His pity gave ere charity began."
But the wish to relieve was so largely in excess of the power, that frequently when Justice called to present a claim for payment Generosity had been beforehand, and had carried away the money; and Justice had to wait, or, alas, in too many cases, to go away unsatisfied. Thus the most humiliating position in which Goldsmith was ever placed in the days of his direst poverty, arose from his hastily obeying an impulse to relieve the landlord of his miserable lodgings, who had been arrested for debt, and whose wife came to Goldsmith, weeping and wringing her hands. Thinking only how he could liberate the poor man by the only means in his power, the poet rushed off and pledged some books, and a suit of clothes, procured on the credit of Ralph Griffiths, a bookseller, that Goldsmith might appear decently at an examination, which he failed to pass, and dire was the wrath of Griffiths on the occasion.
The young days of Oliver Goldsmith offer nothing very remarkable to record. He was considered a dull boy by his first instructors, though there are indications at times of poetical talent. One of his sisters married a gentleman of fortune of the name of Hodson, to whom Henry Goldsmith, Oliver's eldest brother, was tutor. In order that his daughter might not enter this family without a suitable marriage portion, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith made a sacrifice, which, while it impoverished the whole family, was peculiarly detrimental to the fortunes of Oliver. He executed a bond, pledging himself to pay four hundred pounds as the marriage portion of his daughter Catherine. The immediate effect of this proceeding was that Oliver was obliged to enter, in the humblest possible manner, upon the college career he was about to commence. On the 11th of June, 1745, Oliver Goldsmith was admitted as a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin.
Very wretched and very unsatisfactory was his life at that seat of learning. The menial duties exacted in return for the reduced expense of the sizar's education disgusted him. The brutalities of his tutor Wilder, a man at once ferocious and pedantic, and totally unable to appreciate the young scholar's genius, caused him the keenest mortification; and to these ills were added the grinding poverty with which he now first became familiar; a poverty occasionally alleviated by gifts from his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Contarine, a truly kind-hearted and benevolent man, to whom our poet was bound to the last by ties of affectionate gratitude. Now also his father died, and his necessities became greater than ever. We hear of him, writing ballads, and selling the copyrights at five shillings each; then stealing out at night to hear these, the earliest efforts of his muse, sung through the streets.
A small triumph, in the shape of an exhibition, worth some thirty shillings, induced the young awkward student to give a very humble kind of ball at his rooms. To this ball came an unexpected visitor in the shape of Wilder the tutor, who put the guests to flight, and publicly beat the host. Smarting under the disgrace, Goldsmith quitted the college, and was only induced, after a time, to return by the persuasions of his brother Henry, who brought about a reconciliation, or rather a truce, between Oliver and his tyrant. On the 27th of February, 1749, he obtained his B.A. degree, and, returning home, remained for a time idle and unemployed, looking out for the chance of a career. He presented himself for ordination and was refused; was a tutor in a private family, and left in consequence of a quarrel; was furnished with funds by Uncle Contarine to study law, lost his money, and appeared again at home destitute. At length, with some last assistance from the friendly uncle's purse, he started on a tour through Europe; travelling, not like the majority of British tourists in coach and on horseback, but on foot and alone, making his way from place to place, and studying men rather than science. Important, and rich in results for his whole future life, was this remarkable journey. And, among the most memorable of its effects was, that it suggested the poem of the "Traveller." Marvellously true were the views taken by the poor student of the various lands through which he passed; and remarkable were the words in which, in one of his early essays, he predicted the change that was coming upon France. Clearly and distinctly he heard the first far-off mutterings of the great revolutionary storm. He saw the growth and spread of the spirit of freedom among the people, and while others cried "peace" when there was no peace, he distinctly and clearly foresaw the great crash of revolution that was coming.
Early in the year 1756 Oliver Goldsmith found himself alone in London. He was in his twenty-eighth year—without a profession, almost utterly friendless, and destitute of all means of subsistence. Of this part of his life he could be scarcely ever induced to speak in his later and happier days; but here and there we get a glimpse which shows us that it must have been dreary in the extreme. At Sir Joshua Reynolds's he once startled the company by commencing an anecdote with "When I lived among the beggars in Axe Lane;" and there is something very significant in the way in which the pangs of starvation are described in his "Natural History." He must have felt those pangs himself to describe them so graphically.
By various means he made a shift to live. At one time he pounded drugs for an apothecary near London Bridge; at another, he attempted to practise physic amongst the poorest of the poor. Now we find him correcting press proofs for a printer; and now he is settled for a time as usher in Dr. Milner's boys' school at Peckham. We have a picture of him here, drawn by Miss Milner, the principal's daughter. He is described as exceedingly good-natured, always ready to amuse the boys with his flute, giving away his money, or spending it in tarts and sweetmeats for the boys as soon as he received it, and generally recommending himself by his amiability and kindliness of heart. But Goldsmith himself considered this servitude at the Peckham Academy as the most dreary period of his life. The position of an usher was at that time, if possible, worse than it is now; and the mortifications he experienced at Peckham helped to throw a shadow over his later life.
But on a certain day in April, 1757, Ralph Griffiths, a prosperous London bookseller, dined at Peckham, with the Milners. He was the proprietor of a critical magazine; and, as the conversation turned on the literature of the day, Griffiths became aware that the remarks made by the poor usher were not those of an ordinary man. He took him aside, and asked if he would undertake to write some literary notices and reviews. The offer was accepted, as was also the very moderate salary Griffiths offered in return for the daily services of the writer; and thus at last Goldsmith was fairly started in authorship, and beginning to serve his apprenticeship to letters.
A dreary apprenticeship it was. Griffiths, and Griffiths' wife, ruled over their "hack" author with a rod of iron; curtailed his leisure, carped at the amount of "work" done, and ruthlessly altered his articles. He began with some reviews, which, for their elegance of style, facility of expression, and gracefulness of fancy, must have astonished the readers of the ordinarily dull and common-place "Monthly Review." Soon, however, the tyranny of the Griffiths pair became intolerable; a quarrel ensued, and the connexion between master and servant was broken off. Goldsmith established himself in a garret in a court near Fleet Street, and began the almost hopeless attempt to support himself independently by miscellaneous writing.
Very hard and bitter was the struggle through which he had to pass; and now and then he made efforts to emancipate himself entirely from the thraldom of literature. Indeed, we even find him once more at his desk at Dr. Milner's school, at Peckham. He obtained an appointment as medical officer in the East India Company's service on the Coromandel coast, but lost it, probably through inability to pay his passage and procure the necessary outfit. Then, as a last resource, he presented himself for examination at Surgeons' Hall, intending to become a "hospital mate;" but was rejected, as the books of the society record, as "not qualified." Thus, perforce driven back to literature, he girded himself up manfully for the struggle; and gradually the dawn of a better day began to break. The long and hard battle he had fought had at length produced one gain for him. He was known to the bookselling fraternity; and, as they would have phrased it, "his value in the market began to rise." A number of new magazines were started simultaneously, and the proprietors were naturally anxious to secure the services of Goldsmith's graceful pen. We find him writing for several magazines at once, and receiving a respectable price for his work. Thus, with the year 1759, the shadow of squalid poverty and grinding want passes away from Goldsmith's life. Happy would it have been for him had his distresses taught him prudence. But the prosperity came too late. His habits were formed; the unfortunate custom of living from hand to mouth, of flying from the thoughts of the dark future by heedless indulgence in any pleasure that could be snatched in the present—the inveterate disposition to alternate periods of