money. He halted at the little town of Ardagh, and inquired of the first person he met, which was the best house of the place; the person thus accosted was a notorious wag, and directed Oliver to the family mansion of Mr. Featherstone. Goldsmith accordingly rode up to what he supposed to be an inn, ordered his horse to be taken to the stable, walked into the parlour, seated himself by the fire, and demanded what he could have for supper. The owner of the house soon discovered Oliver's whimsical mistake, and with good humour indulged it, especially as he accidentally learned that the intruding guest was the son of an old acquaintance. The supper was served; Goldsmith condescendingly insisted that the landlord and his wife and daughter should sup with him, and he ordered a bottle of wine; and before going to bed, he gave especial orders to have a hot cake for breakfast. Next morning, great was his dismay when he found that he had been swaggering in the house of a private gentleman! True to his habit of turning the events of his life to literary account, we find this chapter of ludicrous blunders and cross purposes dramatized many years afterwards in his admirable comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes of a Night.

OLIVER'S EARLY RHYMES.

When he began to be noted as a rhymer, his zeal in this noble art was, it seems, quickened by the local celebrity of a volume of verse by one Lawrence Whyte, a neighbour and acquaintance of his family, which was published in 1741. This Whyte described rural manners, and especially the grievances of the Irish tenantry, in many thousands of couplets, now forgotten, which passed in their day for successful imitations of the style of Swift; but Mr. Prior notices them, and particularly a piece in four cantos, called the Parting Cup, or the Humours of Deoch an Doruis, on account of Goldsmith's confession to one of his eminent literary friends that this rustic bard gave his mind its first strong impression of the cruelty with which the Irish poor were treated, and suggested some of the most striking passages in the Deserted Village. It is curious, at all events, to observe that the themes of Whyte's indignant doggerel were exactly those which an Irish patriot of the same class would probably select, now that Whyte has been near a hundred years in his grave.

OLIVER AT COLLEGE.

In his seventeenth year, Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin; but his father was no longer able to place him there as a pensioner, as he had done his eldest son Henry; he was obliged, therefore, to enter him as a sizer, or poor scholar." He was lodged in one of the top rooms adjoining the library of the building, numbered 35, where his name might long be seen, scratched by himself upon the glass; the pane has been removed, and is now inclosed in a frame, and deposited in the manuscript-room of the College library.

A student of this class is taught and boarded gratuitously, and has to pay but a very small sum for his room: in return for his advantages he has to render himself useful in a variety of ways. In Trinity College, in Goldsmith's time, several menial offices were exacted from the sizer. He was obliged to sweep part of the courts in the morning; to carry up the dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' table, and to wait in the hall until that body had dined. His very dress marked the inferiority of the "poor student" to his happier classmates it was a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, and a plain black cloth cap without a tassel.

The death of his worthy father, which took place early in 1747, rendered Goldsmith's situation at college extremely irksome. His mother was left with little more than the means of providing for the wants of her household. He would have been compelled, therefore, to leave college, had it not been for the occasional contributions of friends, the foremost among whom was his generous uncle Contarine. He had two college associates from whom he would occasionally borrow small sums. When these casual supplies failed him, he was more than once obliged to raise funds for his immediate wants by pawning his books.

At college, he was remembered by one of his contemporaries, as one that would never refuse to join a party of pleasure; who emerged from his comfortless cell to exhibit animal spirits of apparently the maddest hilarity-who told his story well and sung his song better, and when he had no other means of paying a tavern reckoning, would indite a ballad for the street-singers, and carry it "to the sign of the Reindeer in Mountrath-street, where he found a ready sale at five shillings each." The Mr. Beatty, his chum, whose son fur

nishes these particulars, used to add, that Oliver "exhibited for his offspring all the partiality of a parent, by strolling the streets at night to hear them sung, and marking the degree of applause which each received."

Edmund Burke was a fellow-student with Goldsmith at Dublin. Neither the statesman nor the poet gave promise of their future celebrity, though Burke certainly surpassed his contemporary in industry and application; and evinced more disposition for self-improvement, associating himself with a number of his fellow-students in a debatingclub. But Goldsmith preferred to mingle with the gay and thoughtless. On one occasion, he was implicated in a riot, under one Gallows Walsh," when a student was rescued from a bailiff, who was ducked in an old cistern. They then joined some riotous townsmen, and provided themselves with cannon to attack Newgate; when troops fired upon them, and two townsmen were killed. A severe scrutiny of this affair took place at the University, when four ringleaders were expelled, and others, including Goldsmith, were publicly admonished.

Though he was occasionally distinguished by his translations from the classics, he did not promise much. Like Johnson at Oxford, he was a lounger at the college-gate he gained neither premiums nor a scholarship, and was not admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts till two years after the regular time. He had the disadvantage of a savage tutor, who used to insult him at public examinations. On June 15, 1747, he obtained his only academical laurel, being an Exhi bition on the foundation of Erasmus Smythe, Esq.

r;

On one occasion, poor Oliver was so imprudent as to invite a company of young persons, of both sexes, to a dance and supper in his rooms; when his tutor broke in upon the revelry, belaboured him before his guests, and rudely broke up the party. The disgrace of this treatment drove him for a time from the University. He set out from Dublin, intending to sail from Cork for some other country, he knew not whither but after wandering about till he was reduced to such hunger, that he thought a handful of grey peas, which a girl gave him at a wake, the sweetest repast he had ever tasted, he returned home, like the prodigal son, and matters were adjusted for his being received again at college. His affectionate brother Henry furnished him with money and clothes; soothed his feelings with gentle counsel; prevailed upon him to return

to college, and effected an indifferent reconciliation between him and his tutor.

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.

Oliver having left the University, tried five or six professions in turn, without success. His uncle Contarine wished him to have taken orders, but his great objection to clerical life was the obligation to wear a black coat; he applied for ordination, but as he appeared in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He did not renew the attempt: he probably, even at this early period, had some conscientious misgivings as to his own fitness for the church. In his later life, when asked to read prayers in a friend's house, he always declined to do so, on the plea that "he did not think himself good enough."

He then accepted the situation of private tutor in a gentleman's family, and retained it long enough to save about 307., with which he bought a tolerable horse, and went forth upon his adventures. At the end of six weeks, his friends having heard nothing of him, concluded that he had left the kingdoin, when he returned to his mother's house without a penny, upon a little horse, which he called Fiddleback, and which was not worth more than twenty shillings. The account

which he gave of himself was, that he had been at Cork, where he had sold his former horse, and paid his passage to America; but the ship happening to sail whilst he was viewing the curiosities of the city, he had just money enough left to enable him to return. He had now no legitimate home: at the death of his father, the paternal house at Lissoy was taken by Mr. Hodson, who had married his sister Catherine. His mother had removed to Ballymahon, where she contrived to live with the strictest frugality. He contributed to her means whatever pittance his brother Henry could afford to give him for occasionally assisting in his school. Mr. Prior has found some of the old lady's housekeeping bills, which afford evidence enough of the penury to which she had been reduced. One item is, "To half an ounce of green tea by Mr. Noll, threepence halfpenny " For two years "Mr. Noll" lounged thus about his native district, during which he was considered by his relations to have added nothing to his accomplishments, except the attainment of great facility in speaking French. This he owed, no doubt, to his familiarity with

some of the "foreign bred" Romish priests, and it was very serviceable to him in the sequel.

THE CLUB AT BALLYMAHON.

While Oliver was leading this errant life at Ballymahon, he got up a club at the little inn there, of which he soon became the oracle and prime wit, for he was capital at a song or story. From this club it is surmised that he took some hints in after-life for his picturing of Tony Lumpkin and his associates: "Dick Muggins, the exciseman; Jack Slang, the horse-doctor; little Aminadab, that grinds the music-box; and Tom Twist, that spins the pewter platter." Nay, it is thought that Tony's drinking song at the Three Jolly Pigeons, was but a revival of one of the convivial catches at Ballymahon :

"Then come put the jorum about,

And let us be merry and clever,
Our hearts and our liquors are stout,

Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever.

Let some cry of woodcock or hare,

Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons,
But of all the gay birds in the air,

Here's health to the Three Jolly Pigeons.

Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.'

"

He next resolved to study the law: his uncle gave him 507., and sent him to the Temple, but on his way to London he was fleeced of every shilling in gaming, and returned once more to his mother's house in disgrace and affliction.

His good uncle forgave him; a small purse was made up, and he was sent to Edinburgh, to study medicine, in 1752. Here he nominally attended the lectures for eighteen months, and picked up some information about natural history and chemistry. But he was thoughtless, and he was cheated; he became poor, and he was nearly starved.

OLIVER ON HIS TRAVELS.

From Edinburgh our student passed over to Leyden, but, with the usual eccentricity of his motions, set out to reach it by way of Bordeaux, and embarked in a ship which was bound thither from Leith; but was driven by stress of weather into Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His fellow-passengers were some Scotchmen, who had been employed in raising men in their own country for the service of the King of France. They were arrested by orders from Government at Newcastle; and