Campbell. At about the same time his brother Henry went as a pensioner to Dublin University, and it was resolved that in due course Oliver should follow him: a determination, his sister told Dr. Percy, which replaced that of putting him to a common trade, on some verses he had written at Elphin School, and other evidence of some liveliness of talent, being suddenly brought to light. He remained at Athlone two years; and when Mr. Campbell's ill health obliged him to resign his charge, was removed to the school of Edgeworthstown, kept by the Reverend Patrick Hughes. Here he stayed nearly four years, and was long remembered by the school acquaintance he formed of whom Mr. Beatty, Mr. Nugent, Mr. Roach, and Mr. Daly, communicated with Bishop Percy and his friends, when the first memoir was compiled. They recollected Mr. Hughes's special kindness to him, and 'thinking well' of him, as matters not then to be accounted for. The good master had been Charles Goldsmith's friend. They dwelt upon his ugliness and awkward manners, and professed to recount even the studies he liked or disliked. Ovid and Horace were welcome to him; he hated Cicero; Livy was his delight; and when he had mastered Tacitus, it opened him a new source of pleasure. His temper they described as ultra-sensitive; but though quick to take offence, he was more feverishly ready to forgive. They said, that though at first diffident and backward in the extreme, he mustered sufficient boldness in time to take even a leader's place in the boyish

sports, and particularly at fives or ball-playing. Whenever a trick was going forward, they added, 'Noll Goldsmith' was certain to be in it: actor or victim.

Of his holidays, Ballymahon was the central attraction ; and here, too, recollection was vivid and busy, as soon as his name grew famous. An old man who directed the sports of the place, and kept the ball-court in those days, long subsisted on his stories of 'Master Noll.' The narrative masterpiece of this ancient 'Jack Fitzsimmons' related to the depredation of the orchard of Tirlichen, 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, 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 night-fall, 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 a guinea, who, with 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, 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 Featherstone'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 shown as a supposed expected guest into the parlour of the Squire. These were days when Irish Innkeepers and Irish Squires more nearly approximated than now; and Mr. Featherstone, 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 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 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 Featherstone, grandson to the supposed innkeeper, 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.

But the school-days of Oliver Goldsmith are now to close. Within the last year there had been some changes at Lissoy, 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. Mr. Prior, who discovered the deed, attributes 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 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 in return greatly reduced; is called by Goldsmith's last biographer, 'One of those judicious and 'considerate arrangements 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 Essay on Polite Literature, a 'Contradiction' for which he should blush to ask a reason from men of learning and virtue: 'that youths acquiring 'the liberal arts should at the same time be treated as 'slaves; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.'

To this contradiction he is now himself doomed; the yet hardest lesson 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