t seems probable,
that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his
youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell,
with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle
were acquainted.

He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who
taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a
quarter-master during the war of the Succession in Spain; and from the
romantic accounts which this man delighted to give of his travels,
Goldsmith is supposed, by his sister, to have contracted his propensity
for a wandering life. From hence he was removed successively to the
school at Elphin, of which the Rev. Mr. Griffin was master, and to that
of Athlone; kept by the Rev. Mr. Campbell; and lastly, was placed under
the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, of Edgeworthstown, in the county of
Longford, to whose instruction he acknowledged himself to have been more
indebted than to that of his other teachers.

It was probably that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never
afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull
boy, fit only to be the butt of their ridicule.

On his last return after the holidays to the house of his master, an
adventure befel him, which afterwards was made the ground-work of the
plot in one of his comedies. Journeying along leisurely, and being
inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him
for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by
night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house
in the place, he was directed to a gentleman's habitation that literally
answered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that
entertained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn;
and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without
ceremony; The master of the house, aware of the mistake, resolves to
favour it; and is still less inclined to undeceive his guest, when he
finds out from his discourse that he is the son of an acquaintance and a
neighbour. A good supper and a bottle or two of wine are called for, of
which the host, with his wife and daughter, are invited to partake; and
a hot cake is providently ordered for the morrow's breakfast. The young
traveller's surprise may be conceived, when in calling for his bill, he
finds under what roof he has been lodged, and with whom he had been