w the goodness, the hidden power, and the brightness of the
child. Noll was soon taken away from the village school. Just at the
moment when the heart of the master had greeted the hope of his little
scholar, Oliver caught confluent smallpox, with the pathetic result
that a face plain to begin with, grew a whimsical and winsome ugliness
all its own. Goldsmith has given us more than one friend, and not the
least of these old Paddy Byrne:

"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew."

Then we are told:

"Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes--for many a joke had he--
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."

As the piece proceeds, the delicately chiding satire is delightful,
ringing at last with the laughing lines:

"And still they gazed, and still their wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew."

Seven years had elapsed between the birth of Oliver and the child that
preceded him. His elder brother Henry had superior qualities which
were early marked. To these his father gave great attention, lavishing
his means upon this boy's education. Oliver was destined for
commercial life in the paternal projection of those affairs and
eventualities of which men imagine they are masters. The force of
impressions that fall upon the mind in childhood must be strongest in
those children whose imaginations are most vivid. Listening to Paddy
Byrne made Oliver in heart and mind a wayward rover all his life.
Something of the imprudence of the little man came, it might be said,
from this dash of the recklessness of the old soldier and adventurer
infused into imaginative infant hopefulness. From this same instructor
he also gathered his devotion to books and poetry, which proved a
revelation that changed his father's purpose of fitting him for a
commercial calling.

Henry Goldsmith is known and remembered now through the poetic
expressions of honour and affection bestowed upon him by his brother.
One cannot tell at this hour whether the deeper sense of reverence
should fall upon his character or upon that gratitude through which
alone it lives.

In the childhood of Oliver Goldsmith, his brightness and the