tle village in the county of
Longford; and when Oliver, one of several children, was born in this
village of Pallas, or Pallasmore, on the 10th November, 1728, the Rev.
Charles Goldsmith was passing rich on L40 a year. But a couple of
years later 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