e was wont to declare; 'he seemed impenetrably stupid.'
From this kind but undiscriminating teacher Oliver gravitated to the
village school, where he learnt nothing. Thence he was sent to Elphin;
and of this period of his school life Dr. Strean says: 'He was
considered by his contemporaries and school-fellows, with whom I have
often conversed on the subject, as a stupid heavy blockhead, little
better than a fool, whom every one made fun of.'

Goldsmith has himself, in his 'Inquiry into the Present State of Polite
Learning,' recorded some very striking impressions as to the value of
academic success. 'A lad whose passions are not strong enough in youth,'
he writes, 'to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors,
and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or five years'
perseverance, probably obtains every advantage and honour his college
can bestow. I forget whether the simile has been used before, but I
would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the
tranquillity of dispassionate prudence to liquors that never ferment,
and consequently continue always muddy. Passions may raise a commotion
in the youthful breast, but they disturb only to refine it. However this
be, mean talents are often rewarded in colleges with an easy
subsistence.'

Another 'impenetrable dunce,' according to the opinion of his tutor, an
eminent Dublin scholar, was Richard Sheridan. He was afterwards sent to
Harrow, where he earned for himself a great reputation for idleness. Dr.
Parr, one of the under-masters, wrote to Sheridan's biographer the
following expression of opinion:

'There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to
many of his schoolfellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do
not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by
Latin or English composition, in prose or verse.... He was at the
uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never reached the sixth, and,
if I mistake not, he had no opportunity of attending the most difficult
and the most honourable of school business, when the Greek plays were
taught--and it was the custom at Harrow to teach these at least every
year. He went through his lessons in Horace and Virgil and Homer well
enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, Dr. Sumner,
it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling
up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but
unusually