, Mr. Roach, and Mr. Daly, to whom we are indebted for Polite Learning, chap. x. So, too, in his Life of Bolingbroke, he excuses the youthful 66 66 "Oliver was his second son, and born very unexpectedly after an interval of seven years from the birth of the former child, and the liberal education which "their father was then bestowing on his eldest son bearing hard upon his small income, he could only propose to bring up Oliver to some mercantile employment." Mrs. Hodson's narrative, in the Percy Memoir, 3. In the next page she adds, "he "began at so early a period to show signs of genius that he quickly engaged the "notice of all the friends of the family, many of whom were in the church." 1741. Æt. 13. . 1743. some traits of that early time. They recollected Mr. Et. 15. Hughes's special kindness to him, and "thinking well" of him, as matters not then to be accounted for.* The good master, it appeared, had been Charles Goldsmith's friend. They dwelt upon his ugliness and awkward manners; they professed to recount even the studies he liked or disliked (Ovid and Horace were welcome to him, he hated Cicero, Livy was his delight, and Tacitus opened him new sources of pleasure); they described his temper as ultra-sensitive, but added that though quick to take offence, he was more feverishly ready to forgive. They also said, that though at first diffident and backward in the extreme, he mustered sufficient boldness in time to take even a leader's place in the boyish sports, and particularly at fives or ballplaying. Whenever an exploit was proposed or a trick was going forward, "Noll Goldsmith" was certain to be in it; an actor or a victim. Of his holidays, Ballymahon was the central attraction; and here too recollection was vivid and busy, as soon as his name grew famous. An old man who directed the sports of the place, and kept the ball-court in those days, *We are told, in a note to Mrs. Hodson's narrative, that from Mr. Hughes he profited more than from either of the other masters, as he conversed with him on a footing very different from that of master and scholar. "This circumstance Dr. "Goldsmith always mentioned with respect and gratitude." Percy Memoir, 6. Mr. Daly's remark, as quoted by Mr. Prior (i. 34), is that "when he had "once mastered the difficulties of Tacitus, he found pleasure in the perusal and "occasional translation of that writer." It is less easy to believe what is added, that it was in consequence of a reproof from his elder brother he first began to pay attention to style in writing. Having sent Henry some short and confused letters from school, he received for reply, we are told, a curt piece of advice, which he afterwards turned to account, that "if he had but little to say, he should endeavour to say it well." 66 "He was remarkably active and athletic, of which he gave proof in all "exercises among his playmates, and eminently in ball-playing, which he was very "fond of, and practised whenever he could." Doctor Strean, in Mangin's Essay, 149, 150. The 1743. long subsisted on his stories of "Master Noll." narrative masterpiece of this ancient Jack Fitzsimmons Et. 15. related to the depredation of the orchard of Tirlicken, by the youth and his companions.* Fitzsimmons also vouched to the reverend John Graham for the entire truth of the adventure so currently and confidently told by his Irish acquaintance, which offers an agreeable relief to the excess of diffidence heretofore noted in him, and on which, if true, the leading incident of She Stoops to Conquer was founded. At the close of his last holidays, then a lad of nearly seventeen, he left home for Edgeworthstown, mounted on a borrowed hack which a friend was to restore to Lissoy, and with store of unaccustomed wealth, a guinea, in his pocket. The delicious taste of independence beguiled him to a loitering, lingering, pleasant enjoyment of the journey; and instead of finding himself under Mr. Hughes's roof at nightfall, night fell upon him some two or three miles out of the direct road, in the middle of the streets of Ardagh. But nothing could disconcert the owner of the guinea, who, with a lofty, confident air, inquired of a person passing the way to the town's best house of entertainment. The man addressed was the wag of Ardagh, a humorous fencing-master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, and the schoolboy swagger was irresistible provocation to a jest. Submissively he turned back with horse and rider till they came within a pace or two of the great Squire Featherston's, to which he respectfully pointed as the "best house" of Ardagh. Oliver rang at the gate, gave his beast in charge with authoritative rigour, and was 66 * "In this adventure," Mr. Graham writes, "which he detailed minutely, both were engaged; detection however, either at the moment or soon afterwards, "ensued; and had it not been for the respectability of Goldsmith's connections, "which secured immunity also to his companions, the consequences might have "been unpleasant." 1744. Æt. 16. 1744. shown, as a supposed expected guest, into the comfortable Et. 16. parlour of the squire. Those were days when Irish innkeepers and Irish squires more nearly approximated than now; and Mr. Featherston, unlike the excellent but explosive Mr. Hardcastle, is said to have seen the mistake and humoured it. Oliver had a supper which gave him so much satisfaction, that he ordered a bottle of wine to follow; and the attentive landlord was not only forced to drink with him, but, with a like familiar condescension, the wife and pretty daughter were invited to the supper-room. Going to bed, he stopped to give special instructions for a hot cake to breakfast; and it was not till he had dispatched this latter meal, and was looking at his guinea with pathetic aspect of farewell, that the truth was told him by the good-natured squire. The late Sir Thomas Featherston, grandson to the supposed inn-keeper, had faith in the adventure; and told Mr. Graham that as his grandfather and Charles Goldsmith had been college acquaintance, it might the better be accounted for.t * It is certainly, if true, the earliest known instance of the disposition to swagger with a grand air which afterwards displayed itself in other forms, and strutted about in clothes rather noted for fineness than fitness. 46 *Percy Memoir, 6, 7. The story," said Mr. Graham, at a public meeting in Ballymahon for a monument to the Poet (reported in the Gent. Mag. for 1820, xc. 620), was "confirmed to me by the late Sir Thomas Featherston, Bart, a short time before "his death." |