The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith

The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith

Two of the earlier, and, in some respects, more important Memoirs of Oliver Goldsmith open with a quotation from one of his minor works, in which he refers to the generally uneventful life of the scholar. His own chequered career was a notable exception to this rule. He was born on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, a village in the county of Longford in Ireland, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, being a clergyman of the Established Church. Oliver was the fifth of a family of five sons and three daughters. In 1730, his father, who had been assisting the rector of the neighbouring parish of Kilkenny West, succeeded to that living, and moved to Lissoy, a hamlet in Westmeath, lying a little to the right of the road from Ballymahon to Athlone. Educated first by a humble relative named Elizabeth Delap, the boy passed subsequently to the care of Thomas Byrne, the village schoolmaster, an old soldier who had fought Queen Annes battles in Spain, and had retained from those experiences a wandering and unsettled spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are contradictory. By his schoolfellows he seems to have been regarded as stupid and heavy,little better than a fool; but they admitted that he was remarkably active and athletic, and that he was an adept in all boyish sports. At home, notwithstanding a variable disposition, and occasional fits of depression, he showed to greater advantage. He scribbled verses early; and sometimes startled those about him by unexpected swallow-flights of repartee. One of these, an oft-quoted retort to a musical friend who had likened his awkward antics in a hornpipe to the dancing of Aesop, Heralds! proclaim aloud! all saying, See Aesop dancing, and his monkey playing, reads more like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a neer-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and exquisite sensibility of contempt with which he was to enter upon the battle of life. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 3545
Author: Goldsmith, Oliver
Release Date: Nov 1, 2002
Format: eBook
Language: English