Having received a good preparatory education at home, Goldsmith, on the eleventh of June, 1745, was admitted a sizer of Trinity College, Dublin. At college, though his expenses were defrayed chiefly by his excellent uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarini, yet through his thoughtlessness and irregularity, he was always in want. He was unfortunate in his tutor too, who was a man of fierce and brutal passions, and on one occasion, struck him in the presence of one of his friends. This so incensed Goldsmith that he left college and wandered about the country for some weeks in the utmost poverty. His brother Henry at length found him in this pitiable condition, clothed him, and carried him back to college, where he remained until the twenty-seventh of February, 1749, when he was admitted to his bachelor's degree.

Goldsmith now gladly left the university, and returned to Lissoy; and though his father was dead, and the family somewhat dispersed, still he idled away two years among his relations. He afterwards became tutor in the family of a gentleman in Ireland; but at the expiration of a year, having been furnished by his uncle with fifty pounds for that purpose, he repaired to Dublin to study law. He soon, however, lost the whole sum in a gaming house; but a second contribution was raised, and with it the poet went to Edinburgh, and there, for eighteen months, studied medicine. At the expiration of that time, he drew upon his uncle, who seems to have been devotedly attached to him, for twenty pounds, and with that sum embarked for Bordeaux. But the vessel was compelled through stress of weather, to put into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and whilst there, Goldsmith and his companions were arrested and cast into prison, where the poet remained for two weeks.

Having recovered from this, the most innocent of his misfortunes, Goldsmith next became usher in Dr. Milner's school, at Peckham, in the neighborhood of London, where he is supposed to have passed between three and four years. The tradition of the school represents him to have been extremely good-natured and playful, and to have advanced his pupils more by conversation than by book-tasks. From Peckham he went to Leyden, and there formed the resolution of making the tour of the Continent, notwithstanding the limitedness of his finances. He stopped some time at Louvain, in Flanders, at Antwerp, and at Brussels. In France, he is said to have occasionally earned a night's lodging and food by playing on his flute. To this he alludes in the following lines of the 'Traveller' :

:

How often have I led thy sportive choir,
With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire !
Where shading elms along the margin grew,
And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew :
And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still,
But mocked all tune, and marred the dancer's skill,
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance, forgetful of the noontide hour.

Scenes of this kind formed an appropriate school for the wandering poet.

He brooded, with delight, over these pictures of humble primitive happiness, and his imagination loved to invest them with the charms of poetry. From France he went into Germany and Switzerland, and from the latter he sent the first sketch of the 'Traveller' to his brother. He thence visited Florence, Verona, Venice, and Padua; and at the university of Padua, after a residence of some months, he took his medical degree.

In 1756, Goldsmith, after two years of lonely wandering abroad, returned, in deep poverty, to England; and for want of other means of subsistence, engaged as assistant to a chemist. A college friend, Dr. Sleigh, soon after enabled him to commence practice as an humble physician in Bankside, Southwark; but his chief support arose from contributions to the periodical literature of the day. In 1758, he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as an hospital mate, with the view of entering the army or navy; but he had the mortification to be rejected as unqualified. That he might appear before the examining surgeon suitably dressed, he obtained a new suit of clothes, for which Griffiths, publisher of the Monthly Review, became security. The clothes were to be returned immediately after the examination, or to be paid for; but poor Goldsmith, having failed in his object, and being pressed with want, pledged them, in a luckless moment, to a pawnbroker. This incident involved him in deep distress, and even threatened him with a gaol; but he finally recovered from the effects of his imprudence, and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to literary pursuits. Besides numerous contributions to the Monthly and Critical Reviews, the Lady's Magazine, and the British Magazine, he published, at this time, an Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, his admirable Chinese Letters afterwards published under the title of The Citizen of the World, a Life of Beau Nash, and the History of England in a series of letters from a nobleman to his son. The latter was highly successful, and was currently attributed to Lord Chesterfield.

Towards the close of the year 1764, Goldsmith published The Traveller, a poem so perfect as to be 'without one bad line,' and 'without one of Dryden's careless verses.' Charles Fox pronounced it one of the finest poems in the English language; and Dr. Johnson soon after observed that the merit of 'The Traveller' was so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise could not augment it, nor his censure diminish it.' In 1766, appeared his exquisite novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, and this was followed, in the follow.ng year, by his comedy of The Good Natured Man. In 1768, he produced his Roman History, and two years after The Deserted Village. This sweet poem was as popular as 'The Traveller,' and speedily ran through a number of editions. In 1773, his comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, was brought out at Covent Garden with immense applause. He was now at the summit of his fame and popularity; and though the march to it had been long and toilsome, and he was often ready to faint by the way, his success was at length complete. Habits of extravagance and carelessness had, however, become firmly fixed upon him; and, notwithstanding his annual income, from his vari

ous publications, was not less than fifteen hundred pounds, still difficulty and distress clung to him. He hung loosely on society, having neither wife nor domestic tie; and with little farther literary effort, he passed the remainder of his brief life until death summoned him to his final account, on the fourth of April, 1774, at the early age of forty-five.

Dr. Goldsmith, notwithstanding his many foibles-his undisguised vanity, his natural proneness to blundering, his thoughtless extravagance, his credulity, and his frequent absurdities, was still greatly beloved by all who intimately knew him; for under all the objectionable traits of his character, ran a current of generous benevolence, of enlightened zeal for the happiness and improvement of mankind, and of manly independent feeling. His remains were interred in the Temple burying ground, and a monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, next to the grave of Gay, whom he closely resembled in character, and far excelled in genius.

Besides the works already noticed, Goldsmith produced a History of England in four volumes, and a History of Greece in two; and commenced to write a History of Animated Nature, which was to embrace eight volumes, and for which he was to receive eight hundred guineas. His historical works, though elegantly written, were never of much intrinsic value; for, being the result of contracts for specific sums, of which he was always in pressing want, he usually seized the first materials at hand, without giving himself much concern about their importance or their accuracy. His poetry is, however, of a very different character. It is elaborated to the highest degree of polish. From The Traveller' we take the following extract, in which the rich scenery of Italy, and the effeminate character of the people, are placed in striking juxtaposition with the rugged mountains of Switzerland, and their hardy natives:

ITALIANS AND SWISS CONTRASTED.

Far to the right, where Apennine ascends,
Bright as the summer, Italy extends;
Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side,
Woods over woods in gay theatric pride;

While oft some temple's mouldering tops between,
With venerable grandeur mark the scene.

Could nature's bounty satisfy the breast,

The sons of Italy were surely blest.
Whatever fruits in different climes were found,
That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground;
Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear,
Whose bright succession decks the varied year;
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky
With vernal lives, that blossom but to die;
These, here disporting, own the kindred soil,
Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil;
While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand,
To winnow fragrance round the smiling land.

But small the bliss that sense alone bestows,
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows.
In florid beauty groves and fields appear,
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.
Contrasted faults through all his manners reign:
Though poor, luxurious; though submissive, vain;
Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue;
And even in penance planning sins anew.
All evils here contaminate the mind,

That opulence departed leaves behind;

For wealth was theirs, not far removed the date,
When commerce proudly flourished through the state;
At her command the palace learned to rise,
Again the long-fallen column sought the skies;
The canvass glowed beyond even nature warm,
The pregnant quarry teemed with human form,
Till, more unsteady than the southern gale,
Commerce on other shores displayed her sail;
While nought remained of all that riches gave,
But towns unmanned, and lords without a slave;
And late the nation found with fruitless skill,
Its former strength was but plethoric ill.

Yet, still the loss of wealth is here supplied
By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride;
From these the feeble heart and long-fallen mind,
An easy compensation seems to find.

Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp arrayed,
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade;
Processions formed for piety and love,

A mistress or a saint in every grove.

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled,
The sports of children satisfy the child;
Each nobler aim, repressed by long control,
Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul;
While low delights, succeeding fast behind,
In happier meanness occupy the mind:

As in those domes, where Cæsars once bore sway,
Defaced by time and tottering in decay,
There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed;
And, wondering man could want the larger pile,
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.

My soul turn from them, turn we to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;

No product here the barren hills afford,
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword;
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.

Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,

He sees his little lot the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,

To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal,
To make him loathe his vegetable meal;
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes;
With patient angle trolls the finny deep,

Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage into day.
At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of the shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board:
And haply too some pilgrim thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.

Thus every good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And even those ills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.

The 'Deserted Village' is one of the most popular poems in the English language. Its best passages are learned in youth, and are never forgotten. 'Song,' says Campbell, 'is but the eloquence of truth,' and of this eloquence is this poem made up-eloquence that will ever be listened to; truth that it is impossible to doubt. Goldsmith drew upon his recollections of Lissoy for most, of the landscape, as well as the characters introduced. His father sat for the village pastor, and such a portrait might well have cancelled, with the poet's relations, all the follies and irregularities of his youth. We quote the following pictures :

AUBURN-THE VILLAGE PASTOR-THE SCHOOLMASTER.

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain;

Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed;

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please;
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!