Goldsmith | Page 3

Mr. Goldsmith succeeded to a more lucrative living; and forthwith
removed his family to the village of Lissoy, in the county of
Westmeath.
Here at once our interest in the story begins: is this Lissoy the sweet
Auburn that we have known and loved since our childhood? Lord
Macaulay, with a great deal of vehemence, avers that it is not; that there
never was any such hamlet as Auburn in Ireland; that The Deserted
Village is a hopelessly incongruous poem; and that Goldsmith, in
combining a description of a probably Kentish village with a
description of an Irish ejectment, "has produced something which never
was, and never will be, seen in any part of the world." This criticism is
ingenious and plausible, but it is unsound, for it happens to overlook
one of the radical facts of human nature--the magnifying delight of the
mind in what is long remembered and remote. What was it that the
imagination of Goldsmith, in his life-long banishment, could not see
when he looked back to the home of his childhood, and his early
friends, and the sports and occupations of his youth? Lissoy was no
doubt a poor enough Irish village; and perhaps the farms were not too
well cultivated; and perhaps the village preacher, who was so dear to all
the country round, had to administer many a thrashing to a certain
graceless son of his; and perhaps Paddy Byrne was something of a
pedant; and no doubt pigs ran over the "nicely sanded floor" of the inn;
and no doubt the village statesmen occasionally indulged in a free fight.
But do you think that was the Lissoy that Goldsmith thought of in his
dreary lodgings in Fleet-Street courts? No. It was the Lissoy where the
vagrant lad had first seen the "primrose peep beneath the thorn"; where
he had listened to the mysterious call of the bittern by the unfrequented
river; it was a Lissoy still ringing with the glad laughter of young
people in the twilight hours; it was a Lissoy for ever beautiful, and
tender, and far away. The grown-up Goldsmith had not to go to any
Kentish village for a model; the familiar scenes of his youth, regarded
with all the wistfulness and longing of an exile, became glorified
enough. "If I go to the opera where Signora Colomba pours out all the
mazes of melody," he writes to Mr. Hodson, "I sit and sigh for Lissoy's

fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night from Peggy
Golden."
There was but little in the circumstances of Goldsmith's early life likely
to fit him for, or to lead him into, a literary career; in fact, he did not
take to literature until he had tried pretty nearly everything else as a
method of earning a living. If he was intended for anything, it was no
doubt his father's wish that he should enter the Church; and he got such
education as the poor Irish clergyman--who was not a very provident
person--could afford. The child Goldsmith was first of all taught his
alphabet at home, by a maid-servant, who was also a relation of the
family; then, at the age of six, he was sent to that village school which,
with its profound and learned master, he has made familiar to all of us;
and after that he was sent further a-field for his learning, being moved
from this to the other boarding-school as the occasion demanded.
Goldsmith's school-life could not have been altogether a pleasant time
for him. We hear, indeed, of his being concerned in a good many
frolics--robbing orchards, and the like; and it is said that he attained
proficiency in the game of fives. But a shy and sensitive lad like
Goldsmith, who was eagerly desirous of being thought well of, and
whose appearance only invited the thoughtless but cruel ridicule of his
schoolmates, must have suffered a good deal. He was little, pitted with
the small-pox, and awkward; and schoolboys are amazingly frank. He
was not strong enough to thrash them into respect of him; he had no big
brother to become his champion; his pocket-money was not lavish
enough to enable him to buy over enemies or subsidise allies.
In similar circumstances it has sometimes happened that a boy
physically inferior to his companions has consoled himself by proving
his mental prowess--has scored off his failure at cricket by the taking of
prizes, and has revenged himself for a drubbing by writing a lampoon.
But even this last resource was not open to Goldsmith. He was a dull
boy; "a stupid, heavy blockhead," is Dr. Strean's phrase in summing up
the estimate formed of young Goldsmith by his contemporaries at
school. Of course, as soon as he became famous, everybody began to
hunt up recollections of his