Oliver Goldsmith | Page 5

he was gathered under the wings of one of those good old motherly
dames, found in every village, who cluck together the whole callow
brood of the neighborhood, to teach them their letters and keep them
out of harm's way. Mistress Elizabeth Delap, for that was her name,
flourished in this capacity for upward of fifty years, and it was the pride
and boast of her declining days, when nearly ninety years of age, that
she was the first that had put a book (doubtless a hornbook) into
Goldsmith's hands. Apparently he did not much profit by it, for she
confessed he was one of the dullest boys she had ever dealt with,
insomuch that she had sometimes doubted whether it was possible to
make anything of him: a common case with imaginative children, who
are apt to be beguiled from the dry abstractions of elementary study by
the picturings of the fancy.
At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village schoolmaster,
one Thomas (or, as he was commonly and irreverently named, Paddy)
Byrne, a capital tutor for a poet. He had been educated for a pedagogue,
but had enlisted in the army, served abroad during the wars of Queen
Anne's time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in
Spain. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for the sword,
he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace of Lissoy.
Goldsmith is supposed to have had him and his school in view in the
following sketch in his Deserted Village:
"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze
unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, The
village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern
to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew: Well had the boding
tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full
well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a
joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round, Convey'd the
dismal tidings when he frown'd: Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how
much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too; Lands he

could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he
could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill, For, e'en
though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length
and thund'ring sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around-- And
still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could
carry all he knew."
There are certain whimsical traits in the character of Byrne, not given
in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of talking of his vagabond
wanderings in foreign lands, and had brought with him from the wars a
world of campaigning stories, of which he was generally the hero, and
which he would deal forth to his wondering scholars when he ought to
have been teaching them their lessons. These travelers' tales had a
powerful effect upon the vivid imagination of Goldsmith, and
awakened an unconquerable passion for wandering and seeking
adventure.
Byrne was, moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly superstitious.
He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions which abound in Ireland,
all which he professed implicitly to believe. Under his tuition
Goldsmith soon became almost as great a proficient in fairy lore. From
this branch of good-for-nothing knowledge, his studies, by an easy
transition, extended to the histories of robbers, pirates, smugglers, and
the whole race of Irish rogues and rapparees. Everything, in short, that
savored of romance, fable, and adventure was congenial to his poetic
mind, and took instant root there; but the slow plants of useful
knowledge were apt to be overrun, if not choked, by the weeds of his
quick imagination.
Another trait of his motley preceptor, Byrne, was a disposition to
dabble in poetry, and this likewise was caught by his pupil. Before he
was eight years old Goldsmith had contracted a habit of scribbling
verses on small scraps of paper, which, in a little while, he would throw
into the fire. A few of these sybilline leaves, however, were rescued
from the flames and conveyed to his mother. The good woman read
them with a mother's delight, and saw at once that her son was a genius
and a poet. From that time she beset her husband with solicitations to

give the boy an education suitable to his talents. The worthy man was
already straitened by the costs of instruction of his eldest son Henry,
and had intended to bring his second son up to a trade; but the mother
would listen to