think proper, upon a farther perusal. But, if we might venture to express our wishes, they would lead us to request that he would write the epitaph in English rather than in Latin, as we think that the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be perpetuated in the language to which his works are likely to be so lasting an ornament; which we also know to have been the opinion of the late Doctor himself." This remonstrance was circumscribed with the following names: "Edm. Burke, Tho. Franklin, Ant. Chamier, G. Colman, Wm. Vackell, J. Reynolds, W. Forbes, T. Barnard, R. B. Sheridan, P. Metcalfe, E. Gibbon, Jos. Warton." CELEBRATION OF GOLDSMITH'S BIRTH-DAY. Ir will be gratifying to the admirers of Goldsmith, to find that his memory is still fondly cherished in the neighbourhood of his birth-place. The following account is extracted from the Gentleman's Magazine for 1820. ON the 29th of November, some distinguished friends of taste and literature in Ireland, held a meeting at Ballymahon, to celebrate the anniversary of the celebrated poet, Oliver Goldsmith; and also for the purpose of devising the most practicable means of erecting a pillar to his memory, on that fascinating spot, in Lishoy, which presented to his eye the most agreeable horizon in nature. Unlike Swift, Congreve, and other ingrates, who either denied their country, or left no traces in their writings by which it could be ascertained, Goldsmith identified himself and his divine poetry with the localities of his natal spot, his inimitable delineations of which have elicited such universal feelings of admiration and delight. His memory, therefore, is well entitled to some public testimonial of regard from a country which derives so much honour from his birth; and we feel no doubt of the success of this laudable and spirited undertaking. We have been given to understand that it will not be necessary for any individual to subscribe more than a small sum, payable, in separate portions, on the two succeeding birth-days of the Poet; for it is reasonably expected that the subscription will be as general in Ireland as the feeling which has suggested it, in a country so remarkably distinguished for the literary taste and capabilities of its people. The Scotch have set us an example, very lately, by erecting splendid pillar, near Dumfries, to the memory of Burns. The Bard of Avon has long been the idol of taste in England, where, in every village that can boast of having produced an eminent literary character, the spot of his nativity is pointed out with conscious exultation; but in Ireland, the only memorial of her Goldsmith, buried in a foreign land—of him whose heart, untravelled, still fondly turned to her is his own old hawthorn tree in Lishoy, now nearly cut away by literary pilgrims, whose devotion to Goldsmith and his Deserted Village, shame the apathy of a country which has left both without a mark of public honour for almost half a century. a On the opening of the business, the Reverend Mr Graham, of Lifford, addressed the meeting nearly in the following words: - "We are assembled here, gentlemen, upon an occasion as interesting to the scholar, the philosopher, or the statesman, as any other which has occurred in this island for many centuries. We are all sufficiently aware of the great value of education, particularly of that description of it which has been denominated classical - how it distinguishes one man from another, almost as much as nature has distinguished man from the order of beings below him in the creation. Education of that kind acquires and preserves rank in society, as well as the means of supporting that rank. Countless families have risen by it into opulence and distinction, -witness the descendants of men of the different learned professions, who are now, in almost every county of Ireland, proprietors of that soil on which the founders of their families, with difficulty, obtained the rudiments of the education which raised them from the lower walks of life, to be rulers of the land, to sit among princes: and as many at least have, by the neglect of education, fallen in a generation or two from the highest walks of life, into the lowest state of obscurity and indigence. Connected most intimately with the cause of education is that of literature, by which the minds of mankind are smoothed, harmonized, and rendered capable of calmly investigating truth, and separating it from falsehood; and by it, next to the divine influence of the Christian faith, are men rescued from that degraded demi-savage state, which ever prevails in the absence of education, rendering them unsocial, diffident, suspicious, and hostile to the slightest gleam of the light of knowledge, which never fails to prove offensive to eyes habituated to darkness, Omnes hi metuunt versus, odere Poetas. Quis "The press is ever charged with electric horrors for them quis tibi timet, odit, horret.' From such persons only may we expect either opposition or want of support on the present occasion, and of such a Trulleberian race did Goldsmith himself speak, in his letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hudson, Esq. directed to the post-office of Ballymahon, on the 27th of December, 1757, in which the following passages may be found: -" 'Unaccountable, indeed, is it, that a man should have an affection for a place, who never received, when in it, above common civility—who never brought any thing out of it but his brogue and his blunders. But to be serious, let me ask myself what gives me a wish to see Ireland again? The country is a fine one, perhaps? No. There is good company in Ireland? No. The conversation is there made up of an obscene toast, or an improper song; the vivacity supported by some humble cousin, who has just folly enough to earn his dinner. Then, perhaps, there is more wit and learning among the Irish? No. There has been more money spent in the encouragement of a favourite race-mare there in one season, than given in rewards to men of learning since the times of Usher.' "But the times, gentlemen, are now altered for the better in all parts of the British empire, as well as in Ireland. We now hear of poets purchasing estates, of booksellers enrolled among the legislators of the realm; and when a man writes, none of his friends (as in the days of Goldsmith) imagine that he starves, or that he lives in a garret. We, therefore, consider this to be a favourable opportunity of paying a debt of public gratitude, too long due, and hitherto most shamefully neglected, and, therefore, have called this meeting, in the hope of its proving the means of drawing the public attention to the subject of a monument in honour of Oliver Goldsmith, that prodigy of talent and purity, considering the time in which he lived, and the low state of literature in the country which produced him. His poetry stands unrivalled, at this day, for true sublimity and genuine pathos. Disdaining the meretricious ornament and gaudy imagery which characterizes more than one of our modern poets, his finds the way at once to the heart; and such is the classical purity of his muse, that no sentiment is to be found in his charming poems, which the most scrupulous father would withhold from the pure and uncorrupted mind of his child. The same observation may be made of his prose: his unrivalled Vicar of Wakefield, his Citizen of the World, his Essays, his Abridgment of History, -in fact, to use the words of a distinguished Christian philosopher, who was never known to give such unqualified praise to any other writer, ancient or modern, "But, superadded to his general merit as a poet, a philosopher, and historian, Goldsmith possesses a more endearing claim, if possible, upon the veneration of his country: unlike Swift, Congreve, and others, he never denied his country, or left it a matter of doubt to posterity; on the contrary, we see that, although he had left it early and poorthough he could boast of having received no more than common civility in it, and but little of that even, from persons on whom he had the strongest claim, the love of Ireland was ever uppermost in his mind wherever he went. Her lovely scenery is immortalized in his poems, and he never gave up his intention of returning to the spot where first he drew his breath, 'till he resigned that breath in the arms of a beloved countryman, who attended his deathbed with the tender solicitude of an affectionate brother.' To his brother, the Reverend Henry Goldsmith, at Lissoy, was his Traveller addressed, and to the post-office of Ballymahon the packet, containing that immortal poem, was directed. That Lissoy is the identical spot from which he drew the enchanting scenery of his Deserted Village, has been demonstrated by the late ingenious Dr Newell of Cambridge University, who, a few years ago, republished his poems, with drawings of the Parsonage-house, the Church, the Mill, and the Hawthorn tree, accompanied by notes, which put the matter beyond all doubt to those acquainted with the local history of the country; and this demonstration, gentlemen, came from the pen of a learned Englishman, notwithstanding a line or two in the poem which would seem to indicate that the description was intended for an English village: A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintain'd its man. "The scene of his celebrated comedy, The Mistakes of a Night, was laid in the town of Ardagh, in this immediate neighbourhood, as related in Otridge's splendid edition of his works, and confirmed to me by the late Sir Thomas Fetherston, Baronet, a short time before his death. Some friend had given the young Poet a present of a guinea on his going from his mother's residence in this town, to a school in Edgeworthstown, where, it appears, he finished his education, of which he received the rudiments from the reverend Mr Hughes, vicar of this parish. He had diverted himself on the way the whole day, by viewing the gentlemen's seats on the road, until the fall of night, when he found himself a mile or two out of his direct road, in the middle of the street of Ardagh. Here he inquired for the best house in the place, meaning an inn; but being wilfully misunderstood by a wag, a fencing-master, of the name of Kelly, who boasted of having been the instructor of the celebrated Marquis of Granby, he was directed to the large old-fashioned residence of Sir Ralph Fetherston, the landlord of the town, where he was shewn into the parlour, when he found the hospitable master of the house sitting by a good fire. His mistake was immediately perceived by Sir Ralph, who being a man of humour, and well acquainted with the Poet's family, encouraged him in the deception. Goldsmith ordered a good supper, invited his host and the family to partake of it, treated them with a bottle or two of wine, and at going to bed, ordered a hot cake to be prepared for his breakfast; nor was it till his departure, when he called for the bill, that he discovered that while he imagined he was at an inn, he had been hospitably entertained in a private family of the first rank in the country. "It was originally intended, gentlemen, to hold this first anniversary of the birth of our Poet in Dublin, where, at this season of the year, we might hope for an attendance far more numerous than under any circumstances could be hoped for here; but it occurred to some of us, bound by ties whose force the Poet felt, that in this neighbourhood, if not in this very spot, directly opposite to the house in which he dwelt for many a year with his widowed mother, the proceedings ought to commence, which will, we hope, lead to the erection of some testimonial equally worthy of his memory and the spirit of a county which claims the honour of his birth. "The necessity of our being among the first to carry so just and so patriotic an undertaking into effect, may be readily proved. I need not inform you, gentlemen, that the natal spot of Goldsmith, as well as that of Homer, is in some danger of being disputed by posterity. Such has been the blundering stupidity of several of the early editors of our Poet's works, in the biographical scraps which they prefixed to them, that one of them tells us he was born at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, merely because he had many relations in that neighbourhood, and among them his cousin-german, the grandfather of my venerable friend here, John Goldsmith, of Ballyoughter, Esq.; and in the very same page almost, gives us his epitaph, written by Dr Johnson, directly con tradicting that allegation in these words, which are inscribed on his monument in Westminster Abbey: Natus in Hibernia Forniæ Longfordiensis "Another biographer, worthy to be classed among the early editors of Shakespeare, gives the original words of this epitaph, and translates them thus in a parallel column, transferring the birth-place of the Poet into the county of Wexford, He was born at Fernes, in the province of Leinster, at a place where Pallas had set her name.' An unlucky mistake respecting the natal spot of our Poet, occurs also on the books of Trinity College, owing to the residence of his uncle Henry at Lishoy, or the circumstance of his father having resided there; the entry runs thus: 1744, Olivarius Goldsmith, Siz. Filius Caroli Clerici, ann. agens 15, natus in Comitatu Westmeath, educatus sub Ferula M. Hughes-Tutor, M. Wilder.' But, notwithstanding these very contradictory statements, we may give full credit to the united testimony of many respectable persons, including some of the nearest relations of the Poet, but lately gone to their graves, that Oliver Goldsmith, who has been, in the same spirit of error, so often denominated a Doctor, was born within a mile and a half of Ballymahon, on the southern bank of the river Inny, at Pallas, in the parish of Cloncalla, commonly called Forney. The walls of the house are yet standing; the roof fell in but two years ago; it is distinctly visible from the canal between this and Tenelick, and in it, perhaps, rather than on any other spot, even his beloved mount before Lishoy gate,' should his monumental pillar be erected. The name of the townland in which this interesting ruin stands is spelled Pallice in our barony books; but those who can feel the charm of classic allusion under such a temptation, will readily pardon the great Antæus of literature, the author of the Dictionary of the English Language, for having once in his lifetime spelled a word erroneously. This evidence, gentlemen, I consider to be conclusive; for Dr Johnson cannot be supposed to have known that such obscure places as Pallice or Forney existed, except from the lips of the Poet himself, who was on the most intimate terms of friendship with him. "If we, in Ballymahon, have, on this occasion, dwelt with too much minuteness upon this disputed point, our best apology is, that the contending for the honour of the birth-place of such an ornament to his country, is a pardonable ambition; and it will be recollected, too, in favour of our claim, as well as in apology for our maintenance of it, that one of the wishes dearest to the poet's heart, when unable to return to the place of his nativity, was, 'that his brother and his sister, Lissoy and Ballymahon, would altogether make a migration to him into the county of Middlesex. "We have now, gentlemen, only to read some of the many interesting letters addressed to us on this occasion, and afterwards proceed to the consideration of the most practicable means of accomplishing the object of our meeting. Our undertaking is an honourable one, but we should recollect in limine, that the success of it depends upon causes entirely beyond our control. It is, as it were, a touchstone of the times we live in; if it succeeds, the statesman and the philosopher may augur favourably of the rising intelligence and prosperity of our island-if not, the very effort will stand in record on the pages of our history, to protect this generation, at least, from the Boeotian imputation of insensibility to the honour which devolves upon our country, for having produced such a man. As for him, to use the language of one of his earliest admirers, His own harmonious lays |