uproarious jest or song.
"But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be," and the
friends of this jovial young "buckeen" began to tire of his idleness
and his recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set about
doing something to provide himself with a living; and the first thing
they thought of was that he should go into the Church--perhaps as a
sort of purification-house after George Conway's inn. Accordingly
Goldsmith, who appears to have been a most good-natured and compliant
youth, did make application to the Bishop of Elphin. There is some
doubt about the precise reasons which induced the Bishop to decline
Goldsmith's application, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid
of the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he tried teaching,
and through the good offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship
which he held for a considerable time--long enough, indeed, to enable
him to amass a sum of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his
patron, and once more "took the world for his pillow," as the Gaelic
stories say, he had this sum in his pocket and was possessed of a good
horse.

He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother was now living, with
some vague notion of making his fortune as casual circumstance might
direct. The expedition came to a premature end; and he returned
without the money, and on the back of a wretched animal, telling his
mother a cock-and-bull story of the most amusing simplicity. "If Uncle
Contarine believed those letters," says Mr. Thackeray, "---- if
Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his
going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America; of his
having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of
the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in
a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine and the mother at
Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple
pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them." Indeed,
if any one is anxious to fill up this hiatus in Goldsmith's life, the
best thing he can do is to discard Goldsmith's suspicious record of
his adventures, and put in its place the faithful record of the
adventures of Mr. Barry Lyndon, when that modest youth left his
mother's house and rode to Dublin, with a certain number of guineas in
his pocket. But whether Uncle Contarine believed the story or no, he
was ready to give the young gentleman ano