1747.

youth are spoken of. Doubtless there were better things to be done, by a man of stronger purpose. But the nature of Et. 19. men is not different from that of other living creatures; it gives the temper and the disposition, but not the nurture or the culture. These Goldsmith never rightly had, except in such sort as he could himself provide; and now, assuredly, he had not found them in his college. "That strong, steady disposition which alone makes men great," he avowed himself deficient in:* but were other dispositions not worth the caring for? His imagination might have been too warm "to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary "subtleties of Smiglesius:" + but with nothing less cold or dreary might a warm imagination have been cherished? When, at the house of Burke, he talked these matters over in after years with Edmund Malone, he said that, though he made no great figure in mathematics, which was a study in much repute there, he could turn an ode of Horace into English better than any of them. His tutor, Mr. Theaker Wilder, would sooner have set him to turn a lathe.

This tutor, this reverend instructor of youth, was the same who, on one occasion in Dublin streets, sprang at a bound from the pavement on a hackney-coach which was passing at its swiftest pace, and felled to the ground the driver, who had accidentally touched his face with the whip. So, mathematics being Mr. Theaker Wilder's intellectual passion, the same strength, agility, and ferocity which drove him into brawls with hackney-coachmen, he carried to

See post, Book II. Chap. iv. Letter to his brother-in-law Hodson.

+ Such is his remark, with probable reference to himself, on Parnell's want of success at Dublin university. Miscellaneous Works, iii. 358. See also the seventeenth of his Essays (on a Taste for the Belles Lettres), in which he contrasts Swift's failure at college with his success in after-life.

Boswell, ii. 189. Watkins's Anecdotes of Men of Learning and Genius, 513.

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the demonstrations of Euclid; and for this, all his life afterEt. 19. wards, even more than poet Gray," did poor Goldsmith wage war with mathematics. Never had he stood up in his class that this learned savage did not outrage and insult him. Having the misery to mistake malice for wit, the comic as well as tragic faculty of Mr. Wilder found endless recreation in the awkward, ugly, "ignorant," most sensitive young man.† There was no pause or limit to the strife between them. The tutog's brutality rose even to personal violence; the pupil's shame and suffering hardened into reckless idleness; and the college career of Oliver Goldsmith was proclaimed a wretched failure.

Gray, while yet as young as Goldsmith, complained from Cambridge to West in much the same language that Goldsmith might have employed in Dublin, if at this early time of life he had been blessed with such a friend. "I have endured "lectures daily and hourly since I came last, supported by the hopes of being "shortly at full liberty to give myself up to my friends and classical companions, "who, poor souls! though I see them fallen into great contempt with most people "here, yet I cannot help sticking to them, and out of a spirit of obstinacy (I think) "love them the better for it; and indeed what can I do else? Must I plunge into "metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; nature has not furnished me "with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in "too much light; I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, "but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly; and if "these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it. The people I behold "all around me, it seems, know all this and more, and yet I do not know one of "them who inspires me with any ambition of being like him." Gray's Works, Ed. Mitford (1835), ii. 7-9. "Gray regretted his want of mathematical knowledge," says Norton Nicholls, "yet he would never allow that it was necessary, in order "to form the mind to a habit of reasoning or attention. Does not Locke require as "much attention as Euclid ?" &c. &c. Works, v. 52.

+ Percy Memoir, 15. "Theaker Wilder, a man of the most morose and merciless "temper, who thenceforth persecuted him with unremitting cruelty, especially at the "quarterly examinations, when he would insult him before his fellow students by "sarcastic taunts and ironical applauses of the severest malignity." "He was a

66

younger son," says Mr. Shaw Mason, "of the family of Castle Wilder, in the "county of Longford." Statistical Account, iii. 357. "I well remember," writes Dr. Wilson to Malone, "for he was in the class below me, that his tutor (Wilder), "examining him in the Sen. Soph. Class, commenced his judgments with a Male, "and concluded them with a Valde Bene. 'Twas a mistake that the good Doctor "(the tutor) often fell into, to think he was witty when he was simply malicious." Prior, i. 64.

Let us be thankful that it was no worse, and that parti- 1747. cipation in a college riot was after all the highest of his Et. 19. college crimes. Twice indeed he was cautioned for neglecting even his Greek lecture; but he was also thrice commended for diligence in attending it; and Doctor Kearney said he once got a prize at a Christmas examination in classics. The latter seems doubtful; but at any rate the college riot was the worst to allege against him, and in this there was no very active sin. A scholar had been arrested, though the precincts of the university had always been held privileged from the intrusion of bailiffs, and the students resolved to take rough revenge. It was in the summer of 1747. They explored every bailiff's den in Dublin, found the offender by whom the arrest was made, brought him naked to the college pump, washed his delinquency thoroughly out of him; and were so elated with the triumph, and everything that bore affinity to law, restraint, or authority, looked so ludicrous in the person of this drenched bailiff's-runner, their miserable representative, that it was on the spot proposed to crown and consummate success by breaking open Newgate, and making a general jail delivery. The Black Dog, as the prison was called, stood on the feeblest of legs, and with one small piece of artillery must have gone down for ever; but the cannon was with the constable, the assailants were repulsed, and some townsmen attracted by the fray unhappily lost their lives. Five of the ringleaders were discovered, and expelled the college; and among five lesser offenders who were publicly admonished for being present, "aiding and abetting,"* the name of Oliver Goldsmith occurs.

Quod seditioni favisset et tumultuantibus opem tulisset." Memoir, 16.

See Percy

D

1747.

More galled by formal University admonition than by Et. 19. Wilder's insults, and anxious to wipe out a disgrace that seemed not so undeserved, Goldsmith tried in the next month for a scholarship. He lost the scholarship, but got an exhibition:* a very small exhibition truly, worth some thirty shillings, of which there were nineteen in number, and his was seventeenth in the list. In the way of honour or glory this was trifling enough; but, little used to anything in the shape of even such a success, he let loose his unaccustomed joy in a small dancing party at his rooms, of humblest

sort.

Wilder heard of the affront to discipline, suddenly showed himself in the middle of the festivity, and knocked down the poor triumphant exhibitioner. It seemed an irretrievable disgrace. Goldsmith sold his books next day, got together a small sum, ran away from college, lingered fearfully about Dublin till his money was spent, and then, with a shilling in his pocket, set out for Cork. He did not know where he would have gone, he said, but he thought of America. For three days he lived upon the shilling; parted by degrees with nearly all his clothes to save himself from famine; and long afterwards told Reynolds, what his sister relates in her narrative, that of all the exquisite meals he had ever tasted, the most delicious was a handful of grey peas given him by a girl at a wake after twenty-four hours' fasting. vision of America sank before this reality, and he turned his feeble steps to Lissoy. His brother had private intimation of his state, went to him, clothed him, and carried him back to college. "Something of a reconciliation," says Mrs. Hodson, was effected with the tutor.

The

Probably the tutor made so much concession as to promise

*

Percy Memoir, 16.

+ Ibid, 7, 8.

+ Ibid, 5.

not to strike him to the ground again; for certainly no 1748. other improvement is on record. The insults, the merciless Æt. 20. jests, the "Oliver Goldsmith turned down,"-continue as before.* We still trace him less by his fame in the class-room than by his fines in the buttery-books. The only change is in that greater submission of the victim which marks unsuccessful rebellion. He offers no resistance; makes no effort of any kind; sits, for the most part, indulging day-dreams. A Greek Scapula has been identified t which he used at this time, scrawled over with his writing. "Free. Oliver "Goldsmith;" "I promise to pay, &c. Oliver Goldsmith;"+ are among the autograph's musing shapes. Perhaps one half the day he was with Steele or Addison in parliament; perhaps the other half in prison with Collins or with Fielding. We should be thankful, as I have said, that a time so dreary and dark bore no worse fruit than that. The shadow cast over his spirit, the uneasy sense of disadvantage which obscured his manners in later years, affected himself singly; but how many they are, whom such suffering, and such idleness, would have wholly and for ever corrupted. The spirit hardly less generous, cheerful, or

An anecdote, "often told in conversation to Bishop Percy," obtained one of these turnings down for the rebellious sizar. Wilder called on Goldsmith, at a lecture, to explain the centre of gravity; which, on getting no answer, he proceeded himself to explain: calling out harshly to Oliver at the close, "Now, blockhead, "where is your centre of gravity?" The answer-which was delivered in a slow, hollow, stammering voice, and began "Why, Doctor, by your definition, I think it "must be"-disturbed every one's centre of gravity in the lecture room; and, turning the laugh against Wilder, turned down poor Oliver. Mr. Prior found the latter brief record duly entered under the date of May 9, 1748, on consulting the senior lecturer's book in Dublin University. i. 90. + Prior, i. 94.

Who can possibly doubt the original from whom the man in black's experiences were taken. Citizen of the World, xxvii. "The first opportunity he [my father] "had of finding his expectations disappointed, was in the middling figure I made at "the university: he had flattered himself that he should soon see me rising into "the foremost rank in literary reputation, but was mortified to find me utterly "unnoticed and unknown. His disappointment might have been partly ascribed