were publicly admonished for being present, "aiding and abetting" (Quod seditioni favisset et tumultuantibus opem tulisset), the name of Oliver Goldsmith occurs.

More galled by formal University admonition than by Wilder's insults, and anxious to wipe out a disgrace that seemed not so undeserved, Goldsmith tried in the next month for a scholarship. He lost the scholarship, but got an exhibition: a very small exhibition truly, worth some thirty shillings, of which there were nineteen in number, and his was seventeenth in the list. In the way of honour or glory this was trifling enough; but, little used to anything in the shape of even such a success, he let loose his unaccustomed joy in a small dancing party at his rooms, of humblest sort.

Wilder heard of the affront to discipline, suddenly showed himself in the middle of the festivity, and knocked down the poor triumphant exhibitioner. It seemed an irretrievable disgrace.

Goldsmith sold his books next day, got together a small sum, ran away from college, lingered fearfully about Dublin till his money was spent, and then, with a shilling in his pocket, set out for Cork. He did not know where he would have gone, he said, but he thought of America. For three days he lived upon the shilling;

1748.

parted by degrees with nearly all his clothes, to save himself from famine; and long afterwards told Reynolds what his sister relates in her narrative, that of all the exquisite meals he had ever tasted, the most delicious was a handful of grey peas given him by a girl at a wake after twenty-four hours' fasting. The vision of America sank before this reality, and he turned his feeble steps to Lissoy. His brother had private intimation of his state, went to him, clothed him, and carried him back to college. "Something of a "reconciliation," says Mrs. Hodson, was effected with the tutor. Probably the tutor made so much concession as to promise not to strike him to the ground again; for certainly no other improvement is on record. An anecdote, "often told in conÆt. 20. "versation to Bishop Percy," exhibits the sizar at his usual disadvantage. Wilder called on Goldsmith, at a lecture, to explain the centre of gravity, which, on getting no answer, he proceeded himself to explain: calling out harshly to Oliver at the close, "Now, “blockhead, where is your centre of gravity?" The answer, which was delivered in a slow, hollow, stammering voice, and began "Why, Doctor, by your definition, I think it must be"-disturbed every one's centre of gravity in the lecture room; and, turning the laugh against Wilder, turned down poor Oliver. And so the insults, the merciless jests, the "Oliver Goldsmith turned down," appear to have continued as before. We still trace him less by his fame in the class-room than by his fines in the buttery-books. The only change is in that greater submission of the victim which marks unsuccessful rebellion. He offers no resistance; makes no effort of any kind ; sits, for the most part, indulging day-dreams. A Greek Scapula

The

has been identified which he used at this time, scrawled over with his writing. 66 'Free. Oliver Goldsmith; "I promise to pay, " &c. Oliver Goldsmith;" are among the autograph's musing shapes. Perhaps one half the day he was with Steele or Addison in parliament; perhaps the other half in prison with Collins or with Fielding. We should be thankful, as I have said, that a time so dreary and dark bore no worse fruit than that. shadow cast over his spirit, the uneasy sense of disadvantage which obscured his manners in later years, affected himself singly; but how many they are whom such suffering, and such idleness, would have wholly and for ever corrupted. The spirit hardly less generous, cheerful, or self-supported than Goldsmith's, has been broken by them utterly.

He took his degree of bachelor of arts on the 27th February, 1749; and as his name stood lowest in the list of sizars

1749.

with whom he was originally admitted, so it stands also Et. 21. lowest in a list still existing of the graduates who passed on the same day, and thus became entitled to use the college library.

But it would be needless to recount the names that appear above his; for the public merits of their owners ended with their college course, and oblivion has received them. Nor indeed does that position of his name necessarily indicate his place in the examination; it being then the usage to regulate the mere college standing of a student through the whole of his course, by his position obtained at starting. But be this as it might, Mr. Wilder and his pupil now parted for ever: and when the friend of Burke, of Johnson, and of Reynolds, next heard the name of his college tyrant, a violent death had overtaken him in a dissolute brawl.

CHAPTER III.

THREE YEARS OF IDLENESS. 1749-1752.

GOLDSMITH returned to his mother's house. There were great changes. She had removed, in her straitened circumEt. 21. stances, to a cottage at Ballymahon, "situated on the

1749.

"entrance to Ballymahon from the Edgeworthstown-road "on the left-hand side.” His brother Henry had gone back to his father's little parsonage house at Pallas; and, with his father's old pittance of forty pounds a year, was serving as curate to the living of Kilkenny West, and was master of the village school, which after shifting about not a little had become ultimately fixed at Lissoy. His eldest sister, Mrs. Hodson, for whom the sacrifice was made that impoverished the family resources, was mistress of the old and better Lissoy parsonage house, in which his father had lived his latter life. All entreated Oliver to qualify himself for orders; and when they joined uncle Contarine's request, his own objection was withdrawn. But he is only twenty-one; he

must wait two years; and they are passed at Ballymahon.

It is the sunny time between two dismal periods of his life. He has escaped one scene of misery; another is awaiting him; and what possibilities of happiness lie in the interval, it is his nature to seize and make the most of. He assists his brother Henry in the school; runs household errands for his mother, as if he were still what the village gossips called him, "Master Noll," and brings her green tea by the ounce, the half ounce, and the quarter ounce, for which the charges respectively are sevenpence, threepence halfpenny, and twopence; he writes scraps of verse to please his uncle Contarine; and, to please himself, gets cousin Bryanton and Tony Lumpkins of the district, with wandering bear-leaders of

genteeler sort, to meet at an old inn by his mother's house, and be a club for story-telling, for an occasional game of whist, and for the singing of songs. First in these accomplishments, great

at Latin quotations, as admirer of happy human faces greatest of all,-Oliver presides. Cousin Bryanton had seen his disgrace in college, and thinks this a triumph indeed. So seems it to the hero of the triumph, on whose taste and manners, still only forming as yet in these sudden and odd extremes, many an amusing shade of contrast must have fallen in after-life, from the storms of Wilder's class-room and the sunshine of George Conway's inn.

Thus the two years passed. In the day-time occupied, as I have said, in the village school; on the winter nights, at Conway's; and, in the evenings of summer, taking solitary walks among the rocks and wooded islands of the Inny, strolling up its banks to fish or play the flute, otter-hunting (as he tells us in his Animated Nature) by the course of the Shannon, learning French from the Irish priests, or winning a prize for throwing the sledgehammer at the fair of Ballymahon. "A lady who died lately in this "neighbourhood," says Mr. Shaw Mason, in his account of the district, "and who was well acquainted with Mrs. Goldsmith, men"tioned that it was one of Oliver's habits to sit in a window of his "mother's lodgings, and amuse himself by playing the flute."

Two sunny years, with sorrowful affection long remembered; storing up his mind with many a thought and fancy turned to profitable use in after-life, but hardly better than his college course to help him through the world. So much even occurred to himself when eight years were gone, and, in the outset of his London distresses, he turned back with wistful looks to Ireland.

"Unaccountable fondness for country, this Maladie du Pais, as "the French call it!" he exclaimed, writing to his brother-in-law Hodson. "Unaccountable that he should still have an affection "for a place who never received when in it above common "civility; who never brought anything out of it except his brogue "and his blunders. . . What gives me a wish to see Ireland again? "The country is a fine one perhaps? No. There are good "company in Ireland? No. The conversation there is generally "made up of a smutty toast or a bawdy song; the vivacity supported by some humble cousin, who has just folly enough to earn his dinner. Then perhaps there's more wit and learning among the Irish? Oh, lord! no! There has been more money (C spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare there one 66 season, than given in rewards to learned men since the times of "Usher. All their productions in learning amount to perhaps a "translation, or a few tracts in divinity; and all their productions "in wit, to just nothing at all."

66

66

1750. Æt. 22.

But perhaps the secret escaped without his knowledge, when, in that same year, he was writing to a more intimate friend. "I have disappointed your neglect," he said to Bryanton, "by "frequently thinking of you. Every day do I remember "the calm anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the 66 easy chair: recal the various adventures that first cemented 66 our friendship: the school, the college, or the tavern: preside in "fancy over your cards: and am displeased at your bad play when "the rubber goes against you, though not with all that agony of "soul as when I once was your partner." Let the truth, then, be confessed; and that it was the careless idleness of fire-side and easy chair, that it was the tavern excitement of the game at cards, to which Goldsmith so wistfully looked back from those first hard London struggles.

It is not an example I would wish to inculcate; nor is this narrative written with that purpose. To try any such process for the chance of another Goldsmith would be a somewhat dangerous attempt. The truth is important to be kept in view: that genius, representing as it does the perfect health and victory of the mind, is in no respect allied to those weaknesses, but, when unhappily connected with them, is in itself a means to avert their most evil consequence. Of the associates of Goldsmith in these happy, careless years, perhaps not one emerged to better fortune, and many sank to infinitely worse. "Pray give my love to Bob "Bryanton, and entreat him from me, not to drink," is a passage from one of his later letters to his brother Henry. The habit of drinking he never suffered to overmaster himself;-if the love of gaming to some trifling extent continued, it was at least the