less parts than his have made their way to the woolsack or to the
episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations,
threw away all the advantages, of his situation. He neglected the
studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to
the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room,
was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned by a
brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some
gay youths and damsels from the city.

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between squalid
distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, leaving a mere
pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the
university. During some time the humble dwelling to which his widowed
mother had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year; it
was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to
have fitted him to do nothing but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of
which he was as fond as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish
airs, to play the flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories
by the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in turn without
success. He applied for ordination; but, as he applied in scarlet
clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He then
became tutor in an opulent family, but soon quitted his situation in
consequence of a dispute about play. Then he determined to emigrate to
America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him set out for Cork
on a good horse with thirty pounds in his pocket. But in six weeks he
came back on a miserable hack, without a penny, and informed his mother
that the ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair wind
while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed without him. Then he
resolved to study the law. A generous kinsman advanced fifty pounds.
With this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming house,
and lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small purse
was made up; and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edinburgh. At
Edinburgh he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures,
and picked up some superficial information about chemistry and natural
history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He
left that celebrated university, the third university at which he had
resided, in his twenty-seventh year, w