long subsisted on his stories of "Master Noll."

narrative masterpiece of this ancient Jack Fitzsimmons Et. 15. related to the depredation of the orchard of Tirlicken, by the youth and his companions.* Fitzsimmons also vouched to the reverend John Graham for the entire truth of the adventure so currently and confidently told by his Irish acquaintance, which offers an agreeable relief to the excess of diffidence heretofore noted in him, and on which, if true, the leading incident of She Stoops to Conquer was founded.

At the close of his last holidays, then a lad of nearly seventeen, he left home for Edgeworthstown, mounted on a borrowed hack which a friend was to restore to Lissoy, and with store of unaccustomed wealth, a guinea, in his pocket. The delicious taste of independence beguiled him to a loitering, lingering, pleasant enjoyment of the journey; and instead of finding himself under Mr. Hughes's roof at nightfall, night fell upon him some two or three miles out of the direct road, in the middle of the streets of Ardagh. But nothing could disconcert the owner of the guinea, who, with a lofty, confident air, inquired of a person passing the way to the town's best house of entertainment. The man addressed was the wag of Ardagh, a humorous fencing-master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, and the schoolboy swagger was irresistible provocation to a jest. Submissively he turned back with horse and rider till they came within a pace or two of the great Squire Featherston's, to which he respectfully pointed as the "best house" of Ardagh. Oliver rang at the gate, gave his beast in charge with authoritative rigour, and was

64

"In this adventure," Mr. Graham writes, "which he detailed minutely, both were engaged; detection however, either at the moment or soon afterwards, "ensued; and had it not been for the respectability of Goldsmith's connections, which secured immunity also to his companions, the consequences might have "been unpleasant."

1744.

Æt. 16.

1744.

shown, as a supposed expected guest, into the comfortable Et. 16. parlour of the squire. Those were days when Irish innkeepers and Irish squires more nearly approximated than now; and Mr. Featherston, unlike the excellent but explosive Mr. Hardcastle, is said to have seen the mistake and humoured it. Oliver had a supper which gave him so much satisfaction, that he ordered a bottle of wine to follow; and the attentive landlord was not only forced to drink with him, but, with a like familiar condescension, the wife and pretty daughter were invited to the supper-room. Going to bed, he stopped to give special instructions for a hot cake to breakfast; and it was not till he had dispatched this latter meal, and was looking at his guinea with pathetic aspect of farewell, that the truth was told him by the good-natured squire. The late Sir Thomas Featherston, grandson to the supposed inn-keeper, had faith in the adventure; and told Mr. Graham that as his grandfather and Charles Goldsmith had been college acquaintance, it might the better be accounted for.t

It is certainly, if true, the earliest known instance of the disposition to swagger with a grand air which afterwards displayed itself in other forms, and strutted about in clothes rather noted for fineness than fitness.

Percy Memoir, 6, 7.

was

"The story," said Mr. Graham, at a public meeting in Ballymahon for a monument to the Poet (reported in the Gent. Mag. for 1820, xc. 620), "confirmed to me by the late Sir Thomas Featherston, Bart, a short time before "his death."

CHAPTER II.

COLLEGE.

1745-1749.

1745.

BUT the school-days of Oliver Goldsmith are now to close. Within the last year there had been some changes at Lissoy, Et. 17. which not a little affected the family fortunes. Catherine, the elder sister, had privately married a Mr. Daniel Hodson, "the son of a gentleman of good property, residing at "St. John's, near Athlone." The young man was at the time availing himself of Henry Goldsmith's services as private tutor; Henry having obtained a scholarship two years before, and assisting the family resources with such employment of his college distinction. The good Charles Goldsmith was greatly indignant at the marriage, and on reproaches from the elder Hodson "made a sacrifice detrimental to the "interests of his family." He entered into a legal engagement, still registered in the Dublin Four Courts, and bearing date the 7th of September, 1744, " to pay to Daniel Hodson, Esq., "of St. John's, Roscommon, £400 as the marriage portion of "his daughter Catherine, then the wife of the said Daniel Hodson." But it could not be effected without sacrifice of his tithes and rented land; and it was a sacrifice, as it seems to me, made in a spirit of very simple and very false pride.

66

1745.

The writer who discovered this marriage settlement attributes Et. 17. it to "the highest sense of honour;"* but it must surely be doubted if an act which, to elevate the pretensions of one child, and adapt them to those of the man she had married, inflicted beggary on the rest, should be so referred to. Oliver was the first to taste its bitterness. It was announced to him that he could not go to college as Henry had gone, a pensioner; but must consent to enter it, a sizar.

The first thing exacted of a sizar, in those days, was to give proof of classical attainments. He was to show himself, to a certain reasonable extent, a good scholar; in return for which, being clad in a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, he was marked with the servant's badge of a red cap, and put to the servant's offices of sweeping courts in the morning, carrying up dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' dining-table in the afternoon, and waiting in the hall till the fellows had dined. This, commons, teaching, and chambers, being on the other hand greatly reduced,—is called by one of Goldsmith's biographers" one of those judicious and considerate arrange"ments of the founders of such institutions, that gives to the "less opulent the opportunity of cultivating learning at a "trifling expense;" but it is called by Goldsmith himself, in his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, ‡a "contradiction" suggested by motives of pride, and a passion which he thinks absurd," that men should be at once learning "the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at "once studying freedom and practising servitude."

To this contradiction he is now himself doomed; and that which to a stronger judgment and more resolute purpose

+ Ibid, 59.

* Prior, i. 49. Chap. xiii. Johnson himself condemns the practice not less severely; and as poinpously, on the other hand, Sir John Hawkins supports it.

might have prompted only the struggle that triumphs over 1745. the meanest circumstance, proved to him the hardest lesson Æt. 17. yet in his life's hard school. He resisted with all his strength; little less than a whole year, it is said, obstinately resisted the new contempts and loss of worldly consideration thus bitterly set before him. He would rather have gone to the trade chalked out for him as his rough alternative,-when uncle Contarine interfered.

This was an excellent man; and with some means, though very far from considerable, to do justice to his kindly impulses. In youth he had been the college companion of Bishop Berkeley,* and was worthy to have had so divine a friend. He too was a clergyman; and held the living of Kilmore near Carrick-on-Shannon, which he afterwards changed to that of Oran near Roscommon; where he built the house of Emblemore, changed to that of Tempe by its subsequent possessor, Mr. Edward Mills, Goldsmith's relative and contemporary. Mr. Contarine had married Charles Goldsmith's sister (who died at about this time, leaving one child), and was the only member of the Goldsmith family of whom we have solid evidence that he at any times took pains with Oliver, or felt anything like a real pride in him. He bore the greater part of his school expenses; † and was used to receive him with delight in holidays, as the playfellow of his daughter Jane, a year or two older than Oliver, and some seven years after this married to a Mr. Lauder. How little the most charitable of men will make allowance for differences of temper and disposition in the education of youth, is too well known: Mr. Contarine told Oliver that

* See note to Percy Memoir, 17, 18.

"The rev. Mr. Greene," the son of the rector of Kilkenny West, "also • liberally assisted, as Dr. Goldsmith used to relate, in this beneficent purpose." Percy Memoir, 6.