Oliver Goldsmith

Then we are told:

"Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes--for many a joke had he-- Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."

As the piece proceeds, the delicately chiding satire is delightful, ringing at last with the laughing lines:

"And still they gazed, and still their wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew."

Seven years had elapsed between the birth of Oliver and the child that preceded him. His elder brother Henry had superior qualities which were early marked. To these his father gave great attention, lavishing his means upon this boy's education. Oliver was destined for commercial life in the paternal projection of those affairs and eventualities of which men imagine they are masters. The force of impressions that fall upon the mind in childhood must be strongest in those children whose imaginations are most vivid. Listening to Paddy Byrne made Oliver in heart and mind a wayward rover all his life. Something of the imprudence of the little man came, it might be said, from this dash of the recklessness of the old soldier and adventurer infused into imaginative infant hopefulness. From this same instructor he also gathered his devotion to books and poetry, which proved a revelation that changed his father's purpose of fitting him for a commercial calling.

Henry Goldsmith is known and remembered now through the poetic expressions of honour and affection bestowed upon him by his brother. One cannot tell at this hour whether the deeper sense of reverence should fall upon his character or upon that gratitude through which alone it lives.

In the childhood of Oliver Goldsmith, his brightness and the foreshadowings of future force were not alone among the elements within the little heart which lay neglected by those he loved and whose lives he lighted, though they knew it not. In due course he was despatched to another school, thirty miles away. He lived with his uncle, Mr. John Goldsmith, a landed gentleman, and attended the school at Elphin; and at eleven years of age was sent to another and a more reputed Academy nearer home, at Athlone. Two years here and four at Edgeworthstown completed his schooling at the age of seventeen.

Of the Vicar of Wakefield, and thence of the father of little Oliver, it was said that all his adventures were by his own fireside, and all his travels from one room to another. He was in all likelihood a delicate man, and certainly deeply religious, with a high sense of honour and common moral obligation. The Vicar of Wakefield, his best portrait, stands an honourable and an imperishable filial tribute, the fairest ever paid by son to sire.

One day, when this young Master Goldsmith was in his teens, he left home for Edgeworthstown, riding a good horse, borrowed from a friend, and in high glee, if money braces the manly heart. With a golden guinea in his purse, he was as proud as wealth untold can make a buoyant spirit, in the days when life is very bright and happiness is everywhere. He loitered on the journey. The horse nigh slept, whilst the rider mooned on in meditative peace, and a lad's romantic building up of airy castellations. Instead of achieving his actual destination by nightfall, he was still miles away from the appointed place. Nothing daunted, with a proud and mighty air, he paused in the streets of Ardagh to ask a wayfarer where he could find the best house of entertainment. This question, it happened, was addressed to the greatest wag in the vicinity.

The wit, a jocose fencing-master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, now fenced with words, and in all his life never did defter work. He pointed to the house of old Squire Featherston, rightly averring no better entertainment or hospitality could be found anywhere in all the world than in that generous and hearty home. Thus mistaking this private house and family mansion for an inn, the youth approached the place, and the wag went on his way. Oliver gave the bell a good ring, told the man to take his horse, and sauntered into the commodious parlour of the Squire as if it had been the public room in some well-supplied hotel. The Squire soon detected the mistake that had been made, and knowing the father of the boy, seized upon the diverting situation, entering with all his heart into the possibilities the joke might yield. He turned landlord for the nonce, brought in the supper piping hot, and then was ordered to bring a bottle of good wine. This the lad cordially, yet with some condescension, shared with the supposed master of the hostelry. More than this, at last putting all pride of place aside, he told the good man to bring his wife and daughter to the table. Oliver gave minute and particular orders for a good breakfast on the morrow, and then went to bed.

We can picture the sweetly smiling daughter of the Squire, rippling with laughter and every moment more bewitching.

We wonder what this prototype of Miss Hardcastle was like to look upon, and whether her heart was as tender, and her wit and grace as charming, as that of the character she at least did something to inspire.

In the morning when master Oliver expected to part for ever with that guinea in his pocket, he learned the actual state of things and left no poorer than he came, but all the richer for the laughter and the merriment and the good wishes of the friends, who, to divert and amuse both him and themselves, had treated their guest so well.

In Trinity College, at the time when Goldsmith studied there as a sizar, menial offices were involved in this dubious position. Amongst these were sweeping the courts in the morning, carrying up the dishes from the kitchen to the Fellows' table, waiting for dinner until all the rest had finished, and wearing a garb to signalise inferiority and degradation. Common manliness cannot suffer indignities of this sort. Johnson at Oxford and Goldsmith in Dublin rebelled. The agonised sense of decent justice could not be stifled. In such contexts, only cowards can wish dishonour borne and indignation unrevealed. Oliver himself had none of those conventional prejudices that raise Universities to fetishes. Like the man he was, he would have been content to enter some true trade.