sister of the Poet, from trusting to memory, had fallen, in the account of her brother furnished to Bishop Percy. His birthday is there stated to be the 29th of November, instead of the date here assigned: Henry is also said to be eight years his senior,-an error probably repeated from seeing it in one of the Poet's letters, though the interval could not have been more than six years if so much; and a space of eight years, stated to have occurred between the birth of the previous child and Oliver, really took place between the latter and the succeeding son, Maurice. About the year 1730, Mr. Goldsmith, by the death of his wife's uncle, succeeded to the Rectory of Kilkenny West. He removed at the same time to Lissoy, a respectable house and farm on the verge of a small village standing in his own parish, on the right of the road leading from Ballymahon to Athlone, and about midway between these towns. It was neither a glebe house, nor did he, as is sometimes said, build it; but the lively interest which this spot has excited, as well in his native country as wherever the "Deserted Village" is read, as the supposed scene portrayed in the poem, added to the numerous inquiries made even in Ireland whether such a village as Auburn exists, or was really deserted, make some further notice of this spot necessary. Lissoy, in that scarce volume giving an account of the forfeited estates in Ireland, would appear to have been a species of personal property of James II. It was sold, or at least such portion of it as he claimed, amounting to 121 acres, in 1708, tó Captain Richard Newstead of Westmeath, for 4217., the anuual rent of the then tenant in possession, Robert Temple, Esq., being 297.; it is described as consisting of arable and pasture land, with the further recommendation of having a "good sheep-walk." Soon after the removal of Mr. Goldsmith thither, he procured a lease from the purchaser (Newstead) of about 70 acres of this land, at the rent of eight shillings an acre, renewable for ever on the payment of half a year's rent for every new life introduced, the first lives being those of himself, his eldest son Henry, and daughter Catherine, afterwards Mrs. Hodson.* This property remained in the family till 1802, when it was sold by Mr. Henry Goldsmith, then in America, son of the above-named Henry the clergyman and of whom an account will afterwards appear, to Mr. Bond, a connexion of the family by marriage, in whose possession it remains. The identity of Lissoy with the scene of the poem, in the general belief of the people of the vicinity, is corroborated by an anecdote told by a traveller some yeas ago in the United States. "The Deserted Village,' said he (Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, is the speaker,) relates to the scenes in which Goldsmith was an actor. Auburn is a poetical name for the village of Lissoy in the * An abstract of this deed, dated January 28th, 1731, may be seen in the Register Office, Dublin; also a second, dated September 1742, fixing the sum of 261. as the annual rent of the lands in question, to prevent dispute respecting the amount of rent, the lease having specified certain boundaries, rather than the precise number of acres. county of Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny West. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. I remember him well. He was, indeed, a man severe to view. A woman called Walsey Cruse kept the alehouse 'Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place.' I have been often in the house. The hawthorn-bush was remarkably large, and stood opposite the alehouse. I was once riding with Brady, titular Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me, Ma foy, Best, this huge overgrown bush is mightily in the way; I will order it to be cut down.' What, sir!' said I, 'cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn-bush, that supplies so beautiful an image in the Deserted Village! Ma foy!' exclaimed the Bishop, is that the hawthornbush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the axe, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch!'"+" 66 An anecdote connected with this subject, and of which further notice will occur, requires to be mentioned here. In November, 1738, a part of the townland of Lissoy, and the adjoining lands of Cannorstown to the number of 600 acres, were sold by Jeffrey French, Esq. of the Middle Temple," to the "Honourable Robert Naper lieutenant-general of his Majesty's forces in Ireland," for the sum of £3,300; but the General appears to have died before the purchase was completed. Upon this property, named Ballybegg, lying behind the house of Mr. Goldsmith, about half a mile distant, Mr. William Naper, son of the General, several years afterwards built the family residence named Littleton. In the preliminary arrangements, some circumstances probably neither harsh nor unjust in themselves connected with the removal of part of the tenantry, gave rise in the mind of Goldsmith, morbidly acute in his benevolent feelings and particularly towards the poorer classes of society, to the idea of the "Deserted Village." Proprietary rights cannot always be exercised by landlords in Ireland, even in a reasonable manner, without extreme jealousy on the part of the people. Circumstances therefore which occur daily in England, and produce neither censure nor notice, excite in the former loud complaint, if not open hostility. Any thing resembling severity becomes speedily known and loudly censured; and such impressions, however untrue, taken up and acted upon by the imagination and eloquence of a poet, are dangerous assailants of reputation. An attack in simple prose may be answered, and seldom long survives the period of contention; but embalmed in verse, the supposed misdeeds of an offender may endure as long as the language.‡ The Irish Roman Catholic Clergy were then all educated in France, and in language and manners were often more French than Irish. f Davis's Travels in the United States of America, p. 113. It may amuse the political economist to know the different opinions then entertained of the influence of peace and war upon the value of landed property. In a lease, dated March 1744, from the above-named William Naper to Gerald Dillon, of 141 acres of the land around Ballybegg (adjoining Lissoy,) it is stipulated, The house once occupied by the rector of Kilkenny West, pleasantly situated and of good dimensions, is now a ruin, verifying the truth of the pathetic lines of his son "Vain transitory splendours! Could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!" The front, including a wing, extends, as nearly as could be judged by pacing it, sixty-eight feet by a depth of twenty-four; it consisted of two stories, with five windows in each. The roof has been off for a period of twenty years; the gable ends remain, but the front and back walls of the upper story have crumbled away, and if the hand of the destroyer be not stayed, will soon wholly disappear. Two or three wretched cottages for labourers, surrounded by mud, adjoin it on the left. Behind the house is an orchard of some extent and the remains of a garden, both utterly neglected. In front, a pretty avenue of double rows of ash trees, which formed the approach from the high road, about sixty yards distant, and at one time presented an object of interest to travellers, has, like every other trace of care or superintendence, disappeared-cut down by the ruthless hand of some destroyer. No picture of desolation can be more complete. As if an image of the impending ruin had been present, the Poet has painted with fearful accuracy what his father's house was to be— "Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And we contemplate the realization of the melancholy scene as we do the poem of the unfortunate Falconer, who, while singing the story of one shipwreck, scarcely conceived he was fated to perish by a second. A visiter to this spot will be tempted to believe, from the ignorance he finds among many of the neighbouring peasantry, that little enthusiasm exists regarding the name of him who nevertheless gives it all its importance. We found some unexpected instances of this. In Ireland the legend of a saint, or of a miracle, is universally familiar and never forgotten; but not so the memorials of her distinguished men. These have too often passed away with contemporary generations. Nor are the middling and upper classes exempt from the charge of neglecting what it should be their first ambition affectionately to cherish. It is not that they are indifferent to the fame of their celebrated countrymen, but we require more obvious proofs of the fact; it is in the public statue and the column, that their professions of admiration should be brought to the test of performance. In the homely village, standing a few hundred yards from the house, a spirit of veneration for the memory of Goldsmith has been that eight shillings an acre rent shall be paid during the war between Great Britain and Spain, and ten shillings during peace. fostered by a neighbouring gentleman,* who has used all his influence to preserve from the ravages of time and passing depredators, such objects and localities as serve to mark allusions in the poem. Many of these are pointed out with sufficient resemblance to confirm an opinion, of which more extended notice will hereafter occur, of the Poet having this spot in view when engaged in its composition. Nothing could be more natural, in sketching rural character and scenery, than to look back on such as delighted his youth, and thence most forcibly impressed his memory. 66 At Lissoy, Oliver, when about three years old, was given in charge of his first instructress: she was a relative, resident in the family, who by marriage with a neighbouring farmer became afterwards known as Elizabeth Delap, and died about 1787. In the decline of life she kept a small school in the village, and took pride in speaking to visiters of her former office. "I should have observed," writes Dr. Strean, now rector of Athlone, who was eighteen years curate of this parish, "that Elizabeth Delap, who was a parishioner of mine, and died at the age of about ninety, often told me she was the first who put a book into Goldsmith's hands; by which she meant, that she taught him his letters. She was allied to him, and kept a little school." "Within the last three years," says the Rev. Thomas Handcock, in a letter to Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq., of Dublin, for whom he was making inquiries on this subject in 1790, "I was called, in the absence of a neighbouring clergyman, to visit an old woman at Lissoy (the real name of the place, Auburn,) and, almost with her last breath, she boasted to me of being the first person who had put a book into Goldsmith's hands."+ The characteristics of his mind in infancy, according to the account of Mrs. Delap, were not promising. She admitted he was one of the dullest boys ever placed under her charge, and doubted, for some time, whether any thing could be made of him; or, in the words used by Mr. Handcock, he seemed "impenetrably stupid." Dr. Strean gleaned some remembrances to the same effect. "He was considered," says that gentleman, "by his contemporaries and school-fellows, with whom I have often conversed on the subject, as a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom every one made fun of." To another inquirer, a Mr. Daly, who had collected some particulars of his early life, and who died in France early in the Revolution, her accounts were rather more favourable. She confessed he John Hogan, Esq., who, succeeding to an estate in the neighbourhood, built a pretty house on the opposite side of the road, named after the scene of the poem, Auburn; not the poem, as some seem to imagine, called after the house. This gentleman's zeal deserves every praise; and the more, perhaps, because it has not been imitated in the neighbourhood. † MS. Correspondence, communicated by J. C. Walker, Esq., of Dublin, nephew to the author of " Memoirs of the Irish Bards." Known to the late Dr. M'Veagh M'Donnell, of Orchard Street, Portman Square, a protégé of Goldsmith, of whom some account will hereafter be given. Mr. Daly communicated to that gentleman several particulars of his former patron, was very young at the time; that he was docile, diffident, easily managed, and that his inaptitude for retaining his lessons might have arisen from the carelessness common to all children. Such circumstances are no otherwise worthy of notice, than merely for the gratification of curiosity; they indicate nothing. He is a bold speculator who draws decided inferences of what the man is to be, from the casual peculiarities of the mere child. At the age of about six years he was turned over to the care of the village schoolmaster, Thomas Byrne, a person characterized by many points of originality, had the Poet thought fit to sketch him at length. He had been educated for the profession he now followed; but, enlisting into the army, went with it to the Continent, and rose to be quartermaster of a regiment serving in Spain during the reign of Queen Anne. When reduced on the conclusion of peace, he returned to his original calling of an instructer of youth. His attainments were more than sufficient for all he professed to teach, which, in the want of more advanced scholars, were confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the observations on manners and character furnished by the life of a soldier, set off to advantage such knowledge as he had gleaned from books. He is represented to have been eccentric in his habits, unsettled in disposition, of a romantic turn, wrote poetry, was well versed in the fairy superstitions of the country, and, what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth. He could likewise, according to the accounts of a few of his scholars who were living about 1790, given to the Rev. Mr. Handcock, "translate extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse, of, at least, equal elegance." Not the least of his qualifications was the art of narrating his adventures in a manner to fix the attention and curiosity of his neighbours, and the scene of these narratives was commonly the alehouse. In the school, also, when indisposed to teach a lesson, he would often tell a story; and among the most eager listeners on such occasions was young Goldsmith, whose imagination appears to have been so much excited by what he heard, as to induce his friends to attribute to this cause, that wandering and unsettled turn which distinguished part of his future life. Under the tuition of Byrne he made no material progress; a dawning of natural powers, indeed, appeared, which relatives are happy to see and proud to record; he began to write puerile rhymes, and destroyed them as fast as they were written but the usual school acquirements, either from defective memory or application, scarcely kept pace with those of other boys. The seeming activity of imagination exhibited by his verses made a strong impression upon his mother, who early began to believe that he was destined to make some figure in the world. His temper at this time, by the account of Mrs. Hodson, though peculiar, was kind and affectionate; his and believed he had discovered a few of his minor poetical pieces, of which notice will be taken in a future page. • MS. Letter to the late Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. |