1738. dress and other innocent follies what his friends till then Æt. 10. had done their best to banter him out of. It was to no purpose he made the attempt. So unwitting a contrast to gentleness, to simplicity, to an utter absence of disguise, in his real nature, could but make an absurdity the more. "Why, "what wouldst thou have, dear Doctor!" said Johnson, laughing at a squib in the St. James's Chronicle which had coupled himself and his friend as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour Lost, and at which poor Goldsmith was fretting and foaming; "who the plague is hurt with all this nonsense? and how is a man the worse, I wonder, in his "health, purse, or character, for being called Holofernes?" "How you may relish being called Holofernes," replied Goldsmith, "I do not know; but I do not like at least to play Goodman Dull."* Much against his will it was the part he was set down for from the first. 66 66 66 But were there not still the means, at the fireside of his good-hearted father, of turning these childish rebuffs to something of a wholesome discipline? Alas! little; there was little of worldly wisdom in the home circle of the kind but simple preacher, to make a profit of this worldly experience. My father's education, says the man in black, and no one ever doubted who sat for the portrait, was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than "his education. . . 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. 66 * Mrs. Piozzi's Ancedotes (1786), 180, 181. 1738. "As his fortune was but small, he lived up to the very "extent of it: he had no intentions of leaving his children Et. 10.. "money, for that was dross; he was resolved they should 64 66 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 pains to form our "morals as to improve 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." Acquisitions highly primitive, and supporting what seems to have been the common fame of the Goldsmith race. "The Goldsmiths were always a strange family," confessed three different branches of them, in as many different quarters of Ireland, when inquiries were made by a recent biographer of the poet. "They rarely acted "like other people: their hearts were always in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but "what they ought." In opinions or confessions of this kind, however, the heart's right place is perhaps not so well discriminated as it might be, or collision with the head would be oftener avoided. Worthy Doctor Strean expressed himself more correctly when Mr. Mangin was making his inquiries more than forty years ago. Several 66 1738. Æt. 10. "of the family and name," he said, " live near Elphin, who, as well as the poet, were, and are, remarkable for their worth, but of no cleverness in the common affairs of the If cleverness in the common affairs of the world is what the head should be always versed in, to be meditating what it ought, poor Oliver was a grave defaulter. We are all of us, it is said, more or less related to chaos; and with him, to the last, there was much that lay unredeemed from its void. Sturdy boys who work a gallant way through school, and are the picked men of their colleges, and grow up to thriving eminence in their several callings, and found respectable families, are seldom troubled with this relationship till chaos reclaims them altogether, and they die and are forgotten. All men have their advantages, and that is theirs. But it shows too great a pride in what they have, to think the whole world should be under pains and penalties to possess it too; and to set up so many doleful lamentations over this poor, weak, confused, erratic, Goldsmith nature. Their tone will not be taken here, the writer having no pretension to its moral dignity. Consideration will be had for the harsh lessons this boy so early and bitterly encountered; it will not be forgotten that feeling, not always rightly guided or controlled, but sometimes in a large excess, must almost of necessity be his who * Mangin's Essay, 149. +"A lad whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from "that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclination, have chalked 66 out, by four or five years' perseverance probably obtains every advantage and "honour his college can bestow. I forget whether the simile has been used before, "but I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity "of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and consequently con"tinue always muddy. Passions may raise a commotion in the youthful breast, "but they disturb only to refine it. However this be, mean talents are often "rewarded in colleges with an easy subsistence." Inquiry into the Present State of has it in charge to dispense largely, variously, and freely 1739. to others; and in the endeavour to show that the heart Et. 11. of Oliver Goldsmith was indeed rightly placed, it may perhaps appear that his head also profited by so good an example. At the age of eleven he was removed from Mr. Griffin's, and put to a school of repute at Athlone, about five miles from his father's house, and kept by a reverend Mr. Campbell.* At about the same time his brother Henry went as a pensioner to Dublin University, and it was resolved that in due course Oliver should follow him: a determination, his sister told Doctor Percy, which had replaced that of putting him to a common trade,t on those evidences of a certain liveliness of talent which had broken out at uncle John's being discussed among his relatives and friends. He remained at Athlone two years; and, when Mr. Campbell's ill-health obliged him to resign his charge, was removed to the school of Edgeworthstown, kept by the reverend Patrick Hughes. Here he stayed more than three years, and was long remembered by the school acquaintance he formed; among whom were Mr. Beatty, Mr. Nugent, Mr. Roach, and Mr. Daly, to whom we are indebted for Polite Learning, chap. x. So, too, in his Life of Bolingbroke, he excuses the youthful "Oliver was his second son, and born very unexpectedly after an interval of seven years from the birth of the former child, and the liberal education which "their father was then bestowing on his eldest son bearing hard upon his small "income, he could only propose to bring up Oliver to some mercantile employment." Mrs. Hodson's narrative, in the Percy Memoir, 3. In the next page she adds, "he "began at so early a period to show signs of genius that he quickly engaged the "notice of all the friends of the family, many of whom were in the church." 1741. Æt. 13. 1743. some traits of that early time. They recollected Mr. Et. 15. Hughes's special kindness to him, and "thinking well" of him, as matters not then to be accounted for.* The good master, it appeared, had been Charles Goldsmith's friend. They dwelt upon his ugliness and awkward manners; they professed to recount even the studies he liked or disliked (Ovid and Horace were welcome to him, he hated Cicero, Livy was his delight, and Tacitus opened him new sources of pleasure); they described his temper as ultra-sensitive, but added that though quick to take offence, he was more feverishly ready to forgive. They also said, that though at first diffident and backward in the extreme, he mustered sufficient boldness in time to take even a leader's place in the boyish sports, and particularly at fives or ballplaying. Whenever an exploit was proposed or a trick was going forward, "Noll Goldsmith" was certain to be in it; an actor or a victim. Of his holidays, Ballymahon was the central attraction; and here too recollection was vivid and busy, as soon as his name grew famous. An old man who directed the sports of the place, and kept the ball-court in those days, * We are told, in a note to Mrs. Hodson's narrative, that from Mr. Hughes he profited more than from either of the other masters, as he conversed with him on a footing very different from that of master and scholar. "This circumstance Dr. "Goldsmith always mentioned with respect and gratitude." Percy Memoir, 6. Mr. Daly's remark, as quoted by Mr. Prior (i. 34), is that "when he had once mastered the difficulties of Tacitus, he found pleasure in the perusal and "occasional translation of that writer." It is less easy to believe what is added, that it was in consequence of a reproof from his elder brother he first began to pay attention to style in writing. Having sent Henry some short and confused letters from school, he received for reply, we are told, a curt piece of advice, which he afterwards turned to account, that "if he had but little to say, he should endeavour "to say it well." "He was remarkably active and athletic, of which he gave proof in all "exercises among his playmates, and eminently in ball-playing, which he was very "fond of, and practised whenever he could." Doctor Strean, in Mangin's Essay, 149, 150. |