n 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