is condition, he graduated in 1749, his name as usual the last
upon the list. When, later in life, he penned his _Inquiry into the
State of Polite Learning_, he wrote from bitter experience. Allied
with Johnson in the feeling of humiliation at the position of a sizar
in a College, Goldsmith went further, and questioned the whole policy
of education at our schools and Universities. It is hardly too much to
hold him one of the pioneers of modern methods, and those new,
slowly-growing principles, which mark our present somewhat broader
enlightenment.

Leaving the University, and returning to his mother's house at
Ballymahon, Goldsmith loafed about lazily, good-humouredly, and
merrily, taking things just as they came. To bear with him in patience
was hard for the members of his family. Our young, dreaming, and
delightful poet may not have been a blessing at home. Another hearth
saw this minstrel in his happiest vein. Passing his evenings at an
inn, he gleaned there a knowledge of mankind of which in later years
he made capital use. In time a finer audience than that he cheered at
this village ale-house, greeted a fairer humour when this tavern,
immortalised in happy memory, was seen in _She Stoops to Conquer_. At
this village hostelry, merriment, and not indulgence, ruled delighted
hours. In this haven of hilarity Oliver sang ditties and told stories
that blessed his boon companions. One recalls Shenstone's words:

"Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn."

It may seem difficult to discover a hero rejoicing in comrades
discovered in a village ale-house. Still less should we expect to find
in a heart pleased so easily a man of refined and exquisite
sensibility. Oliver Goldsmith, revelling in friends coarse and crass
to superficial vision, must have found in them gleams of holiness that
lives less loving could not discern.

CHAPTER II

"THE DESERTED VILLAGE"

The wandering boy, stricken with grief at the pain and the poverty he
sees, alike in town and village in Ireland, foreshadows and unveils
the coming man, who, knowing his own anxieties, was ever more
distressed by the cares and afflictions he beheld than by those
through which he was at any time himself the sufferer.

In all the careers of the essentially great, there are times when
laughter will mingle with the honour we bestow, and compassio