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was a Scotchman named Delap, a discharged quartermaster, who used to recount his military adventures to his gaping scholars, and, in the language of one of them, destined to become immortal

"Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won."

He probably, also, sat for the inimitable portrait of the village schoolmaster. At school, Oliver was remarkable for his oddities, his irregular diligence, and his variable spirits. He was sometimes the gravest, and sometimes the most uproariously mirthful boy in the school. Ere he was eight, he scribbled verses on scraps of paper, and then committed them to the flames.

"He lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."

His verses amused his father's family; and his mother espe- cially, discerning in them the promise of future celebrity, urged her husband to give him a learned education. He was placed, accordingly, under the care of the Reverend Mr Griffin, master of the school at Elphin, where he distinguished himself as a quick and clever, if not a regularly studious boy. It was determined to send him to the university, and some kind friends-Mr Green, Mr Contorine, and others came forward to contribute to the expense. He was first, however, placed at Athlone school, under the tuition of the Reverend Mr Campbell, where he stayed two years. On his master leaving his situation, he came under the charge of the Reverend Patrick Hughes, at Edgeworthtown, in the county of Longford, and remained with him till he went to the university. At these different seminaries he is stated to have made rapid progress, and to have conciliated and returned the affection of his masters. It was while at Edgeworthtown that he met with an adventure which became the germ of the plot in "She Stoops to Conquer." He was directed by one of his waggish schoolmates to a gentleman's house as an inn; and the scrape was productive of a number of amusing perplexities, which have since, in their imaginary form, been the laughter of the whole world.

At the age of fifteen he repaired to the University of Dublin; and, on the 11th of June 1744, was admitted a sizar of

Trinity College, under the Reverend Theaker Wilder, one of the fellows. His tutor was as overbearing and tyrannical as Goldsmith was thoughtless and irregular. Perpetual quarrels ensued, and the matter came to a climax when Wilder burst into the midst of a little party which Oliver was holding in his rooms, dispersed it, and inflicted summary castigation on his pupil. This his high spirit could not brook. He sold his books and clothes, and determined to fly from a spot which was now associated with pain and disgrace. Cork was his destination; but, characteristically, he lingered in Dublin till his money was reduced to a shilling. On this he supported himself for three days. He then sold some of his clothes, which enabled him to live a little longer; but was reduced at last to beg a handful of gray pease from a girl at a wake, and the result was, that he wrote his brother to obtain a reconciliation between him and his tutor. This was with some difficulty effected, and Oliver came back to college, and was for a short time a sadder and a wiser man. His old disposition, however, was continually breaking out, and his studies were all by fits and starts. He said himself afterwards that he made no great figure at mathematics, but could turn an ode of Horace better than any of them. He obtained one premium at a Christmas examination, which was considered rather a high honour; but his general progress was slow, and he was not admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts till 1749, two years after the usual time. He was contemporary with Burke, whose mighty genius was as yet utterly unsuspected, although he was silently employed in collecting those vast stores of knowledge which were afterwards to feed the splendid and far-seen fires of his eloquence. Whether Goldsmith was then acquainted with Burke, we are not informed; but no two more thoroughly appreciated each other in after days. Burke loved Goldsmith as he would have done a queer, careless, but interesting and gifted boy; and Goldsmith almost worshipped the transcendent intellect, the subtle genius, the princely eloquence, and the warm, kindly, fatherlike nature of Burke.

At this time good old Charles Goldsmith died, and Oliver found himself fatherless. Mr Contorine, however, did all he could to supply his place. A ludicrous story is told of this

period of his life. He was intended for the Church, and went to the Bishop of Elphin to be examined for orders, but, appearing in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected. Conceive the poor fellow returning from the examination, half-admiring and half-cursing the flaming cause of his bad success! He had always a strong taste for flaring colours in dress-a singular contrast, by the way, to the modest and elegant graces of his style. After this disappointment he became private tutor to the family of a gentleman in the neighbourhood, but soon tired of the situation, and threw it up. He had by some means or other contrived to accumulate a little money, with which he bought a good horse, put the surplus, amounting to thirty pounds, in his pocket, and set out on an excursionone of the most absurdly romantic since the days of Don Quixote. After a considerable time had elapsed, during which his family could get no information of his motions, he returned without a penny in his pocket; having exchanged his fine steed for a wretched pony called "Fiddleback"! His mother received him with a somewhat stern aspect. He told her his adventures, and added, with matchless naïveté, "And now, my dear mother, having struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder you're not happier to see me." He had, according to his own account, engaged a passage in a ship from Cork to North America, but had wandered into the country, and lost his passage. What was to be done with such an eccentric personage? Some stupid friend or other proposed that he should study law (as ridiculous a proposal as it were to try to teach a hare to hunt); and his friend, Mr Contorine, obligingly supplied him with funds to support him in his journey to England, and afterwards at the Temple. He set out, accordingly, via Dublin, where he fell in with a sharper, who engaged him in play and stripped him of his money; when he returned to his mother's house as penniless as before.

About the end of 1752 he was sent to Edinburgh as a student of medicine. Here he studied little, but played and caroused much. He made friends of L. MacLean (afterwards one of the many candidates for the honour of being "Junius"), and Dr Sleigh, who rescued him from the arrest of one Bar

clay, a tailor, to whom he had become security for a friend's debts. Whether because he connected unpleasant reminiscences with Scotland or not, certain it is that he bore it ever afterwards a deep grudge, and took every opportunity of detracting from the character of its inhabitants, and sneering at its scenery and manners. He set out next for Leyden, with his usual eccentricity taking ship for Bourdeaux, and was nearly lost on the passage. Arrived in Holland, heattended at his leisure hours the lectures of Gaubius on chemistry, and Albinus on anatomy; but his time was chiefly occupied in frequenting the theatre and other places of amusement. His friend Dr Ellis, who saw the necessity of his leaving Holland, strongly advised him to take a tour through the Continent, and lent him money to assist him in his expedition. This he spent in purchasing some rare flower-roots, and he was obliged to start on the tour of Europe with one clean shirt, and with nothing in his pockets; for even his tulips, which cost him so dear, he left behind him!

What a pity Goldsmith has not written a full account of this remarkable tour! One is never weary of looking at the strange, thoughtless pedestrian, with his ugly, pock-pitted face, his small, ill-built, ill-dressed figure, his gay nonchalant aspect, his broad Irish accent, his light heart and lighter purse, his little knapsack slung over his back, and his flute in his hand, passing on his way from town to town, and country to country,-exchanging his kind good-morrow with the labourer and the country maiden,-entering the French village at evening, and gathering around him and his flute a little circle of laughing faces and dancing feet; approaching some monastery or college, shadowed by its ancestral woods, and using his scholarship, such as it was, as an Open Sesame to the hospitality of the inmates, who receive, argue with, entertain, and send the amiable blundering stranger on his way the next day rejoicing; meeting the grim brigand, who, at the sight of Goldsmith's wardrobe, exchanges his original purpose of plunder for a surly salutation; sleeping now in the humblest hut, and now under the open sky, consoled by the feeling that it is the Rhine which is murmuring below his pillow; musing by the Lake of Geneva, or from

some Alpine summit looking down on the fair plains of Italy, and muttering to himself some of the noble lines of "The Traveller," which is already beginning to take shape in his mind, and which is to be the glorious essence, the bright residuum, of this most singular of journeys. That Goldsmith encountered innumerable privations and mortifications in his tour is unquestionable; but he was young, his spirits were high, he was cased in true Irish carelessness; hope still rose before him, "like a fiery column, the dark side not yet turned; " the countries he traversed were the most beautiful in the world—the inhabitants were then hospitable; and we believe, in after days, when slaving for the booksellers of London, that he looked back with a sigh to the time when he was free as the breeze or the sunbeam to wander where he willed,—the world all before him, Providence watching o'erhead, and a happy heart bounding and leaping within. He is understood to have sketched "The Traveller" at Geneva, and to have sent it to his brother Henry in Ireland. At Geneva, too, he met a gentleman with whom he engaged himself as private tutor. They soon quarrelled, however, and Goldsmith found himself at Marseilles, once more on foot, and pursuing his solitary way to Italy. While in Italy he visited Verona, Florence, Venice, and Padua, where he stayed six months studying medicine, and is said to have taken a medical degree. Padua was his furthest point. Here he turned round, and, pursuing his journey homewards in the same eccentric style, he reached London in the year 1756.

He arrived there with only a few halfpence in his pocket, and, as he says himself, "without friends, recommendation, money, or impudence." He became first an usher in a school, a situation for which he was extremely ill-adapted, and the minor miseries of which he has humorously described in the "Vicar of Wakefield." He soon sickened of it, and was taken by a chemist in Fishhill, into his laboratory. About this time he met his old friend Dr Sleigh, who was as kind as ever, helped him with his purse, and gave him-what he needed quite as much-his advice. He set up, by his friend's advice, as a medical practitioner in Southwark, and afterwards at the Temple. His practice was chiefly among the poor, and

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