divine a friend. He, too, was a clergyman; and held the living of Kilmore, near Carrick-on-Shannon, which he afterwards changed to that of Oran, near Roscommon; where he built the house of Emblemore, changed to that of Tempe by its subsequent possessor, Mr. Edward Mills, Goldsmith's relative and contemporary. Mr. Contarine had married Charles Goldsmith's sister (who died at about this time, leaving one child), and was the only member of the Goldsmith family of whom we have solid evidence that he at any time took pains with Oliver, or anything like a real pride in him. He bore the greater part of his school expenses; and was used to receive him with delight in holidays, as the playfellow of his daughter Jane; a year or two older than Oliver, and some seven years after this married to a Mr. Lauder. How little the most charitable of men will make allowance for differences of temper and disposition in the education of youth, is too well known: Mr. Contarine told Oliver that he had himself been a sizar, and that it had not availed to withhold from him the friendship of the great and the good.

His counsel prevailed. The youth went to Dublin, passed the examination, and on the 11th of June, 1745, was admitted, last in the list of eight who so presented themselves, a sizar of Trinity College. There most speedily to earn that experience, which, on his elder brother afterwards consulting him as to the education of his son, prompted him to answer thus: If he has ambition, 'strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt,

'do not send him to your college, unless you have no other 'trade for him except your own.'

Flood, who was then in the college, does not seem to have noticed Goldsmith: but a greater than Flood, though himself little notable at college, said he perfectly recollected his old fellow-student, when they afterwards met at Sir Joshua's. Not that there was much for an Edmund Burke to recollect of him. Little went well with Goldsmith in

his student course. He had a menial position, a savage brute for tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. He was not indeed, as perhaps never living creature in this world was, without his consolations: he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult or outrage, could blow off excitement through his flute with a kind of desperate 'mechanical vehemence.' At the worst he had, as he describes it himself, a knack at hoping;' and at all times, it must with equal certainty be affirmed, a knack at

getting into scrapes. Like Samuel Johnson at Oxford,

he avoided lectures when he could, and was a lounger at the college gate. The popular picture of him in these Dublin University days, is little more than of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, heard seldom and always to great disadvantage in the class-rooms; and of a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the wait for misery and ill-luck. His Edgeworthstown schoolfellow, Beatty, had entered among the sizars with him, and for a time shared his rooms. Mr. Prior describes them as the top-rooms adjoining the

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library of the building numbered 35, where the name of Oliver Goldsmith may still be seen, scratched by himself upon a window-pane. Another sizar, Marshall, is said to have been another of his chums. Among his occasional associates, were certainly Edward Mills, his relative; Robert Bryanton, a Ballymahon youth, also his relative, of whom he was fond; Charles and Edward Purdon, whom he lived to befriend; James Willington, whose name he afterwards had permission to use in London, for low literary work he was ashamed to put his own to; Wilson and Kearney, subsequently doctors and fellows of the college; Wolfen, also well known; and Lauchlan Macleane, whose political pamphlets, unaccepted challenge to Wilkes, and general party exertions, made a noise in the world twenty or thirty years later. But it is a saying of Johnson that not till a man becomes famous, are any wonderful feats of memory or condescension performed respecting him; and it seems tolerably evident that, with the exception of perhaps Bryanton and Beatty, not one owner of the names recounted put himself in friendly relation with the sizar, to elevate, assist, or cheer him. Richard Malone, afterwards Lord Sunderlin; Bernard, Marlay, and Stopford, afterwards worthy bishops of those names; found nothing more pleasant than to talk of their old fellow-collegian 'Doctor Goldsmith,' in the painting-room of Reynolds: but nothing, I suspect, so difficult, thriving lads as they were in these earlier days, than to vouchsafe recognition to the unthriving, depressed, insulted Oliver.

A year and a half after he had entered college, at the commencement of 1747, his father suddenly died. The scanty sums required for his support had been often intercepted, but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow: but 'squalid poverty,' relieved by occasional gifts, according to his small means, from uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton and Beatty, or by desperate pawning of his books of study, was Goldsmith's lot thenceforward. Yet even in the depths of that despair, arose the consciousness of faculties reserved for better fortune than continual contempt and failure. He would write Street-Ballads to save himself from actual starving; sell them at the Rein Deer Repository in Mountrath Court for five shillings a piece; and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung.

Happy night! worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets, watched, and waited, this poor neglected sizar, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and dull, perhaps, the beggar's audience at first; more thronging, eager, and delighted, when he shouted the newly-gotten ware. Cracked enough his ballad-singing tones, I dare say; but harsh, discordant, loud or low, the sweetest music that this earth affords fell with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces pleased, old men stopping by the way, young lads venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing: why

here was A World in little, with its Fame at the sizar's feet! The greater world will be listening one day,' perhaps he muttered, as he turned with a lighter heart to his dull home.

It is said to have been a rare Occurrence when the five shillings of the Rein Deer Repository reached home along with him. It was the most likely, when he was at his utmost need, to stop with some beggar on the road who might seem to him more destitute even than himself. Nor this only. The money gone: often, for the naked shivering wretch, had he slipped off a portion of the scanty clothes he wore, to patch a misery he could not