received his preliminary education and formed this attachment. The young couple married against the will of both their families, and without having any means of support at their own command; but Mr. Green, an uncle of the bride, who was rector of Kilkenny-West, provided them a farmhouse in his parish to live in, and by-and-bye her mother, Mrs. Jones, made over to them fifty acres of land, procured at a nominal rent.* Of this tenure the following is related:

The Rev. Oliver Jones had held these and other lands on a life-rent lease from Mr. Conolly, one of the Lords Justices. His wife, on his death, found that Mr. Conolly was not disposed to grant a renewal, and determined to try the effect of a personal application. She mounted on horseback behind her only son, and travelled straight to Dublin. Mr. Conolly persisted in his refusal, until the old lady drew out a bag, and showered its contents, one hundred guineas, upon the table. This was a temptation not to be resisted; the landlord immediately granted a fresh lease of half the lands on the same easy terms as before—and she used afterwards to say that she wished she had taken another hundred with her, and so secured the whole. An accident on this journey cost the spirited dame the life of her son: she returned home, as the old song says, "Sitting single on her saddle;" and, in the mercy of sorrow, handed over the hard-earned lease to her rash daughter and son-in-law.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH BORN.

The farmhouse in which the Goldsmith family found shelter was that of Pallismore, or Pallas, the property of the Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown ;-and here they continued to live for about twelve years, on the scanty income of Mr. Conolly's fifty acres, which it adjoined. Five children were born to them at Pallismore, the last being Oliver, who, according to the first leaf of the family-bible, saw the light (while Swift was yet alive,) on the 10th of November, 1728, three years earlier than the date on his monument in Westminster Abbey. He had one brother, Henry, six years his senior, two younger brothers, and three sisters; but before all these came into the world, the father succeeded to the living of Kilkenny-West, then worth 150l. to 2007. a year, and removed to a good house at Lissoy, in that parish.

A century and a quarter ago, when Goldsmith was born, Pallas was a rude place, and bore scarcely any evidence of having been adapted to the wants of man. "Even at this day," says Lord Macaulay, "those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet, are

Abridged from the Quarterly Review, No. 114: Prior's Life and Works of Goldsmith, 1836.

forced to perform the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain, which in wet weather is often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces; and there are ruts and sloughs. through which the most strongly-built wheels cannot be dragged."

The family inhabited an old half rustic mansion, in which Goldsmith was born; and it was a birthplace worthy of a poet; for by all accounts it was haunted ground. A tradition handed down among the neighbouring peasantry states that, in after years, the house, remaining for some time untenanted, went to decay, the roof fell in, and it became so lonely and forlorn as to be a resort for the "good people," or fairies, who, in Ireland, are supposed to delight in old, crazy, deserted mansions for their midnight revels. All attempts to repair it were in vain ; the fairies battled stoutly to maintain possession. A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride the house every evening with an immense pair of jack-boots, which, in his efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through the roof, kicking to pieces all the work of the preceding day. The house was, therefore, left to its fate, and went to ruin.

LISSOY "THE DESERTED VILLAGE."

When Oliver was in his second year, by the death of his wife's uncle, the father succeeded to the living of KilkennyWest, in Westmeath; and the family removed to Lissoy, where they occupied a farm of seventy acres on the skirts of that pretty village.

This was the earliest scene of Goldsmith's boyhood, the little world whence he drew many of those pictures, rural and domestic, whimsical and touching, which abound throughout his works. Lissoy is confidently cited as the original of his "Auburn" in the Deserted Village; his father's establishment, a mixture of farm and parsonage, furnished hints, it is said, for the rural economy of his Vicar of Wakefield; and his father himself, with his learned simplicity, his guileless wisdom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the world, has been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. In the Deserted Village we have this picture of his father and his father's fireside:

"His house was known to all the vagrant train,

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;

The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,
Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won ;
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.”

OLIVER'S EARLY SCHOOL-DAYS.

The boy's education began when he was three years of age: a young woman in his father's house, and afterwards known as Elizabeth Delap, and schoolmistress of Lissoy, first put a book (doubtless a hornbook) into Goldsmith's hands. He did not much profit by it; for although she was proud of having taught the child his first letters, and boasted of it at the age of ninety, when Goldsmith had been thirteen years in his grave, she also confessed, "Never was so dull a boy he seemed impenetrably stupid."

At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village schoolmaster, one Thomas Byrne, who had been educated for a pedagogue, but had enlisted in the army, served abroad during the wars of Queen Anne's time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. At the return of peace, he sat down to teach the young of Lissoy reading, writing, and arithmetic, and something more, according to the sketch of him in the Deserted Village. He had a host of strange stories "about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, about the great Rapparee chief, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. He was of the aboriginal race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver became early, and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp he heard."-(Macaulay.)

Another trait of his motley preceptor, Byrne, was a disposition to dabble in poetry, and this likewise was caught by his pupil. Before he was eight years old, Goldsmith had

contracted a habit of scribbling verses on small scraps of paper, which, in a little while, he would throw into the fire: a few, however, were rescued, and his mother read them with a mother's delight, and saw at once that her son was a poet by nature. From that time she beset her husband with solicitations to give the boy an education suitable to his genius, and she succeeded.

OLIVER'S BOYHOOD.

This period of his life was far from happy. A severe attack of confluent smallpox caused him to be taken from Byrne's tuition: the disease had nearly proved fatal: it left his face deeply pitted, spoiled what small pretension he had to good looks. He was next sent to the Rev. Mr. Griffin's superior school at Elphin, in Roscommon; and at the house of an uncle John, at Ballyoughter, in the neighbourhood of Elphin, he was lodged and boarded. This removal to a new school was unfortunate: the poor little thick, pale-faced, pock-marked boy became the jest and sarcasm of his schoolfellows; he was considered " a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom every one made fun of." Lord Macaulay says:—

His stature was small, and his limbs were ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder, which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the playground, and flogged as a dunce in the schoolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets which had dropped from him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century later, to indicate the powers which produced the Vicar of Wakefield and the Deserted Village.

Oliver's father obtained ultimately a benefice in the county of Roscommon, but died early; for the careful researches of the Rev. John Graham, of Lifford, have found his widow, nigre veste senescens, residing with her son Oliver in Ballymahon, so early as 1740. Among the shop-accounts of a petty grocer of the place, Mrs. Goldsmith's name occurs frequently as a customer for trifling articles; on which occasions Master Noll appears to have been his mother's usual emissary. He was recollected, however, in the neighbourhood by more poetical employments, as that of playing on the flute,

and wandering in solitude on the shores or among the islands of the river Inny, which is remarkably beautiful at Ballymahon.

OLIVER'S SCHOOLS.

It was one of the playful repartees just referred to that led to Oliver's being removed to a school of a higher order, and the confirmation of his mother's opinion of his genius.

A number of young folks had assembled at his uncle's to dance. One of the company, named Cummings, played on the violin. In the course of the evening, Oliver undertook a hornpipe. His short and clumsy figure, and his face pitted and discoloured with the smallpox, led the musician to dub him his little sop. Goldsmith was nettled by the jest, and, stopping short in the hornpipe, exclaimed:

"Our herald hath proclaimed this saying,

See Esop dancing, and his monkey playing."

The repartee was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years old, and Oliver became forthwith the bright genius of the family. The greater part of his school expenses was borne by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine, descended from the noble family of the Contarini of Venice. This worthy man had been the college companion of Bishop Berkeley, and was possessed of moderate means, holding the living of Carrickon-Shannon: he had married the sister of Goldsmith's father; he had taken Goldsmith into favour from his infancy, and he now undertook the expense of his scholastic education; he was sent first to a school at Athlone, kept by the Rev. Mr. Campbell; and in two years to one at Edgeworthstown, under the superintendence of the Rev. Patrick Hughes. Even here he was indolent and careless rather than dull; he inclined towards the Latin poets and historians; relished Ovid and Horace, and delighted in Livy and Tacitus. He was once detected in robbing an orchard, for which he narrowly escaped the severest punishment.

A MISTAKE OF A NIGHT.

On Goldsmith's last journey homeward from Edgeworthstown-a distance of twenty miles of rough country-he procured a horse for the journey, and a friend furnished him with a guinea for travelling expenses. He was then a stripling of sixteen, but resolved to play the man, and spend his