tant and Saxon family which had
been long settled in Ireland, and which had, like most other Protestant
and Saxon families, been, in troubled times, harassed and put in fear
by the native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, studied in the
reign of Queen Anne at the diocesan school of Elphin, became attached to
the daughter of the schoolmaster, married her, took orders, and settled
at a place called Pallas in the county of Longford. There he with
difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could earn, partly
as a curate and partly as a farmer.

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. That spot was
then, for all practical purposes, almost as remote from the busy and
splendid capital in which his later years were passed, as any clearing
in Upper Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this
day those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace
of the poet are forced to perform the latter part of their journey on
foot. The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain which,
in wet weather, is often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting
car to pieces; and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most
strongly built wheels cannot be dragged.

While Oliver was still a child, his father was presented to a living
worth about 200 pounds a year, in the county of Westmeath. The family
accordingly quitted their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious
house on a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was
taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh
year to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who
professed to teach nothing but reading, writing, and arithmetic, but
who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees,
and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and
galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope,
the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega.
This man must have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the
aboriginal race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but could pour
forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life
continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially
of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp
he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the
Englishry, and though connected by numerous