it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face
and person; anon, he surveys them in the glass ruefully; and presently
assumes the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person
in splendour and fine colours. He presented himself to be examined for
ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did
not like to go into the Church, because he was fond of coloured clothes.
When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black
velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat
over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in
plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours
the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to
this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled
the little account in Hades.(176)

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the
name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it?
Not the young sizar's, who made but a poor figure in that place of
learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:(177) he learned
his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for
the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was
to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his
tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much
to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property,
and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to
America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home
ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf--it was but a lean
one--and welcomed him back.

After college, he hung about his mother's house, and lived for some years
the life of a buckeen--passed a month with this relation and that, a year
with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house.(178) Tired of
this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the
Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than
Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his
outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home.
Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped him to a
couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to
hear the famous professors of Leyden and Pa