The wandering boy, stricken with grief at the pain and the poverty he sees, alike in town and village in Ireland, foreshadows and unveils the coming man, who, knowing his own anxieties, was ever more distressed by the cares and afflictions he beheld than by those through which he was at any time himself the sufferer.

In all the careers of the essentially great, there are times when laughter will mingle with the honour we bestow, and compassion oust our adoration from its throne. Laughter may grow derisive and compassion scornful. Contempt has one virtue—it recoils. Derision can find no room within the fathoming comprehension that does not forget the ceaseless pressure of those ruthless surroundings in which often noblest lives are framed.

Pope's line on Gay pictures Goldsmith:

In these early days no path seemed chosen save that of the road following the loitering line of least resistance.

After his University career was over, Goldsmith for a while made his home with his sister and her husband near Lissoy, enjoying fishing and otter-hunting. Principally he passed his days idling, as people say, or seeing visions, as the poets and the prophets plead. He was often with his brother Henry, sharing in the pastor's work. Precious these fraternal communions must have been. Abiding was Oliver's love for Henry, to the last, deep, devoted, and revering. During this wayward era, splendidly attired, and gaily wearing a pair of red riding-breeches, he called upon the Bishop, having at the moment a hazy view of being ordained. Noll's radiant apparel, laughing eyes, and merry face, made the bewildered prelate diffident. Contarine procured his nephew a tutorship, which was held for twelve months, until one night, playing cards, Noll called his employer a scoundrel and a cheat. With thirty pounds in his leaking pockets, later he set out from home for Cork, and thence, according to his magnificent plans, for America. He was not destined to become an Empire-builder in the Colonies. Six weeks saw him home again as happy as ever, and quite penniless. Neither he himself nor anyone else ever knew, or ever will know now, what in the meantime had happened to the good fellow. He had exchanged a capital horse for a lank and bony creature of which he appeared very fond, called Fiddle-back. According to his story, he had put his kit on board, and the captain of the ship had sailed without him. No one was too glad to see him back again so soon. His mother and his brother Henry knew that neither of them had means to support him as a man of fantastic leisure. His indolence dishonoured the family. Perplexing eccentricities had grown intolerable. Only old Uncle Contarine stood by the boy. He still believed in and loved dear Noll, incorrigible as the good fellow was, and inexplicable from every vantage. When he returned poor Oliver had said, with his happy though here unconscious humour: "And now, my dear mother, after having struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder that you are not more rejoiced to see me."

Even his poor mother could not welcome his return with warmth. A certain coldness crept into the heart of Henry, the beloved brother. They had been greatly tried. Perhaps Uncle Contarine continued clement merely because in the nature of things his responsibilities for the vagrancies of his kinsman were inevitably less intimate. As he was not willing to enter the Church, his uncle now thought that Goldsmith should go to London and study law at the Temple. He gave the prodigal fifty pounds, and bade him God-speed. Goldsmith made his way as far as Dublin. There, passing a merry and philanthropic time with new and old familiars, he gambled away, and gave away, and lost his money, and all too soon had none for further travels. He returned with shame upon his brow, completely contrite. The kindly Contarine possessed that fine courage, the fortitude of forgiveness. It was springtime in the poet's heart. This was his era of heroic hope, immortal dreaming, and Divine revelation.

Following the traditions of his family, he would have become a clergyman. It was not want of religious sentiment that precluded his feeling sincerely called to this Divine office, but the unutterable profoundness of his reverence. With all his laughter he ever had the pure spirit of the pastor. For the faithful fulfilment of the ministry, in that marvellous picture of a parson's life given in The Deserted Village he has revealed a living and an enlightening ideal. Here the hearts of priest and poet beat as one. There is a universal ministry, higher than divided priesthoods. Oliver Goldsmith, poet, playwright, and humorist, was a veritable minister of God. Poetry has one eternal test. The poem must ever be a very part of the very life of the poet, his very soul, the breathing hope and the vital blood of his whole being. This is true of Goldsmith's two great poems. They are in themselves a sufficing and beautiful biography. We know the heart of the man from these sublime outpourings of the soul. For every word and every line we love and honour Goldsmith. The Deserted Village reveals the singer's sense of sorrow, reverence for the reverend in life, his compassion and outpouring sympathy, not for single hearts merely, but that wider love involved and proclaimed in the understanding pity for a race—and not for one place alone, but for a whole land, lain desolate.

Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon Goldsmith's greatest poem, one thing is as significant as it is certain. These poetic yearnings were long in his heart ere he gave them utterance. A wayward, careless lad, heedless of all responsibility, he seems purposeless and perplexing to the last degree, yet the profoundest meditations of his life moved his soul. The very spell of poetry was upon him. This Divine revealing may have accounted for that outward want of earnestness of the character, and the career that troubled others if it did not trouble him. The hold upon the inward and the hidden spirit absorbed and stagnated the outward movements and the conventional plans of common existence. It is right to be implicitly imbued with the honour due to honour, and that tribute which must in every issue be humbly paid to elemental guiding and essential greatness. Amid the inconsequent and eccentric variations of evolving genius, the Uncle Contarine possessed inexhaustible patience. If he had very possibly not a complete confidence in his wayward nephew, he had an affection for the lad, and a devotion to his welfare that nothing could diminish.

This good old man often thought of the poor widow and her boy. He saw that the provision for a grown lad, ripening into manhood, with no visible means of independent subsistence, and no ostensible desire for any conceivable occupation, was a burden too great for the fondest of mothers to bear when she was very poor. Contarine had been deeply moved when Oliver came home again that last time thoroughly ashamed and broken-hearted. This contrition touched the very depths of all the old man's sympathy. He must have been a man of few words—so few that he had none to spare for reproaches. He saw to the full the embarrassments of the situation, and came once more swiftly to the rescue. His manner was at all times persuasive rather than peremptory. His plans were practical and immediate. Sudden action stayed the possibility of growing bitterness. Forthwith Goldsmith was despatched to Edinburgh to qualify for the medical profession. He was twenty-four years of age. Although he loved his family dearly, and cherished the land of his birth with all its pathos and its poetry, he never saw Ireland again, nor the kinsmen and kinswomen to whom, in his heart, he lived his days mid fault and failure, sorrow and success, joy and pain, endlessly devoted.

From the earliest days to the last, throughout the whole career of Oliver Goldsmith, there were deep emotions in the mind and high motives in the life and character of this great man that few in his own times even dimly perceived. Impenetrable love was hidden in that laughter-laden heart, with its outward concealing and dissimulating vanities.

When the time came, and he might have left his work in London and gone home to Ireland for a while, it was too late, for his dear and gentle mother, old Uncle Contarine, and brother Henry had passed away. It may be hard to think that an indolent boy who squanders without scruple the money you have with great embarrassment raised for his benefit loves you devotedly, and has dedicated his whole heart, and life, and love to yours. It is difficult, too, to think that a vain little man is, in his soul, an earnest great one. Yet all this must be achieved if the heart would know Oliver Goldsmith rightly, and give at least one faithful life its due.

There is no period in which the moving mind of genius is not receptive. In those days of wayward adolescence, Goldsmith found books somewhere, and many, and read them to the depths. Some men have left lists of the works they studied—even Burns and Byron did. Noll was never at any time systematic enough to have done this. Often the spirit is more influenced by the things that are read and not greatly heeded, than by those that become the subject of fixed study. Goldsmith was always a lover of Latin poetry and classic models. In this perplexing youthful time of transition, he had imbued his mind with romance and with those higher aspirations of the poets of all ages and eras in which their utterances, growing religious, pertain to life in its love and light and lofty purity. Literature yields nothing more enthralling than those passages in which sublimity is seized, and the mind of man is commanded to rise above the pressing issue and the material care.

Prudence has many advantages. It makes men rich and respectable, but it is the death of poetry. Prudence has no genius. It cannot perceive its own deplorable delimitations. It may not fathom the vagaries of high minds. Goldsmith was not meant to make his own fortune. He was intended to make what is far dearer and better than prosperity—hope and happiness for many and many a heart, and many and many a home. Burns was not prudent, Byron was not; Johnson was not industrious for the pure sake and love of labour. He preferred ease, and never, he acknowledged, worked when he had a guinea to preclude the unpleasant necessity of toil. Of Goldsmith Thackeray said: "The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend someone." Sincere and sublime tributes of love, honour, and affection are offerings doubly blessed, blessing those who give and those who do receive. Nobly Oliver Goldsmith revered his brother Henry. The sudden separation from this heart was the greatest pain for Goldsmith when at last the day came.

The best idea of the life of Goldsmith at this period is gleaned from his great poem The Deserted Village. These were his words as he looked back:

With what delight he shares the rustic revelry. There falls the light of lingering love on each and every line and word:

he cries,

He depicts emigration and its devastating and enforced exile, so widely diverse from the healthful, free, and willing spirit of true and liberal colonisation:

Years later the man wrote these lines, but the thoughts, the burning sense of burning wrong, the pain and anguish, were hidden in the heart of the youth, outwardly so careless:

There is a majesty in the lines—

A little later he speaks of

There is a depth in the man who could write:

How pretty and how pathetic is the picture in this poem of the end that he had fancied for his days! A thousand and a thousand times the ceaseless humanity, seeking only love, endears the man. Mark the sweet, true, and sublime ideal:

In simplicity Goldsmith equals Gray. There is a Miltonic dignity truly classical in the line—

Failures have been indicated in the literary construction of the finest poems. Critics have held that Burns, in "The Cotter's Saturday Night," lost the Scottish and gave the piece an English colour.

Macaulay contended that the deserted hamlet pictured by Goldsmith was neither one thing nor the other, but first Irish and then English. Criticism purely Æsthetic cannot destroy the poignancy and profoundness of the theme and throughout the touch of a master power. From beginning to end the piece proceeds in a picturesque progress which in its steady advancement and maintained dignity is splendidly processional.

At last we come to the village pastor, and line after line, love leads the light:

This passage concludes in a fine strain, the finest in the poem:

Here is a transcendent radiance that has been held the most sublime simile that language yields. Then, following with a most delicate transition, we have the genial and gentle humour in the picture of the pedagogue and his pupils, and then the village inn and the rustics discussing news "much older than their ale."

Well may the sweetly chiding and chastening poet reflect,

It may be surprising to hear dear Noll, the dandy of the Literary Club, deride

There is a grace—nay, more, there is a genius in transition. The exile and the emigration of the Irish were not, and are not now, exclusively territorial, nor is the spiritual pang of leaving loved homes and cherished hearts entirely sentimental. Of the Irish it may be said that, of all the races, their pure love of home is the deepest, and the most faithful and devoted. Often the enforced exile that must be endured had no solace save death and the grave for peace—and a home. Of all the fair, and the gentle and pure, fairest and gentlest and purest, now and ever, is the Irish girl. Swift the passage in this tender poem from the village in its sunshine to the town and the streets in their darkness, and the clouds about the life of outcast humanity, suffering a more fearful exile:

The wonders of the poem are first its pathos, and then its picturesqueness and its charm. With all these glidings from light to grave and gladness into gloom, and then again to gaiety, it is a moving and a magic intermingling. There is a very thunder in the phrase,

And then later:

In this poem we find the sympathy and the grace of Gray and Wordsworth with a greater warmth and a glow that is enkindling. The man who is a master in transition is also and perforce powerful in contrast. In this graceful gift the whole piece is a striking study. Whether the strain be didactic or dramatic, emotional or vivacious, melody is never lost. With many poets frequently the whole melodiousness of poetry disappears in the prose of a too palpably proclaimed philosophy. This poem from a pure heart, and these lines from a loving life, enlighten, but do not tease the mind. There is a prayer in the words,

This poem, and also and not less The Traveller, although it is a tale of wandering, beyond all else, reveal the light and the love of the home.