Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 20

"Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land.

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale, Downward they move, a melancholy band, Pa.s.s from the sh.o.r.e, and darken all the strand.

Contented toil, and hospitable care, And kind, connubial tenderness are there; And piety, with wishes placed above, And steady loyalty, and faithful love."

In five years, it is shown by official doc.u.ments, that 72,000 persons have been thus cast out of their homes and expatriated, and that the process of this exterminating system has, within twenty years, made outcasts of no less than two millions and a half of peasantry!

Seeing this wholesale depopulation, which has not merely gone on formerly, but is going on at this hour, in the face of all enlightened and humane England, it is quite too late to call in question the truth of the poet's descriptions. We no longer wonder that, in opposition to popular opinion, he stood boldly forward, at the moment that he issued his poem to the world, in a.s.sertion of the truth of his descriptions, and we deplore the fact that his n.o.ble sentiments have not sooner become national and availing.

Under all these circ.u.mstances, Auburn or Lissoy, which you will, will always be visited with enthusiasm by the genuine lovers of purest poetry and of kindly humanity. The visitor will not find all there that he naturally looks for. He will not find the country very beautiful, or the mill, the brook, the ale-house as rural and picturesque as he could wish; but he will find the very ground on which Oliver Goldsmith ran in the happy days of his boyhood; the ruins of the house in which that model of a village preacher--simple, pious, and warm-hearted, justly, indeed, dear to all the country--lived, the father of the poet; the ruins of the house in which the poet himself spent a happy childhood, cheris.h.i.+ng under such a parent one of the n.o.blest spirits which ever glowed for truth and humanity; fearing no ridicule, contracting no worldliness, never abating, spite of harsh experience and repeated imposition, one throb of pity or of generous sympathy for the wretched.

The ground where such a man was reared is indeed holy. Goldsmith himself, not less than his father and brother, was one of the most genuine Christian preachers that ever lived. The sermons of the father and the brother perished with their hearers, but those of the poet live forever in his writings. And how many of the personal characteristics of "the village preacher," which in his father he celebrates, lived in himself!

"Unpracticed he to fawn or seek for power, By doctrines fas.h.i.+oned to the varying hour; For other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."

How often did he present this trait in his own life! How zealous he was to help any one that he could; how careless to help himself! Thus, when requested by the minister to say if he could be of any service to him, he said, "Yes, he had a brother, a worthy clergyman, whom he would gladly see promoted." At this time he was in great distress himself. At another time, Lord North sent to him a Dr. Scott, with a _carte blanche_, to induce him to write for the ministry; but Goldsmith was not to be bought. "I found him," said the doctor, "in a miserable set of chambers in the Temple; I told him my authority; I told him that I was empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions, and, would you believe it! he was so absurd as to say, '_I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the a.s.sistance, therefore, you offer is unnecessary to me_;' and so I left him," added Dr. Scott, "in his garret."

How completely was this Dr. Primrose! How thoroughly was he the same man in every thing. When his aid was needed by his fellow-man,

"Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began."

It is because he embodied himself in all he wrote that his writings command such undecaying interest; for in impressing his own heart on his page, he impressed there nature itself in its most unselfish and generous character. Every circ.u.mstance, therefore, connected with "The Deserted Village" of such a man will always be deeply interesting to the visitor of the spot, and we must for that reason notice one or two facts of the kind before quitting Lissoy. Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, met by Mr. Davis in his travels in the United States, said, "The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. I remember him well. He was, indeed, a man severe to view. A woman, called Walsey Cruse, kept the ale-house. I have often been in the house. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood opposite the house. I was once riding with Brady, t.i.tular Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me, 'Ma foi, Best, this huge, overgrown bush is mightily in the way; I will order it to be cut down!' 'What, sir,' said I, 'cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn bush, that supplies so beautiful an image in The Deserted Village!' 'Ma foi!' exclaimed the bishop, 'is that the hawthorn bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the ax, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch!'"

In other places the schoolmaster is called, not Paddy Burns, but Thomas Byrne, evidently the same person. He had been educated for school-teaching, but had gone into the army, and, serving in Spain during the reign of Queen Anne, became quarter-master of the regiment.

On the return of peace he took up his original calling. He is represented to be well qualified to teach; little more than writing, reading, and arithmetic were wanted, but he could translate extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse, in considerable elegance. But his grand accomplishment was the narration of his adventures, which was commonly exercised in the ale-house; at the same time that, when not in a particular humor for teaching, he would edify his boys in the school with one of his stories. Among his most eager listeners was Oliver, who was so much excited by what he heard, that his friends used to ascribe his own love of rambling to this cause. The schoolmaster was, in fact, the very man to raise the imagination in the young poet. He was eccentric in his habits, of a romantic turn, wrote poetry, was well versed in the fairy superst.i.tions of the country, and, what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth.

A poor woman, named Catharine Geraghty, was supposed to be

"Yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring: She, wretched matron, pressed in age for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread."

The brook and ditches near where her cabin stood still furnish cresses, and several of her descendants reside in the neighborhood. The school-house is still pointed out, but it is unfortunate for its ident.i.ty that no school-house was built then, school being taught in the master's cottage. There is more evidence in nature of the poet's recalling the place of his boyhood as he wrote his poem. The waters and marshy lands, in more than one direction, gave him acquaintance with the singular bird which he has introduced with such effect as an image of desolation.

"Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest."

Little charm as Lissoy has at the present moment independent of a.s.sociation with Oliver Goldsmith, with him and genius it possesses one that grows upon you the more you trace the scenes made prominent in his poem, and we leave it with regret.

There are various other places in the same part of Ireland which are connected with the early history of Goldsmith. At the school of Paddy Byrne he made little progress, as was to be expected, except in a growing attachment to the marvelous. He devoured not only the romantic stories of the schoolmaster, but of the peasantry. He listened enthusiastically to their ballads, their fairy tales and superst.i.tions, of which they have in Ireland a plentiful stock. He got hold of, and read with equal avidity, what have been called the cottage cla.s.sics of Ireland--those books which may be found in their cabins every where--History of Witches and Ghosts; the Devil and Dr. Faustus; Parismus and Parismenus; Montelea, knight of the Oracle; Seven Champions of Christendom; Mendoza's Art of Boxing; Ovid's Art of Love; Lives of celebrated Pirates; History of the Irish Rogues and Rapparees; of Moll Flanders; of Jack the Bachelor, a notorious smuggler; of Fair Rosamond and Jane Sh.o.r.e; of Donna Rosena; the Life and Adventures of James Freny, a famous Irish Robber, &c. A precious literature for a lad, it must be confessed. Luckily, if it excited his imagination, it failed in corrupting his heart; and, thanks to the spread of knowledge, a better cla.s.s of books has now found its way even into Irish cabins, among which not the least general are Chambers's Journal and Tracts. To put Oliver under more suitable tuition, he was sent to the Rev. Mr. Griffin, of Elphin, master of the school once taught by his grandfather. Here he became an inmate of his uncle's house, Mr. John Goldsmith, of Ballyoughter, in the vicinity. Displaying now much talent, which was at once seen and cordially acknowledged by his uncle, he was destined for the University, and preparatory to that he was sent to a school of repute at Athlone. At this school he continued two years, when he was removed to Edgeworthstown, under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, where he continued till he went to the University.

That we may take a connected view of his homes and haunts in this part of the country, we must include at once his life hereabout before he went to the University, and his visits. .h.i.ther during an interval of two years, between his quitting the University and his quitting Ireland, to study physic in Edinburgh, and, in fact, never again to return to Ireland.

There are several facts connected with his school days at Edgeworthstown that are very interesting. He is said to have become acquainted, either here or at Ballyoughter, with Turlogh O'Carolan, the last of the ancient Irish bards. This popular musician and poet, whose songs have been translated into English, and published, maintained the style and life of the minstrel. He disdained to play for money, but went as an admired and honored guest from house to house among the most ancient and opulent families of Connaught. To complete his character as a harper, he was blind, and had been so from the age of eighteen. His songs, which are sung by the peasantry with enthusiasm, are numerous, and celebrate the persons and families of his patrons. If they do not, in the mind of an Englishman, appear to possess an originality equal to their fame in Ireland, it is to be remembered that they have there all the charm of a.s.sociation, their very t.i.tles being the names of lords and ladies of old families: O'Connor Faby; Dennis O'Connor; Planxty Stafford; Nelly Plunkett; Mrs. French; Anna M'Dermot Roe &c.

The influence which the other local poet, Laurence Whyte, had on the mind and genius of Goldsmith, is very striking. Whyte wrote, as part of a larger poem, The Parting Cup, or the Humors of Deoch an Doruis, in four cantos. It is a lively picture of a Westmeath farmer's life, about the year 1710, and shows not only how its themes had sunk into the mind of Goldsmith as a boy when they reappeared in The Deserted Village, but also how old and how fixed a portion of Irish history are those miseries and outrages on the people which are at this hour the topic of public wonder in England. The exactions of the landlords; the casting forth from house and home the wretched tenantry; the stream of consequent emigration; and the curse of absenteeism. Whyte's poem is very clever, and deserves to be better known. Speaking of the better condition of the farmers in the seventeenth century, he proceeds:

"Thus farmers lived like gentlemen, Ere lands were raised from five to ten; Again from ten to three times five, Then very few could hope to thrive; But tugged against the rapid stream, Which drove them back from whence they came: At length 'twas canted to a pound, What tenant then could keep his ground?

Not knowing which, to stand or fly, When rent-rolls mounted zenith high, They had their choice to run away, Or labor for a groat a day.

_Now beggared and of all bereft, Are doomed to starve or live by theft.

Take to the mountain or the roads, When banished from their old abodes.

Their native soil were forced to quit, So Irish landlords thought it fit; Who without ceremony or rout, For their improvements turned them out._

_How many villages they razed, How many parishes laid waste, To fatten bullocks, sheep, and cows_, When scarce one parish has two plows.

Their flocks do range on every plain, That once produced all kinds of grain.

Depopulating every village, Where we had husbandry and tillage; Fat bacon, poultry, and good bread, By which the poor were daily fed.

Instead of living well and thriving, There's nothing now but leading--_driving_; The lands are all monopolized, The tenants racked and sacrificed; _Whole colonies, to shun the fate Of being oppressed at such a rate, By tyrants who still raise their rent, Sail to the Western Continent.

Rather than live at home like slaves, They trust themselves to winds and waves._"

If a poet at the present hour were describing the acts and deeds of the Gerrards, the Waterfords, and like exterminators, could he have done it more literally? Thus, independent of the other miseries and wrongs of Ireland, this system of turning out human creatures to make way for bullocks has been going on exactly for a hundred years; and the Irish aristocracy, having made themselves the scandal of the whole civilized world, still sleep in warm beds and dream that they are Christians! and England, the most powerful and humane nation on the earth, has overlooked the dreadful scene, having her eyes fixed, full of tears, on the far-off negro, the Esquimaux, and the South Sea Islander. Till this crying iniquity and disgrace be removed out of our borders, every Bible Society, and Missionary Society, and Society for Humanity to _Animals_, should stop its ordinary operations, and combine each and all into a great and omnipotent a.s.sociation to convert the Irish aristocracy to Christianity, and to teach to the oppressed and trodden-on people that there is really such a thing as "loving our neighbors as ourselves."

How unvarying are the features of the Irish gentry:

"Our squires of late through Europe roam; Are too well bred to live at home: Are not content with Dublin College, But range abroad for greater knowledge; To strut in velvets and brocades At b.a.l.l.s, and plays, and masquerades.

To have their rent their chiefest care is, In bills to London and to Paris.

Their education is so nice, They know all chances on the dice;

Those absentees we here describe _Are chiefly of our Irish tribe_, Who live in luxury and pleasure, And throw away their time and treasure; Cause poverty and devastation, And sink the credit of the nation,"

Who has not seen their deserted homes, so picturesquely sketched here?

"Their mansions molder quite away, And run to ruin and decay; Left like a desert wild and waste, Without the track of man or beast; Where wild fowl may with safety rest, At every gate may build a nest: Where gra.s.s or weeds on pavements grow, And every year is fit to mow.

No smoke from chimneys does ascend, Nor entertainment for a friend; Nor sign of drink, or smell of meat, For human creatures there to eat."

To turn to a more agreeable circ.u.mstance. The chief incident in "She Stoops to Conquer" is said to have originated in an amusing adventure of Goldsmith's, on his last going from home to the school at Edgeworthstown, and is thus related by Prior: "Having set off on horseback, there being then, and indeed now, no regular wheeled conveyance from Ballymahon, he loitered on the road, amusing himself by viewing the neighboring gentlemen's seats. A friend had presented him with a guinea; and the desire, perhaps, of spending it--to a schoolboy--in a most independent manner at an inn, tended to slacken his diligence on the road. Night overtook him in the small town of Ardagh, about half way on his journey. Inquiring for the best house in the place, meaning the best inn, he chanced to address, as is said, a person named Cornelius Kelly, who boasted of having taught fencing to the Marquis of Granby, and was then domesticated in the house of Mr.

Featherstone, a gentleman of fortune in the town; he was known as a notorious wag, and, willing to play off a trick upon one whom he had no doubt discovered to be a swaggering schoolboy, directed him to the house of his patron.

"Suspecting no deception, Oliver proceeded as directed; gave authoritative orders about the care of his horse, and, being thence conceived by the servants to be an expected guest, was ushered into the presence of their master, who immediately discovered the mistake. Being, however, a man of humor, and willing to enjoy an evening's amus.e.m.e.nt with a boy under the influence of so unusual a blunder, he encouraged it, particularly when, by the communicative disposition of the guest, it was found he was the son of an old acquaintance on his way to school.

Nothing occurred to undeceive the self-importance of the youth, fortified by the possession of a sum he did not often possess; wine was therefore ordered, in addition to a good supper, and the supposed landlord, his wife, and daughters, were invited to partake of it. On retiring for the night, a hot cake was ordered for breakfast the following morning; nor was it until preparing to quit the house next day that he discovered he had been entertained in a private family."

Ballymahon, the little foreign-looking town near his native place, figures conspicuously in Goldsmith's early life. After his father's death, which took place while he was at college, his mother removed thither, and thither during vacations Oliver betook himself. Again, when he quitted college, he spent two years among his relations, with no fixed aim; sometimes he was with his uncle Contarine in Roscommon; sometimes at Lissoy, where now his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, lived in the old house; at other times he was with his brother Henry, who, officiating as curate, lived at Pallasmore in the house where Oliver was born, and, to eke out his small salary, kept a school, in which Oliver a.s.sisted him. No place was so dear to him, however, as Lissoy, where he entered into all the rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law with fullest enjoyment. There is no doubt that, had he had sufficient means, he would have continued to live here a country life, and the world would most probably have lost a poet. As it is, he has made the life and characters of Lissoy familiar to all the world, in both The Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield. No man drew more from real, and especially from his own past life, than Goldsmith. The last years he spent in the country he was a tutor in the family of a country gentleman in the county of Roscommon, of the name of Flinn; and the nature of his impressions regarding such a situation he is supposed to have recorded in the history of The Man in Black.

His mother's house at Ballymahon, where she lived as a widow about twenty years, is still pointed out to the curious; it forms one corner of the road to Edgeworthstown. Some shop accounts have been preserved, in which Oliver, under the familiar t.i.tle of Master Noll, is found figuring as his mother's messenger for tea and sugar; it was only to the next door. Opposite to his mother's house stood George Conway's inn, where he used to spend many a gay and jovial evening, in the company of those who resorted thither, and often amused them with a story or a song. Here he was naturally a great authority in matters of learning.

From scenes and characters occurring here, it is believed he drew the first idea of Tony Lumpkin; at all events, in such a circle he saw traits of human life and action that would be found as old gold at the necessary time. At Ballymulvey House, in the neighborhood, he spent many happy hours with his friend, and quondam college and school companion, Mr. Robert Bryanton, and also with him made excursions into the surrounding country, sometimes shooting, sometimes fis.h.i.+ng in the Inny, which runs through the town. In these rambles he made himself as familiar with nature and her wild children as he did with man in towns; he traced the haunts of the wild fowl, and hunted the otter in the waters that there communicate with the Shannon. There are many objects in the neighborhood of Ballymahon still proudly pointed out as belonging to the haunts of Goldsmith: the islets in the river; the ruins of a mill, in his time in full activity; the places on the river side where he used to sit and play on his flute; as well as the house of a Mr.

Gannon, where, as he himself tells us in his Animated Nature, he first saw a seal, this gentleman having two for ten years in his house.

In this portion of his life there are many rich and amusing incidents, which it is to be regretted we can not here introduce, particularly that most amusing account of his visit to an old college friend, who had often pressed him to come and "command his stable and his purse," but who turned out as such friends often do. But we have over-stepped his sojourn at college, and must turn back to it.

Trinity College, Dublin, is a n.o.ble structure; and, with its s.p.a.cious courts and extensive gardens, more fittingly deserving the name of parks, one would think a place where the years of students.h.i.+p might--especially in the heart of such a city--be very agreeably spent.

But Goldsmith entered there under circ.u.mstances that were irksome to him, and, to add to the matter, he met with a brute in his tutor. The family income did not allow him to occupy a higher rank than that of a sizer, or poor scholar, and this was mortifying to his sensitive mind.

The sizer wears a black gown of coa.r.s.e stuff without sleeves, a plain black cloth cap without a ta.s.sel, and dines at the fellows' table after they have retired. It was at that period far worse; they wore red caps to distinguish them, and were compelled to perform derogatory offices: to sweep the courts in the morning, carry up the dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' table, and wait in the hall till they had dined.

No wonder that a mind like that of Goldsmith's writhed under the degradation! He has recorded his own feelings and opinions on this custom: "Sure pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd fas.h.i.+on of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and, at the same time, treated as slaves; at once studying freedom and practicing servitude." A spirited fellow at length caused the abolition of the practice of the sizers acting as waiters, and that, too, on grand occasions before the public, by flinging the dish he was carrying on Trinity Sunday at the head of a citizen in the crowd, a.s.sembled to witness the scene, who made some jeering remarks on the office he had to perform.

His tutor, a great brute--let his name be known: it was Wilder--proceeded sometimes to actual corporeal castigation; and, with Oliver's natural tendency to poetry rather than to dry cla.s.sical and mathematical studies, like many other poets, including Scott and Byron, he cut no great figure at college; and, like the latter, detested it.

Among his cotemporaries at the college was Edmund Burke, but they appear to have known little of each other. To add to Goldsmith's uncomfortable position, there occurred a riot of the students, who, hearing that one of their body had been arrested in Fleet-street, rushed to the rescue, seized the bailiffs, dragged them to the college, and pumped them soundly in the old cistern. They next attempted to break open Newgate, and make a general jail delivery, but failed for want of cannon. In the subsequent inquiry Goldsmith came in, not for any severe punishment, but for a college censure. Feeling his self-respect deeply wounded by his brutal tutor entering his chambers on one occasion when he had a party of merry comrades there, and in their presence inflicting personal chastis.e.m.e.nt upon him, he quitted college, selling his books, and set off to Cork to embark for some foreign country; but his money failed; he was compelled to sell his clothes from his back, and, brought to the utmost condition of misery and starvation, he thus reached his brother's house, who again clothed him, and brought him back to college, endeavoring to propitiate the brutal tutor. His father dying, he was reduced to the deepest distress. His generous uncle Contarine helped him all he could, but, with Oliver's careless habits, he was still often reduced to the utmost straits. He was sometimes compelled to p.a.w.n his books, and borrow others to study from. His condition became that of squalid poverty, and at length he was driven to the extremity of writing street-ballads, which he found a ready sale for, at five s.h.i.+llings a copy, at a shop known as the sign of the Reindeer, in Mountrath-street.

Eventually obtaining the degree of B.A., he quitted the University, and, as we have seen, retreated to his own native neighborhood and friends.