them, they returned him an equivalent in praise; and this was all he wanted. The same ambition that actuates a monarch at the head of his army, influenced my father at the head of his table: he told the story of the ivy-tree, and that was laughed at; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one pair of breeches, and the company laughed at that; but the story of Taffy in the sedan-chair was sure to set the table in a roar. Thus his pleasure increased in proportion to the pleasure he gave; he loved all the world; and he fancied all the world loved him. "As his fortune was but small, he lived up to the very extent of it: he had no intention of leaving his children money, for that was dross; he was resolved they should have learning, for learning he used to observe, was better than silver or gold. For this purpose he undertook to instruct us himself, and took as much care to form our morals as to prove our understanding. We were told that universal benevolence was what first cemented society: we were taught to consider all the wants of mankind as our own; to regard the human face divine with affection and esteem; he wound us up to be mere machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest impulse made either by real or fictitious distress. In a word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands, before we were taught the more necessary qualifications of getting a farthing." However disposed to quit the University, Oliver found little to allure him to the country; the pecuniary circumstances of his nearest connexions enabling them to do little more than afford him a temporary home. Mr. and Mrs. Hodson lived in the house at Lissoy after the death of his father. His mother remained there also for a time; but removing soon afterwards to Ballymahon, occupied a small house, (still an object of interest to visiters, forming one corner of the road to Edgworthstown,) and survived about twenty years, as would appear, in very confined circumstances.* Henry, the clergyman, who served the curacy of his late father's parish and whose school was at this period limited, lived at the original family residence of Pallas; as appears by the copy of a My friend, the Rev. Mr Graham, supplies the following note, first printed in Mr. Shaw Mason's "Statistical Survey :" "The writer of this account purchased some old papers several years ago, at an auction in Ballymahon, and among them an account-book, kept by a Mrs. Edwards and a Miss Shore, who lived in the next house to Mrs. Goldsmith. In this village record were several shop accounts, from the year 1740 to 1756. Some of the entries, in the earliest of these accounts, ran thus :-Tea by Master Noll'—'Cash by ditto'-from which it appears, that Oliver was his mother's principal messenger. One of the accounts, in 1756, may be considered a curiosity, ascertaining the use and the price of green tea in this part of the country nearly eighty years ago. "Mrs. Goldsmith to Sarah Shore, Dr. Brought forward Jan. 16. Half an ounce of green tea A quarter of a pound of lump sugar An ounce of green tea Half a pound of rice A quarter of an ounce of green tea deed in the Registry of Dublin, stating that "the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, Clerk, of Pallismore in the County of Longford, as eldest son and heir-at-law of the late Charles Goldsmith, confirms to Daniel Hodson the lands assigned to him by his late father, in lieu of the marriage portion with his daughter Catherine." It bears date December 13th and 14th, 1750. For about two years, according to the verbal account given by Mrs. Hodson to the Rev. Mr. Handcock in 1790, the future poet "Having no fixed object in view, continued visiting about among his friends," which may have tended to render habits naturally careless, still more unsettled and irregular. Occasionally he is said to have assisted his brother in his school, the only return in his power to make for unintermitted protection and friendship; but to one of his temperament, an effort of no ordinary resolution. To this first initiation into the drudgery of teaching, was probably owing that disgust to the exercise of a profession honourable in itself, which he ever afterwards felt and hesitated not to avow, although compelled to resort to it as the means of subsistence when thrown upon his own resources. At Lissoy he likewise spent a considerable portion of time, entering into the rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law with the usual ardour of a young and unoccupied mind. Through life he preserved the fondest attachment to this spot; often revisiting it, as he said, in imagination, although restrained by circumstances he could not control, from realizing in person what memory delighted to retrace; and indeed a man of warm affections looks back upon few things with more satisfaction than the scenes and the friends of his youth. One of his subsequent letters enters strongly into these feelings: he remembers his acquaintance and country, he says, with the strongest affection,-yet stops to ask why this is,-when from the one he experienced no more than common civility, and from the other brought nothing away but his brogue and his blunders? On the same occasion he alludes, in a strain of fond recollection, to the scenery around Lissoy, presenting, he warmly says, "the most pleasing horizon in nature." Under the influence of similar feelings and nearly in the same language as in these letters, he commences one of his Essays; the locality though not expressly named, will be immediately obvious to the reader : "When I reflect on the unambitious retirement in which I passed the earlier part of my life in the country, I cannot avoid feeling some pain in thinking that those happy days are never to return. In that retreat all nature seemed capable of affording pleasure: I then made no refinements on happiness, but could be pleased with the most awkward efforts of rustic mirth; thought cross-purposes the highest stretch of human wit; and questions and commands the most rational way of spending the evening. Happy could so charming an illusion still continue! I find that age and knowledge only contribute to sour our dispositions. My present enjoyments may be more refined, but they are infinitely less pleasing. The pleasure the best actor gives, can no way compare to that I have received from a country wag who imitated a quaker's sermon. The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's last Good Night, or the cruelty of Barbara Allen."* In conversation he has been known to refer to this spot with something of pride as his family residence and in his writings, on more than one occasion, felt pleasure in recalling a scene where his father had fed the hungry, and sometimes lodged the houseless. The "Deserted Village" points to the exertion of this benevolence in several points of view; while the "Vicar of Wakefield," in describing his abode and the inmates to whom it formed an occasional home, is made to advert to it in others; the resort of idle and poor relatives, or of those who claim to be such, to families raised a little above them in condition, will be familiar to all acquainted with Ire land, in the following sketch : "As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger visit us to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great repution; and I profess, with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins, too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity without the help of the herald's office, and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by these claims of kindred; as we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that, as they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at the same table. So that if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colours of a tulip, or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy faces. "However, when any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value; and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them. By this the house was cleared of such as we did not like; but never was the family of Wakefield known to turn the traveller or the poor dependant out of doors."+ • See Works, vol. i., Bee, No. II. † See Works, vol. iii. Vicar of Wakefield, chap. i. CHAPTER IV. Declines to take Orders.-Ballymahon.-Accepts a Tutorship.-Travels to Cork. -Reputed Poetical attempts.—Adopts the Profession of Physic.—Edinburgh.— Mr. Lachlan Macleane. GOLDSMITH'S family, desirous of securing a respectable profession as well as provision for one without either, wished him to take orders under the belief that they could advance him in the church; but to this he felt a settled repugnance. "For the clerical profession," said Mrs. Hodson, "he had no liking; having always a strong inclination for visiting foreign countries." The real motives, judging from sentiments expressed in future life, and which he probably did not now think proper to disclose, appear to have been conscientious conviction of being unfitted by temperament for the sacred office, and a consequent dislike to undertake the performance of duties which he knew he wanted the requisite inclination to fulfil. All men, even such as are estimable in many respects, are not necessarily fitted for clergymen; they should be naturally disposed toward the calling, and not the calling made matter of convenience to their families or to themselves. So high an opinion had he formed of the purity of conduct necessary to such as attempted to admonish or to instruct their fellows from the sacred volume, that at a late period of life, as will be hereafter seen, when even requested to read prayers in a private family, he declined with the remark, "that he did not deem himself good enough." At length, induced by the persuasions of Mr. Contarine, whom it would have been ingratitude to disobey, he presented himself before the Bishop of Elphin, Dr. Synge, for ordination, and by the account of his sister, was rejected on the plea of being too young. The tradition in the diocess is, that he had neglected the proper professional studies, and that an exaggerated statement had reached the Bishop of his irregularities at College; while Dr. Strean alludes to a rumour, not at all improbable from his thoughtlessness and reputed love of gay dress, of some prejudice being formed against him from appearing before the Bishop in scarlet breeches. Whatever was the cause of rejection, he does not seem to have made a second attempt: the first he probably supposed enough to satisfy his friends; and the result did not displease himself, in escaping from what he considered the restraints of a clerical life. One of these restraints, frivolous no doubt and boyish as he afterwards considered it, was dislike to the usual dress of the profession; and in the paper already mentioned in the "Citizen of the World," it is thus alluded to:"After I had resided at college seven years, my father died and left me his blessing. Thus shoved from shore, without ill nature to protect, or cunning to guide, or proper stores to subsist me in so dangerous a voyage, I was obliged to embark in the wide world at twenty-two. But, in order to settle in life, my friends advised (for they always advise, when they begin to despise us,) they advised me, I say, to go into orders. "To be obliged to wear a long wig when I liked a short one, or a black coat when I generally dressed in brown, I thought was such a restraint upon my liberty, that I absolutely rejected the propasal. A priest in England is not the same mortified creature with a bonze in China. I rejected a life of luxury, indolence, and ease, from no other consideration than that boyish one of dress. So that my friends were now perfectly satisfied I was undone; and yet they thought it a pity, for one that had not the least harm in him, and was so very good-natured." The vicinity of Ballymahon to his usual places of residence carried him frequently thither, to enjoy such society as a small town in a rude district of country afforded. The province of Connaught and its borders have been always considered, even in Ireland, backward and unpromising; the land in many places for miles together, sterile; cultivation where it exists, imperfect; the houses of the gentry fewer in number and more widely scattered than in the other provinces; and the people less advanced in the arts, comforts, and knowledge of civilised life. There was at the period in question, still more traces of Celtic manners and peculiarities among them than at present; much simplicity, hospitality, and pride, mingled with habits of a ruder kind, little intercourse with strangers, defective education, and little appreciation of the advantages of literature. He adverts to the state of society as he found it, in one of his letters; inquiring why "he should be fond of a spot where the country is not fine and the company not good; where vivacity is supported by some humble cousin who has just folly enough to earn his dinner; and where more money has been spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare* (a celebrated racer of that day) in one season, than given in rewards to learned men since the times of Usher." In society thus characterized, although mingling with it, despised, he is said to have indulged in the usual propensities of a young man of lively imagination, but destitute of the consideration necessary to guide him in the business of life. Conscious of the possession of superior talents, of which, it is said, occasional proofs were given, and ambitious of being at the head of his company, his companions very willingly tendered their admiration in return for his efforts to please. "George Conway's Inn," mentioned in one of his letters, which stood and still stands, though shorn of its honours by rival establishments, opposite the residence of his mother, had more of his time In ridiculing national characteristics, in supposed extracts from a newspaper (Citizen of the World, Letter V.), he again alludes to the same topic. "Dublin.-We hear that there is a benevolent subscription on foot among the nobility and gentry of this kingdom, who are great patrons of merit, in order to assist Black and all Black in his contest with the Padareen mare." |