ith his happy though
here unconscious humour: "And now, my dear mother, after having
struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder that you are not more
rejoiced to see me."

Even his poor mother could not welcome his return with warmth. A
certain coldness crept into the heart of Henry, the beloved brother.
They had been greatly tried. Perhaps Uncle Contarine continued clement
merely because in the nature of things his responsibilities for the
vagrancies of his kinsman were inevitably less intimate. As he was not
willing to enter the Church, his uncle now thought that Goldsmith
should go to London and study law at the Temple. He gave the prodigal
fifty pounds, and bade him God-speed. Goldsmith made his way as far as
Dublin. There, passing a merry and philanthropic time with new and old
familiars, he gambled away, and gave away, and lost his money, and all
too soon had none for further travels. He returned with shame upon
his brow, completely contrite. The kindly Contarine possessed that
fine courage, the fortitude of forgiveness. It was springtime in the
poet's heart. This was his era of heroic hope, immortal dreaming, and
Divine revelation.

Following the traditions of his family, he would have become a
clergyman. It was not want of religious sentiment that precluded his
feeling sincerely called to this Divine office, but the unutterable
profoundness of his reverence. With all his laughter he ever had the
pure spirit of the pastor. For the faithful fulfilment of the
ministry, in that marvellous picture of a parson's life given in _The
Deserted Village_ he has revealed a living and an enlightening ideal.
Here the hearts of priest and poet beat as one. There is a universal
ministry, higher than divided priesthoods. Oliver Goldsmith, poet,
playwright, and humorist, was a veritable minister of God. Poetry has
one eternal test. The poem must ever be a very part of the very life
of the poet, his very soul, the breathing hope and the vital blood of
his whole being. This is true of Goldsmith's two great poems. They are
in themselves a sufficing and beautiful biography. We know the heart
of the man from these sublime outpourings of the soul. For every word
and every line we love and honour Goldsmith. _The Deserted Village_
reveals the singer's sense of sorrow, reverence for the reverend in
life, his compassion and outpouring sympathy, not for single hearts
merely, but that wider love involved and proclaimed in the
understa