he added with sound philosophy, "these are the thoughts "and feelings which have reclaimed us from all the errors of "life." And why were they so enforced in that charming book, but because the writer had undergone them all; because they had reclaimed himself, not from the world's errors only, but also from its suffering and care; and because his own life and adventures had been the same chequered and beautiful romance of the triumph of good over evil. Though what is called worldly success, then, was not attained by Goldsmith, it may be that the way to happiness was yet not missed altogether. The sincere and sad biographer of Savage might have profited by the example. His own benefit he had not successfully "endeavoured," when the gloom of his early life embittered life to the last, and the trouble he had endured was made excuse for a sorrowful philosophy, and for manners that were an outrage to the kindness of his heart. What had fallen to Johnson's lot, fell not less heavily to Goldsmith's; of the calamities to which the literary life is subject, "Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol," none were spared to him: but they found, and left him, gentle and unspoiled; and though the discipline that thus taught him charity entailed some social disadvantage, by unfeigned sincerity and simplicity of heart he diffused every social enjoyment. When his conduct least agreed with his writings, these characteristics did not fail him. What he gained, was others' gain; what he lost, concerned himself only; he suffered pain, but never inflicted it; and it is amazing to think how small an amount of mere insensibility to other people's opinions would have exalted Doctor Goldsmith's position in the literary circles of his day. He lost caste because he could not acquire it, and could as little assume the habit of indifference, as trade upon the gravity of the repute he had won. "Admirers in a room," said Northcote, repeating what had been told him by Reynolds, "whom his "entrance had struck with awe, might be seen riding out upon "his back." It was hard, he said himself to Sir Joshua, that fame and its dignities should intercept people's liking and fondness; and for his love of the latter, no doubt he forfeited not a little of the former. "He is an inspired idiot," cried Walpole ;— "he does not know the difference of a turkey from a goose," said Cumberland;-" sir," shouted Johnson," he knows nothing, "he has made up his mind about nothing." Few cared to think or speak of him but as little Goldy, honest Goldy; and every one laughed at him for the oddity of his blunders, and the awkwardness of his manners. But I invite the reader to his life and adventures, and the times wherein they were cast. No uninstructive explanation of all this may possibly await us there, if together we review the scene, and move among its actors as they play their parts. BOOK THE FIRST. THE SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, APOTHECARY'S JOURNEYMAN, USHER, AND POOR PHYSICIAN. 1728 to 1757. BOOK THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 1728-1745. THE marble in Westminster Abbey is correct in the place, 1728. but not in the time, of the birth of OLIVER GOLDSMITH. He was born at a small old parsonage house (supposed afterwards to be haunted by the fairies, or good people of the district, who could not however save it from being levelled to the ground) in a lonely, remote, and almost inaccessible Irish village on the southern banks of the river Inny, called Pallas,* or Pallasmore, the property of the Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, on the 10th of November, 1728: a little more than three years earlier than the date upon his epitaph. His father, the reverend * Pallas is often written Pallice, or Pallis, and seems to have been so written by Goldsmith's father. The rev. Mr. Mangin believed the latter to be the proper name, having seen in it Charles Goldsmith's handwriting. (Parlour Window, 4.) So did the rev. Mr. Graham, who supposed indeed that Dr. Johnson, in writing it Pallas, had simply laid a trap for the luckless and too classical biographer who afterwards translated the line of his epitaph, "in loco cui nomen Pallas," "at a Gent. Mag. xc. 620. place where Pallas had set her name!" The year of his birth was first correctly given in the Percy Memoir (1 and 116), and in Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland, iii. 357; but Mr. Prior settled the date of the month by reference to the fly-leaf |