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BOOK THE FIRST.

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SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, APOTHECARY'S
JOURNEYMAN, USHER, AND POOR
PHYSICIAN.

THE marble in Westminster
Abbey is correct in the place,
but not in the time, of the birth of
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. He

1728

TO

1757

was born at a lonely, re-
mote, and almost inacces-

sible Irish village called
Pallas, or Pallasmore, the
property of the Edge-
worths of Edgeworths-
town, 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,

B

the Reverend Charles Goldsmith, was a Protestant clergyman with an uncertain stipend, which, with the help of some fields he farmed, and occasional duties. performed for the rector of an adjoining parish who was uncle to his wife, averaged forty pounds a year. A new birth was but a new burthen; and little dreamt the humble village preacher, then or ever, that from the date of that tenth of November on which his Oliver was born, his own virtues and very foibles were to be a legacy of pleasure to many generations of men. For they who have loved, laughed, and wept, with the Man in Black of the Citizen of the World, the Preacher of the Deserted Village, and Doctor Primrose in the Vicar of Wakefield, have given laughter, love, and tears, to the Reverend Charles Goldsmith.

The death of the rector of Kilkenny West improved his fortunes. He succeeded in 1730 to this living of his wife's uncle; his income of forty pounds was raised to nearly two hundred; and Oliver had not completed his second year when the family moved from Pallasmore to a respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, 'in the county of Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny 'West,' some six miles from Pallasmore, and about midway between the towns of Ballymahon and Athlone. The firstborn, Margaret, appears to have died in childhood; and the family, at this time consisting of Catherine, Henry, Jane, and Oliver, born at Pallasmore, was in the next ten years increased by Maurice, Charles, and John, born at

IL

Lissoy. The youngest, as the eldest, died in youth; Charles went in his twentieth year, a friendless adventurer, to Jamaica, and, after long self-exile, died, little more than thirty years since, in a poor lodging of Somers' Town; Maurice was put to the trade of a cabinet maker, kept a meagre shop in Charlestown in the county of Roscommon, and 'departed from a miserable life' in 1792; Henry followed his father's calling, and died as he had lived, a humble village preacher and schoolmaster, in 1768; Catherine married a wealthy husband, Mr. Hodson, Jane a poor one, Mr. Johnston, and both died in Athlone, some years after the death of that celebrated brother to whose Life and Adventures these pages are devoted.

A trusted dependant in Charles Goldsmith's house; a young woman, afterwards known as Elizabeth Delap, and schoolmistress of Lissoy;

first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands. She taught him his letters; lived till it was matter of pride to remember; and at the ripe age of ninety, when the great writer had been thirteen years in his

grave, boasted of it with

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'her last breath.' That her success in the task had not been much to boast of, she at other times confessed. 'Never was 'so dull a boy: he seemed impenetrably stupid,' said the

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