OLIVER GOLDSMITH-whose complete works are herewith issued to the world at a cheaper rate than was ever before attempted--was born at an isolated and almost inaccessible village in Ireland, called Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, was a Protestant clergyman

"Passing rich on forty pounds a year!" His stipend, however, from his clerical duties, was uncertain; and the above small income was made up by farming operations on a few fields which he cultivated. While upon this farm, five children were born to the worthy clergyman: Margaret, who died in childhood; Catherine, Henry, Jane, and Oliver, whose life we are now recording.

This

When the young Oliver had reached the age of two years, the circumstances of his father were materially improved. On the death of the rector of Kilkenny West, the living of the place was given to the Rev. Mr. Goldsmith. living was the gift of his wife's uncle, and was worth nearly two hundred a-year. Upon this improvement of the fortunes of the family, in 1730. they removed from Pallasmore to the more delightful village of Lessoy, where they had a respectable house and farm in the county of Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny, about midway between the towns of Ballymahon and Athlone. Three additional children were born here during the next ten years: Maurice, Charles, and John. The latter died in early years; and, with the exception of one, all the other children, as they grew up, passed through a life of viscissitude, and, in some cases, privation. At the age of twenty, Charles went, as a friendless adventurer, to Jamaica; and after an absence of some years, came to London, where he ultimately died, about fifty years ago, miserably poor, at a humble lodging in Somers Town. Catherine was fortunate enough to secure a wealthy husband, Mr. Hodson; but Jane married a poor man named Johnson. Both these sisters died at Athlone, some few years after the death of their brother Oliver. They had lived long enough to rejoice in the celebrity of his name, and to associate with themselves many a little incident in connection with the immortal pages of "The Vicar of Wakefield." Maurice had been brought up as a cabinet-maker, and ultimately kept a small shop in Charlestown, county of Roscommon, dying in very poor circumstances, in 1792.

The only one that followed his father's calling was Henry, and he died, after a plodding, arduous life, a village preacher and schoolmaster, in the year 1708.

Having thus chronicled the fortunes of some of Oliver's brothers and sisters, we leave them for a time to return to the boy who was one day to earn for himself a proud niche in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.

According to all accounts, Master Oliver Goldsmith was an exceedingly dull boy." A servant in the family, afterwards known as Elizabeth Delap, who became a schoolmistress at Lissoy, first took the boy in hand, and endeavoured to teach him his letters; but, as she says, "he seemed impenetrably stupid." She made but very little progress with him; but ultimately lived to the age of ninety; and it was her greatest source of joy, in the garrulity of her old age, even thirteen years after the poet's death, to recount how it was she that taught the great Dr. Oliver Goldsmith to read.

At the age of six years, Oliver was placed under the care of the village schoolmaster of Lissoy, a Mr. Thomas Byrne. He, however, had served as quarter-master of an Irish regiment, through the wars of Marlborough, and was fonder of telling the boys the adventures and warlike scrapes " he had gone through, than teaching them to "read, write and spell." It is surmised that much that was told him here led, to a great extent, to the wandering life which, for a considerable time, was the chief event in Goldsmith's career. Oliver had never been a good-looking boy-in fact, he was decidedly plain; and while at this school he suffered trom an attack of small-pox, which brought him nearly to death's door, and left him with features which too many of his schoolfellows called ugly. The kind-hearted old soldier pedagogue took pity on the boy, humoured his shy and awkward, unscholarly ways, and left him to pursue much of his own course. Hence it was that Oliver learned very little here.*

He was next removed to a superior school at Elphin, kept by the Rev. Mr. Griffin, where, much to his distaste, Oliver, for the first time, was put to study Horace and Ovid. He was still the pale, sickly, ill-favoured boy, and all considered him "a stupid, heavy, blockhead, little better than a fool, whom every one made fun of." The treatment he received here was never forgotten. It made him peevish and irritable; yet at times he was good-natured and even good-humoured.