The time had now come for Oliver to be sent to college, Trinity College, Dublin, where his elder brother Henry had preceded him, entering as a pen sioner. Owing to an exercise of false generosity in sacrificing his income to portion a daughter married to a gentleman's son, Goldsmith's father was unable to support him at the university in the same comfortable though inferior rank. Oliver was consequently thrown upon one still lower, the lowest grade of all, that of sizer or servitor, which gave him board and instruction free of expense, with a small charge for his room, while he was to perform various minor duties in return, of which sweeping the courts in the morning, carrying the dishes from the kitchen to the table of the Fellows and waiting in the hall until they had dined, after which he might dine there himself, were among the number. He also was entitled or compelled to wear in token of his servitude, a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves with a distinctive red cap. For such privileges a higher degree of scholarship was expected on entering than from the nobler fellow commoners who paid their way and were dressed in more gentlemanly attire. The sizers were generally mature in age and better qualified in learning than the other students. Goldsmith, however, was still young, at the age of seventeen. In the account of the delinquencies of his youth which occupy so unseemly a proportion of his biog. raphies, it must be set down to his credit that he passed his rigorous examination successfully. He was, how ever, not much of a student at college. His sensitive nature felt all" the slings

and arrows" daily cast upon him by the "outrageous fortune" which condemned him to ignominious servitude and suffering, in a seat of the Muses, where all should have been cheerful sunshine; and he was, moreover, constantly insulted by a brutal tutor, a Mr. Theaker Wilder, a cold-blooded mathematician, who confounded all moral and intellectual qualities, "thinking he was witty when he was simply malicious," an ugly fellow with his spite and ignorance to handle poor Goldsmith at an examination. For, with whatever learning he may have possessed, he was profoundly ignorant of Goldsmith's nature. Long afterwards, when his pupil was at the height of his fame, this unhappy man came to a violent end, being found dead one morning on the floor of his room with some bruises on his person, a disaster attributed to his disreputable mode of living.

While Goldsmith was bearing these inflictions he was cast more deeply into poverty by the death of his father, in his second year at the College, when the scanty remittances from home ceased, and he was thrown upon casual loans from his friends to supply his narrow necessities-not, however, without some assistance from his own genius. He composed street ballads, for which he found a ready sale, receiving five shil lings for each from a bookseller in the city; and, what was more agreeable to his nature, his instinctive pride in authorship was gratified by listening to them at night as they were sung by the criers in the streets—a consolatory suggestion, we may hope, to him in the midst of his humiliations of the

"All hail hereafter!" There were other incidents, too, of a rougher character, of this college life. Feuds between gownsmen and the town people were not uncommon in Dublin in the last century. A riot occurred, in which a bailiff who had arrested a student was assailed, the peace of the city was disturbed, and several lives lost in the tumult. Goldsmith was not a ring leader in this affair, but he had been out with the rioters, and was publicly admonished for favoring the tumult. To redeem his character, he tried the next month for a scholarship, and failing in this, succeeded in gaining a trifling "Exhibition," worth about thirty shillings. Characteristically enough, he celebrated this little triumph by a dancing party, of more frolic than expense, in his upper rooms, and in the midst of the hilarity was confronted by his savage tutor for his infringement of the rules. The tutor from words proceeded to violence, and Goldsmith was so roughly and ignominiously handled, Wilder, with his mathematical attainments, being a redoubted pugilist, that Goldsmith, stung by the disgrace, determined to escape from the College. Selling his books, he improvidently loitered in Dublin till his stock was reduced to a shilling, with which he set out for Cork, with a vague intention of going to America. The shilling supported him for three days, and when the proceeds of such clothes as he had to sell were exhausted, he began to feel the sufferings of hunger. Late in life he told Reynolds how, after fasting at this time for twenty-four hours, a handful of gray peas, given him by a

girl at a wake, was the most delicious meal he had ever tasted. Utterly destitute, he turned homeward, was met on his way by his brother Henry, who relieved his wants and accompanied him back to College. There he remained to the end of his four years' course, taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1749. "The popular picture of him in these Dublin University days,' writes his biographer, Forster, "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 in the wait for misery and ill-luck." Something, doubtless, is to be added to this notion of Goldsmith on the score of reading and scholarship. Though, as he afterwards told Malone in London, "I made no great figure at the University in mathematics, which was a study much in repute there, I could turn an ode of Horace into English better than any of them." But of all who were students at the University during his service there, certainly he appeared the least likely to be enthroned at its gate in a monumental statue. Yet there he now stands, in the exquisite workmanship of the sculptor Foley, clad in his habit as he lived, his right hand, falling at ease, holding a pen, his left supporting an open book, his countenance reflecting at once his humor and intelligence--the oppressed servitor of 1745 -the most interesting tradition of the University a century afterwards.

From College Goldsmith returned home, and uncertain as to his prospects, with no settled resolution, passed

the good Bishop Berkeley, furnishing out of his slender clerical revenue fifty pounds to set him on the track. He was to proceed to London to keep the usual terms; but got no further than Dublin, where he was stripped of all his money at the gambling table by one of his Irish acquaintances. This sent him back to his home, Uncle Contarine receiving him with kindness. A few months after, at the suggestion of another relative, the chief clerical dignitary of the family, Dean Goldsmith, of Cloyne, the third and last of the professions, that of medicine was resolved upon and Uncle Contarine again stepped forward to furnish the pecuniary outfit for Edinburgh, where the study was to be prosecuted at the University. Here Goldsmith remained a year and a half, becoming a member of its Medical Society and attending the lectures, particularly admiring the scope and ability of Munro, the professor of anatomy. He found pleasure in his studies, in a letter to his uncle, speaking of the science as "the most pleasing in nature, so that my labors are but a relaxation, and, I may truly say, the only thing here that gives me pleasure." There is a hint of his employment, probably as a tutor, in the family of the Duke of Hamilton, to eke out his resources; but the remittances of the generous Contarine, though limited, were sufficient to support some indulgence in dress, as the tailor's bills yet extant indicate in their items of sky-blue satin, rich Genoa velvet and high claret-colored cloth; while there was something left to undertake a visit to the Continent to perfect his medical studies at one of its universities. Paris

was resolved upon for this purpose, and in the spring of 1754, Oliver embarked on his round-about way thither in a ship to Bordeaux. But, as luck would have it, the vessel was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the passengers were seized, on the charge of being recruits for the French service, and Goldsmith with difficulty procured his liberation after a fortnight's imprisonment. It was some consolation afterwards to reflect that had he been allowed to proceed with the vessel he would probably have been drowned with the crew-shipwrecked at the mouth of the Garonne. Finding another ship ready for Holland, he took his passage for Rotterdam, arrived there safely, proceeded to Leyden, and presently reported in a very agreeable letter to his Uncle Contarine, the state of medical learning at its University, at which he was for some time a student. He now gained some support as a teacher of his native language, in which we may suppose he turned his knowledge of French to account. Habitual cheerfulness, with a physical constitution of great endurance, enabled him to support a life of makeshifts, which to a less courageous temperament would have been unendu rable. Encouraged by the example of the Baron Holberg, then recently deceased, who, following his own inclinations in a career of adventure had risen by his exertions from a youth of poverty to the highest rank in the literature of Denmark, he determined to pursue the somewhat vagrant course which, in the career of that eminent man had preceded his acquisition of fame and fortune. As Holberg's story