Goldsmith | Page 5

with his tutor, an ill-conditioned brute,
who baited Goldsmith and occasionally beat him; and a chance frolic
when funds were forthcoming. It was while he was at Trinity College

that his father died; so that Goldsmith was rendered more than ever
dependent on the kindness of his uncle Contarine, who throughout
seems to have taken much interest in his odd, ungainly nephew. A loan
from a friend or a visit to the pawnbroker tided over the severer
difficulties; and then from time to time the writing of street-ballads, for
which he got five shillings a-piece at a certain repository, came in to
help. It was a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth sort of existence,
involving a good deal of hardship and humiliation, but having its frolics
and gaieties notwithstanding. One of these was pretty near to putting an
end to his collegiate career altogether. He had, smarting under a public
admonition for having been concerned in a riot, taken seriously to his
studies and had competed for a scholarship. He missed the scholarship,
but gained an exhibition of the value of thirty shillings; whereupon he
collected a number of friends of both sexes in his rooms, and proceeded
to have high jinks there. In the midst of the dancing and uproar, in
comes his tutor, in such a passion that he knocks Goldsmith down. This
insult, received before his friends, was too much for the unlucky sizar,
who, the very next day, sold his books, ran away from college, and
ultimately, after having been on the verge of starvation once or twice,
made his way to Lissoy. Here his brother got hold of him; persuaded
him to go back; and the escapade was condoned somehow. Goldsmith
remained at Trinity College until he took his degree (1749.) He was
again lowest in the list; but still he had passed; and he must have
learned something. He was now twenty-one, with all the world before
him; and the question was as to how he was to employ such knowledge
as he had acquired.
CHAPTER III.
IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL.
But Goldsmith was not in any hurry to acquire either wealth or fame.
He had a happy knack of enjoying the present hour--especially when
there were one or two boon companions with him, and a pack of cards
to be found; and, after his return to his mother's house, he appears to
have entered upon the business of idleness with much philosophical
satisfaction. If he was not quite such an unlettered clown as he has

described in Tony Lumpkin, he had at least all Tony Lumpkin's high
spirits and love of joking and idling; and he was surrounded at the
ale-house by just such a company of admirers as used to meet at the
famous Three Pigeons. Sometimes he helped in his brother's school;
sometimes he went errands for his mother; occasionally he would sit
and meditatively play the flute--for the day was to be passed somehow;
then in the evening came the assemblage in Conway's inn, with the
glass, and the pipe, and the cards, and the uproarious jest or song. "But
Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be," and the friends of
this jovial young "buckeen" began to tire of his idleness and his
recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set about doing
something to provide himself with a living; and the first thing they
thought of was that he should go into the Church--perhaps as a sort of
purification-house after George Conway's inn. Accordingly Goldsmith,
who appears to have been a most good-natured and compliant youth,
did make application to the Bishop of Elphin. There is some doubt
about the precise reasons which induced the Bishop to decline
Goldsmith's application, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid
of the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he tried teaching,
and through the good offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship which
he held for a considerable time--long enough, indeed, to enable him to
amass a sum of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his patron, and
once more "took the world for his pillow," as the Gaelic stories say, he
had this sum in his pocket and was possessed of a good horse.
He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother was now living,
with some vague notion of making his fortune as casual circumstance
might direct. The expedition came to a premature end; and he returned
without the money, and on the back of a wretched animal, telling his
mother a cock-and-bull story of the most amusing simplicity. "If Uncle
Contarine believed those letters," says Mr. Thackeray, "---- if Oliver's
mother believed that story which the youth related of his going to Cork,
with the purpose of embarking for America; of his having paid his