pastured their cattle on the old common fields lost their privilege when the land was inclosed. Many who had been small farmers were forced to become laborers on the lands of others, to go to factory towns, or to emigrate. Thus a large class of small farmers disappeared. The historian Lecky, citing a contemporary document in proof, writes that "whole villages which had depended on free pasture land and fuel dwindled and perished, and a stream of emigrants passed to America."1 Others think the conditions sketched in Goldsmith's poem less typical; but there was undoubtedly much suffering.

Literary Conditions. Goldsmith lived and wrote in the transitional period linking the age of Pope, generally called the classical age, with the romantic reaction to be ushered in by Burns, Cowper, and Wordsworth. Literary historians often call this period the "Age of Dr. Johnson," from Goldsmith's friend, Samuel Johnson, the dictionary maker and essayist, who was its literary lawgiver. The social and intellectual ideas of the time were on the whole much the same as in the age preceding, that is, critical rather than creative, showing respect for convention, the centering of interest on form, and the exaltation of " reason " and " common sense at the expense of individuality and spontaneity. It was not an especially productive period for letters. Among prose writers Goldsmith's leading contemporaries were Dr. Johnson, Gibbon the historian, Burke the orator and essayist, and Sheridan the dramatist. In poetry were Collins, Gray, Young, and Chatterton; thus the showing was even slenderer for poetry than for prose.

Professional writers of this period were likely to encounter many hardships, and much in their lot was sordid and unenviable. They were breaking away from the patronage system previously prevailing, and were now dependent on booksellers, the better modern system of allowing authors a percentage of the profits

1 History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1903), VII, 260.

on their books being not yet evolved. In the Restoration period literature had been close to politics. The author was dependent, not on the sale of his books to a bookseller, or to the public, but on the munificence of some patron. He sought to attach himself to some distinguished man or to some party. Dryden, Swift, Addison, and Steele all had patronage bestowed upon them in return for some political service. In the time of Dr. Johnson, men of letters became less subservient to patrons or to parties; hence they could be freer and more sincere ; but prices were low and uncertain, and an income that was derived from literary drudgery, hack writing on assigned themes regardless of equipment, was likely to be as precarious as it was hard-earned.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Early Years. Oliver Goldsmith was born November 10, 1728, in the small village of Pallas, County Longford, Ireland, the fifth child and second son in a family of eight. The Goldsmiths were of English descent, but the family had been for some generations settled in Ireland. The Reverend Charles Goldsmith, Oliver's father, was a humble Protestant curate, whose income averaged forty pounds a year, a not unusual revenue in that period for a country parson. When Oliver was two years old his father succeeded to a more lucrative living at Lissoy, County Westmeath, almost in the geographical center of Ireland, and here the future poet passed the larger part of his boyhood. Oliver was awkward and unattractive as a child, nor did his physical appearance improve with years. He was short, thickset, and ugly, and his face was permanently disfigured, with more than the usual severity, by an attack of the smallpox in his eighth year. He was not a precocious child. His youth gave signs enough of the thoughtless generosity, the

good nature, and the improvidence that were always to characterize him, but gave few or no signs of his literary genius. For the former traits his father was perhaps in part responsible. In A Citizen of the World, much of which is autobiographical, Goldsmith writes, presumably of his bringing up by his father:

We were told that universal benevolence was what first cemented society; we were taught to consider all the wants of mankind as our own . . . he wound us up to be mere machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest impulse, made either by real or fictitious distress. In a word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands before we were taught the necessary qualifications of getting a farthing.1

Goldsmith has pictured some of his own or his father's traits in the character of Dr. Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield, in Honeywood in The Good-Natured Man, and in the preacher in The Deserted Village.

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Goldsmith as a Student. Goldsmith's school career was throughout undistinguished. He was taught his letters by a maidservant and relative, who pronounced him very stupid. At the age of six he was sent to the village school, where his master was an ex-soldier, Thomas or 'Paddy" Byrne, the original of the schoolmaster in The Deserted Village. He studied under several later masters in schools at Elphin, Athlone, and elsewhere, leaving apparently a record for little more than dullness and awkwardness. His college career was similarly inglorious. Owing to his father's crippling the means of the family to provide Goldsmith's sister with an extravagant marriage portion, Oliver entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of seventeen, as a sizar, passing the necessary entrance examination the lowest in the list. The sizar was part student, part servant, and as such Goldsmith waited at table and

1 Letter XXVII.

performed janitor service. He tided over money difficulties in various ways, by the generosity of a kind-hearted maternal uncle, Thomas Contarine, his chief support after the death of his father, by loans from friends, by pawning his books, and by the occasional writing of street ballads, which brought him five shillings apiece. His life in college was a hand-to-mouth sort of existence, marked by various frolics and gayeties as well as by numerous humiliations. He was popular with his associates, partly because of his flute playing and his singing, and partly because of his lively disposition and his ability to tell stories; but he quarreled constantly with a rather brutal tutor, took part in a town-and-gown riot and was publicly reprimanded, and once when giving a dancing party attended by not a little hilarity in his college rooms he was surprised in the breach of discipline by an angry tutor and was "personally chastised." The latter disgrace was too much for Goldsmith, and the next day he sold his books and ran away, ultimately turning up at Lissoy. He was taken back to college by his brother Henry, and succeeded in securing his degree of Bachelor of Arts, graduating, as he had entered, the lowest in the list.

Attempts at Various Professions. For two years after leaving college Goldsmith loitered at home, ostensibly fitting himself, at the request of his relatives, for church orders. He lived an idle, irresponsible life, happy and thriftless; and when he finally presented himself for ordination was rejected, perhaps because of his record at college, perhaps because he neglected his preliminary studies, or perhaps, as the curate who was his brother's successor near Lissoy reports, because he presented himself for examination in a pair of flaming scarlet breeches. For a while he tried tutoring; then came a futile attempt to emigrate to America. If we may believe the account Goldsmith wrote to his mother, the ship on which he had engaged passage from Cork sailed without him, while he was

pleasure-seeking in the neighboring country. There was nothing for him to do but to turn up again at Lissoy with empty pockets.

The legal profession was next determined upon, and Goldsmith was provided by his uncle with fifty pounds to take him to Dublin or London to study law. This money he lost on the way at gambling. Goldsmith was hard to help; but his longtried relatives again got together a purse, and he was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, this time reaching his destination. He proved popular as usual with his associates, through his various gifts at entertaining. A few evidences remain from this period of the lavishness in dress which was one of his peculiarities. There is a tailor's bill1 of 1753 containing references to "rich sky-blue satin cloth," "rich Genoa velvet," "fine high claret-coloured cloth," etc., suggesting his strong love of finery. He made little progress in medicine, however, and, becoming restless, succeeded in persuading his uncle that he would be benefited by study under a certain great professor at Leyden. He crossed to the Continent in 1754, after obtaining from his indulgent uncle the sum of twenty pounds.

Wanderings. Goldsmith lingered for some time in Leyden; then impulsively spending the last of his money to buy some high-priced roots for his Uncle Contarine, who was an enthusiastic florist, he left the city, almost penniless, to make a tour of Europe. For two years he roved through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, ostensibly studying medicine, but probably doing very little. Possibly he studied a few months at the University of Padua; but he seems to have been more vagabond than student. He was often, of course, in straits for money, depending for subsistence on teaching his native language, on gaming, but generally on his flute and songs, which brought him welcome from the peasantry. In Italy he is

1 Printed in full in Forster's Life (1877), I, 52.