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Of all our poets, there is none who more completely verified the words
of Crabbe than Oliver Goldsmith:
"And never mortal left this world of sin
More like the infant that he entered in."
He was a genuine Irishman, all heart and impulse. Imposed upon, ill
treated, often made the butt of witlings, and compelled to labor and
live on with that cancer of the heart, constant anxiety to procure the
ordinary means of existence--none of these things could convert the milk
of human kindness within him into gall, could teach him one lesson of
malevolence, or dim the godlike sense of truth and humanity in his soul.
Through a long experience of men and things, living by shifts, and
writing for mere bread, he still remained the same simple, warm-hearted,
generous, and unsophisticated creature that he was at the beginning.
Improvident he was, out of the overflowing goodness of his nature;
ready, at the first cry of distress, to give away that which he had
bitterly toiled for, and which had been grudgingly paid; but he never
made others the victims of his improvidence. He remained single, and
made all that were in suffering his family, and helped them even when he
needed help himself. I know not whether more to admire the exquisite
beauty of his poetry, the life and virtues of the Vicar of Wakefield, or
the gloriously unworldly texture of his heart. Thousands of brilliant
spirits have risen, glittered, and died in the field of our literature,
having astonished and wounded their neighbors, as they have gone along
in their pride, dreaming of an everlasting reputation, who are now
justly forgotten, or are remembered without respect or emotion. They had
intellect unallied to heart, and the cold meteor dazzled in its descent
to earth, and left no blessing behind it. But the genial spirit of
Goldsmith, all love and pity in itself, is, and will be forever,
remembered with love and reverence--the last the very quality that he
received least of in his lifetime. One of the most amiable and
attractive points of view in which we contemplate Dr. Johnson, is that
of his attachment to Goldsmith, and of his acknowledgment of his genius.
The life of Oliver Goldsmith has been well written by Mr. Prior. It is
almost the only one that I have found, during the researches necessary
for this work, which might have rendered unnecessary a visit to the
actual "homes and haunts" of the poet under notice. It is a most rare
circumstance that a biographer possesses the faculty of
landscape-painting, and, besides detailing the facts of a person's life,
can make you see the places where that life was passed. Mr. Prior
possesses this faculty in a high degree. He was at the pains to visit
Ireland, and see, with his own eyes, the scenes where Goldsmith was
born, and where he lived; and the different sojourns of Goldsmith in
that country are so accurately sketched, that they might have been
transferred literally to these pages with advantage, had not I myself
also gone over the same ground.
Goldsmith was of a very respectable family in Ireland, many of whom had
been clergymen, residing principally in the counties of Roscommon,
Westmeath, and Longford. Two of them were deans of Elphin, another dean
of Cloyne. Goldsmith used to boast that, by the female side, he was
remotely descended from Oliver Cromwell, from whom his Christian name
was derived. It seems, however, more likely, that he owed his name to
his mother's father, the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan
school at Elphin. The poet's own father, Charles Goldsmith, was a poor
curate at the time of the poet's birth. He had married Ann Jones at a
time when he was without occupation, and therefore to the great
dissatisfaction of her friends. Mrs. Goldsmith's uncle, however, was
rector of Kilkenny West, near Lissoy, afterward to become the residence
of Goldsmith himself, and to receive from him the immortal name and
celebrity of Auburn. This uncle provided the young couple with a house,
about six miles from Kilkenny West, at a small hamlet called Pallasmore,
and with a salary for officiating at the church of the parish in which
Pallas or Pallasmore was situated, and also in that of his own, Kilkenny
West. It seems Goldsmith's parents continued to reside twelve years at
Pallas, and here the poet was born, on the 10th of November, 1728. He
was one of eight children, five boys and three girls. He was the second
son, his elder brother being Henry, who afterward became curate of
Kilkenny West, and lived at Lissoy, where Oliver addressed to him his
poem, "The Traveler." That Goldsmith was come of a good stock, we may
infer by the character of simple piety which both his poetry and local
tradition give to his father, the good parish priest--"passing rich,
with forty pounds a year"--and not the less from the spirit and decision
which his grandmother, Mrs. Jones, displayed in order to improve the
scanty income of Oliver's parents. The husband of this lady, the Rev.
Oliver Jones, was now dead; she was a widow; her daughter and son-in-law
were living at Pallas, on the poor stipend derived from his curacy. Her
husband had rented a considerable tract of land on very advantageous
terms, which now fell out of lease. She determined, if possible, to
secure this for her son-in-law and daughter. She was refused; but,
nothing daunted, she mounted behind her own son on a pillion, and set
out on the long and arduous journey to Dublin, to try her personal
influence with the landlord. Here the same refusal met her; but, as a
last argument, she took out a hundred guineas, which she had provided
herself with, and held them open in her hand while she pleaded. This had
the effect that she procured _half_ the land on the same easy terms as
before, and she used jocularly to regret that she had not taken two
hundred guineas, and thus got the whole. This noble act of maternal
heroism is the more to be admired, as it cost her the life of her son,
who received an injury of some kind on the journey.
Pallasmore, then, where Oliver Goldsmith was born, is a mere cluster of
two or three cottages, called in Ireland farm-houses, but which, to an
English eye, would present only the appearance of huts. The place lies
quite out of the track of high-roads, about a mile and a half from
Ballymahon in a direct line, but perhaps three, taking in all the
windings of the ways to it. It is now the property of the Edgeworths.
There is nothing remarkable in the aspect of the country. It is rather
flat, naked of trees, and cultured by small tenants. It was with some
difficulty that I got at it. My car-driver from Edgeworthstown knew
nothing more of it than its name, and we had proceeded somewhat beyond
the proper turning, as it lay quite off the highway, and were obliged to
obtain permission to pass through the park of Newcastle, in order to
reach it without making a great circuit. Having approached to within
half a mile of it, a peasant pointed it out, as a group of white
cottages standing in a clump of trees. The lanes were now become so
narrow and stony that I was obliged to quit my car, as Mr. Prior
describes himself to have done, and proceed across the fields on foot.
I passed along the deep, stony, and narrow lanes, here and there a
regular Irish cabin sticking in the bank, the smoke coming out of the
door, or issuing from the thatched roof about on a level with the fields
above. A boy who was teaching school in one of these came out with his
book in his hand, and directed me into a footpath across the fields.
Here I advanced through the standing corn, and at length reached this
out-of-the-world spot, dignified with the sounding title of Pallasmore.
Here about three whitewashed cottages, of a superior description to the
cabins I had passed in the narrow lanes, stood amid a number of
ash-trees, looking out over an ordinary sort of country. A man, the
inhabitant of one of them, advanced to show me the spot where the poet
was born. He plunged into a potato-field, and at a few hundred yards
from the cottages, in the bank of the next field, showed me a few
stones, like the foundation of a wall, which have the reputation of
being the sole remains of the house where the poet was born. Poets are,
certainly, often born in odd places, but it certainly did strike me
strangely, that the man who was destined to spend the greater portion of
his life in the dense crowd of London, should have sprung out of this
obscure and almost inaccessible location. There is nothing in the view
around to suggest to the mind any the most faint dream of poetry. Oliver
Goldsmith, however, was a mere, infant when first removed from this
place. His father, two years after his birth, succeeded, on the death of
his wife's uncle, to the rectory of Kilkenny West, and removed to
Lissoy; but Oliver was accustomed to come thither, and made considerable
sojourns with his brother Henry, who lived here when Oliver was grown
up. The house is said to have been a good country house, looking toward
Forney Church, at which Oliver's father and brother used to preach, and
which still rises to view between it and some distant woods, one of the
most pleasing objects of the scene.
Popular tradition ascribes the utter destruction of the house to the
fairies, who, on its becoming untenanted, used to take up their quarters
there, and pursue their nocturnal sports in great content. But a tenant
being found, and repairs of the house being commenced, a huge man in
huge jack-boots used to come every night, and making a horse of it by
bestriding the roof, would push his legs through the tiles, and,
imitating galloping, shake the roof to pieces. It was therefore obliged
to remain empty, till, falling into ruin, it was at length cleared clean
away, with the exception of these few stones.
The very ordinary character of this scene, and of the country round,
almost extinguished my desire for proceeding onward five miles further
to Lissoy, the reputed Auburn, especially as the Edgeworths had told me
it was not worth my while. I inquired, however, of a farmer that I met
on my return to the car that waited for me on the road, what sort of a
place Lissoy was. "Oh, a very beautiful place!" said he, "a very
beautiful place! You must see it: that was where Oliver Goldsmith lived
and died." "Lived, but not died," I replied: "he died in London." "Oh
no! your honor," replied the man, "I assure you he died there, and lies
buried at Kilkenny West."
The accuracy of the man's account was about equal in all its parts.
Lissoy was just as truly beautiful as Goldsmith was buried there. But
this is always the way with the Irish peasantry. Unlike the Scotch,
whose local knowledge is generally very correct, they seem to look upon
all remarkable men as they do on their saints, and insist on their
remains being preserved among them. At Kilcolman Castle I was assured
with equal positiveness that Spenser was buried just below the castle,
and the spot pointed out to me. There was, however, sufficient charm in
the farmer's assurance that Lissoy was a very beautiful place, to turn
the scale for going on. In such cases one is willing to be deceived, and
follow the slightest word, though with an inward consciousness that we
shall not find what we are promised. We drove on, therefore, six or
seven miles further, over a very monotonous, naked country, only marked
by a few banks for fences, and a few little smoky cabins with a poor
population. It is a country that to Goldsmith's boyish fancy might be
charming, but is certainly to an English eye by no means romantic. A
part of an old round tower, however, stands near Auburn. There are the
ruins of an old castle not far off, and old parks that _are_ charming.
One I passed, old, gray, craggy, and full of fern, but having not a
single tree in it except old thorn-trees, large and of venerable age.
There was a desolate antiquity about it that was attractive to the
imagination. From the higher part of the road, too, approaching Lissoy,
you see the Shannon hastening on toward the west. Presently, at a turn
of the road, we passed the public house said to be that alluded to in
The Deserted Village, and were in that "very beautiful place," Lissoy.
It consists, in fact, of a few common cottages by the road side, on a
flat, and by no means particularly interesting scene. A few hundred
yards beyond these cottages stand, at some distance from the road, the
ruins of the house where Goldsmith's father lived, and which continued
in the family till 1802, when it was sold by Henry, the son of Henry,
Oliver Goldsmith's brother, the nephew of the poet who had gone to
America. This house was described in 1790 by the Rev. Mr. Hancock, of
Athlone, who was intimately acquainted with the Goldsmith family, and,
indeed, managed their property for them, as "a snug farm-house, in view
of the high road, to which a straight avenue leads, with double rows of
ash-trees, six miles northeast of this town--Athlone. The farm is still
held under the Naper family, by a nephew of Goldsmith at present in
America. In the front view of the house is the 'decent church' of
Kilkenny West, that literally 'tops the neighboring hill;' and in a
circuit of not more than half a mile diameter around the house, are
'the never-failing brook,' 'the busy mill,' 'the hawthorn bush with
seats beneath the shade,' 'the brook with mantling cresses spread,' 'the
straggling fence that skirts the way, with blossomed furze unprofitably
gay,' 'the thorn that lifts its head on high, where once the sign-post
caught the passing eye,' 'the house where nut-brown draughts inspired;'
in short, every striking object of the picture. There are, besides, many
ruined houses in the neighborhood, bespeaking a better state of
population than at present."
Such it was. Prior's description of it at his visit a few years ago
would very nearly do for it now. "The house once occupied by the rector
of Kilkenny West, pleasantly situated and of good dimensions, is now a
ruin, verifying the truth of the pathetic lines of his son--
'Vain, transitory splendors! Could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!'
The front, including a wing, extends, as nearly as could be judged by
passing it, sixty-eight feet by a depth of twenty-four; it consisted of
two stories, with five windows in each. The roof has been off for a
period of twenty years: the gable-ends remain, but the front and back
walls of the upper story have crumbled away, and if the hand of the
destroyer be not stayed, will soon wholly disappear. Two or three
wretched cottages for laborers, surrounded by mud, adjoin it on the
left. Behind the house is an orchard of some extent, and the remains of
a garden, both utterly neglected. In fact, a pretty avenue of double
rows of ash-trees, which formed the approach from the high road, about
sixty yards distant, and at one time presented an object of interest to
travelers, has, like every other trace of care or superintendence,
disappeared--cut down by the ruthless hand of some destroyer. No picture
of desolation can be more complete. As if an image of the impending ruin
had been present, the poet has painted with fearful accuracy what his
father's house was to be:
'Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.'"
Little can be added to that account. There still stands the long, white
ruin of the house which sheltered Goldsmith as a boy, at the right-hand
end one tall gable and chimney remaining aloft, the other having, since
Mr. Prior's visit, fallen in. At the left hand, near the house, still
remains _one_ of the wretched cottages he mentions. I went into it. The
floor of mud was worn into hollows, in which geese were sitting in
little pools. There was a dresser on one side, with a few plates laid on
it; a few chairs of a rudeness of construction such as no Englishman who
has not visited an Irish cabin has any conception of; and the interior
of the roof, for ceiling it had none, was varnished into a jetty
brilliancy with the smoke.
Behind the ruins of the house there are still the orchard and wild
remains of a garden, inclosed with a high, old stone wall. One could
imagine this retreat a play-place for the embryo poet, whose charm would
long linger in his memory; and, in truth, when the house was complete,
with its avenue of ashes, along which you looked to the highway, and
thence across a valley to the church of Kilkenny West, on a hill about a
mile distant, the abode of Goldsmith's boyhood must have been a very
pleasant one. It is now seen as stripped of all its former attractions,
its life, its completeness as a house, its trees; and stands a white,
bare, and solitary ruin.
Many people think, that as Goldsmith's father was the clergyman, this
was the parsonage. It was not so. The parsonage was at Kilkenny West,
where the present rector resides. This house was attached to the farm
which the pastor had here, and was probably a much better and more
commodious dwelling than the parsonage.
Returning to the village--if three or four poor cottages by the
roadside can deserve that name--the public house is the object which
attracts your attention. This is said to be the very house of which
Goldsmith speaks in The Deserted Village. Goldsmith, however, tells you
himself, in The Deserted Village, that the public house, among others,
was destroyed:
"Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,
Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired," &c.
In fact, it was rebuilt by Mr. Hogan, a gentleman living near, who,
being an ardent admirer of Goldsmith's poetry, did all that he could to
restore to Lissoy the characteristics of Auburn. He rebuilt the public
house on the spot where tradition placed the old one, with the
traditionary thorn in front. He gave it the sign of "The Jolly Pigeons,"
he supplied it with new copies of "The Twelve Good Rules," and "The
Royal Game of Goose;" he went even to the length of the ludicrous in his
zeal for an accurate _fac-simile_ of the genuine house, and
"Broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row."
These, to perpetuate them, were fast imbedded in the mortar--but in
vain; relic-hunters knocked them out, fictitious as they were, and
carried them off as genuine. The very sign did not escape this relic
mania--it is no longer to be seen; nor, I suppose, were a new one to be
set up, would it long remain. The new "Twelve Good Rules," and new
"Royal Game of Goose," have gone the same way; and there is no question
that a brave trade in such things might be carried on with what
Goldsmith calls "the large family of fools," if a supply were kept here.
The very thorn before the door has been cut down piecemeal, and carried
off to all quarters of the world. In 1830, Mr. Prior, when visiting the
place, making inquiries for Goldsmith's biography, observed that "a
tender shoot had again forced its way to the surface, which he, in
emulation of so many other inconsiderate idlers, felt disposed to seize
upon as a memorial of his visit; but which, if permitted to remain,
though this is unlikely, may renew the honors of its predecessor." Vain
hope! there is not an atom of it left! He himself tells us, that "every
traveler thither for forty years had carried away a portion of the tree,
as a relic either of the poem or of his pilgrimage; when the branches
had been destroyed, the trunk was attacked; and when this disappeared,
even the roots were dug up, so that, in 1820, scarcely a vestige
remained, either above or below ground, notwithstanding a resident
gentleman had built a wall round it, to endeavor to prevent its
extermination." There is now neither vestige of tree, root, nor wall. I
suppose the rage of relicism has carried off the very stones that had
stood on so hallowed a spot. There is still a slight mound left, or
rather made, to mark the spot where the thorn stood.
The public house presents not a resemblance to Goldsmith's picture in
his poem. The road from Ballymahon runs right toward this house. On
arriving at it, the house stands on the further side of the road, facing
you and the Ballymahon highway. Another road runs at right angles, that
is, parallel with the house, so that it stands at what is usually called
"where three roads meet." The road on your right hand runs down to the
village; and some space is left in front of the house, the stone wall on
your right, which fences in the field, being carried in a circular
sweeping, instead of coming up to an abrupt corner. On the space left by
this arrangement, on the side of the road, and directly opposite to the
house, stood the tree. But how different is the house itself to that
whose delightful picture your imagination has carried away from the page
of the poet!
"Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,
Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired.
Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.
Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place;
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;
The chest contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
The pictures, placed for ornament and use,
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay,
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Vain, transitory splendor! could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart;
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;
The host himself, no longer to be found,
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest."
These are all the attractive characteristics of a nice old village
public house in England. Clean, quiet, sweet, and breathing of the olden
time. They are characteristics professedly gathered by the poet in his
rural rambles in England, where he had lived at least twenty years when
he wrote the poem. In his preface he talks of these "country excursions
for four or five years past," in which he had "taken all possible pains"
to be correct in his details. Where, indeed, did any one see in an Irish
country ale-house "the parlor splendors of a festive place;" "the
whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor;" "the varnished clock that
clicked behind the door;" "the hearth, except when winter chilled the
day, with aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay?" Where does he find
the nut-brown ale? They all belong to the healthy, wholesome,
well-to-do village ale-house of rural and prosperous England. An Irish
village ale-house! What is it? A poor and filthy cabin; the walls of
rough stones, the roof often with nothing between it and the floor. The
floor! nicely sanded?--a bed of mud, full of holes, in which geese, and
ducks, and pigs, are dabbling and wallowing! If floored at all, paved
with pebbles, which stand up in heaps by places, and by places are gone,
leaving the aforesaid duck-pools and pig-troughs. A parcel of ragged
people sprawling on the hearth around the peat fire, the coy maid, a
bare-legged, shock-headed body, hard at work in tending the potato
kettle, or contending with the ass, the cow, the pigs, that make part of
the family. The parlor splendors? Half the house separated by a counter,
behind which the landlord stands, amid a stock of candles and bread for
sale, and dealing out, not the generous nut-brown ale, but the deadly
liquid fire called whisky. Such are the almost universal attributes of a
village ale-house in Ireland. Goldsmith knew better than to draw on his
memory for them; he turned to the more poetical scene of the English
village ale-house, which, clean as hands could make it, sweet, and all
that he describes, had charmed him in his numerous rural excursions in
this country.
The Three Jolly Pigeons is just a regular Irish ale-house, or, rather,
whisky-shop. On going in, you look in vain for the picture Goldsmith has
so beautifully drawn. The varnished clock clicking behind the door, the
pictures placed for ornament and use, the twelve good rules, the royal
game of goose, where are they? Not there; but in many an old-fashioned
hamlet of England. The mud floor, the dirty walls, the smell of whisky,
these are what meet you. You look for "the parlor splendors," and on
your left hand there is, for a wonder, a separate room, but it is, as
usual, filled with the candles, the herrings, the bread, of the Irish
ale-house, and the whisky is doled out over the suspicious counter,
instead of the nut-brown ale being brought in the generous foaming cup,
to the bright, clean fireside, by the neat and blooming maid.
In all Goldsmith's description of his Auburn, he has clearly blended the
Doric charm of the English village and English scenery with the fond
boyish memories of his actual native place. He has evidently intended to
represent the scene as in England, or, at all events, to make his poem
of general application, though he has drawn on his memory for features
connected with his native place, and imparted soul and sentiment to it
by indulging the feelings of old, affectionate regret. Thus the
ale-house, the parsonage, the mill, the brook, the village green, the
schoolmaster, the pious clergyman, were all portions of his native
place, and actual inhabitants of it, yet mixed with touches from the
later observations of his English life. The very circumstance of
depopulation, which no doubt had occurred at Lissoy, and had sunk deep
into his indignant heart, he tells us, in his dedication to Sir Joshua
Reynolds, was going on in England, and that his description meant to
apply to England. "But I know you will object--and, indeed, several of
our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion--that the depopulation
it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only
to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarcely make
any other answer, than that I sincerely believe what I have written;
that I have taken all possible pains in my country excursions, for these
four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege, and that all my
views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real which I
here attempt to display."
The fact is only too much a fact. From Goldsmith's time to our own, the
process of rural depopulation has been going on, by the absorption of
smaller properties into larger ones. The rapid growth of capital in
England has created a demand for landed investments, which has tempted
the small proprietors to sell the old cottages and crofts. Whole hamlets
have disappeared one after another, and ample parks have taken their
place, and solitary halls have sprung up where there used to be a long,
populous village, buried in its gardens and orchards. As new men,
merchants, lawyers, successful speculators, and cits grown wealthy, have
carried out these changes, the old aristocracy have withdrawn further
and further from the contact of these new erections, and, demolishing
the little hamlets, have extended their immense park walls so as to
create a vast solitude for themselves, where amid woods and wide fields
have stood their proud seats. It were easy to cite almost innumerable
instances of this, but in every neighborhood the old inhabitants are
living chronicles of all these changes; we need only refer to the
general and striking fact developed by our statistics, that about 1770,
or in Goldsmith's time, the landed proprietors of England were about
200,000--they are now about 30,000! that is, proprietors of considerable
estates; for the proprietors of small lots, on which houses and gardens,
or town property stand, amount to about three millions. The proportion
of _estates_, however, is as above, and it tells a fearful tale of the
conglomeration of landed property during the last seventy years.
What is more strange than the doubt of the progress of rural
depopulation in England is, that Mr. Prior, the biographer of Goldsmith,
doubts even the justice of his strictures as applied to Ireland. He
admits that there appeared to have been some such circumstance at Lissoy
in Goldsmith's youth as he has described in The Deserted Village; but he
is inclined to palliate it till it becomes a mere trifle. "In November,
1738, a part of the town lands of Lissoy, and the adjoining lands of
Cannorstown, to the number of 600 acres, were sold by Jeffery Frend,
Esq., of the Middle Temple, to the Honorable Robert Naper,
lieutenant-general of his majesty's forces in Ireland, for the sum of
£3300, but the general died before the purchase was completed. Upon this
property, named Ballybegg, lying behind the house of Mr. Goldsmith,
about half a mile distant, Mr. William Naper, son of the general,
several years afterward built the family residence, named Littleton. In
the preliminary arrangements, some circumstances, probably neither harsh
nor unjust in themselves, connected with the removal of part of the
tenantry, gave rise in the mind of Goldsmith, morbidly acute in his
benevolent feelings, and particularly toward the poorer classes of
society, to the idea of The Deserted Village."--Vol. i., p. 18. This,
however, does not agree with Mr. Prior's own account of the appearance
of the place on his own visit, given at page 257 of vol. ii. "There are,
besides, many ruined houses in the neighborhood, bespeaking a better
state of population than at present." It as little agrees with
Goldsmith's assertion, that the very ale-house of the village was pulled
down. Nay, at this very part of Mr. Prior's account (vol. ii., p. 259),
he gives a more extended history of Mr. Naper or Napier's transactions;
and while he endeavors to persuade us that the tradition of the
neighborhood was not to be trusted, he shows that Mr. Naper had 1200
acres of land, a great part of which had been converted into demesne.
The story of the neighborhood, as given by himself, is, that
Lieutenant-general Robert Naper, returning from Vigo, in Spain, with a
large fortune, purchased, as has been stated, the adjoining lands. In
erecting a residence, and forming a demesne around it, the habitations
of some, as is alleged, respectable tenants and several of the peasantry
stood in the way, and being unwilling to remove for his convenience,
were at length, after much resistance, all, except the Goldsmith family,
ejected for non-payment of rent. Their houses were pulled down, and the
park enlarged to a circumference of nine miles; but so great was the
indignation of the people at the proceeding, that on the general's
death, which occurred soon afterward, they assembled in a tumultuous
manner, destroyed most of the property in and around it, and, among
other things, plantations to the value of £5000.
What are the reasons assigned by the biographer for doubting the story?
His own belief, that "the wanton destruction of a thriving and pretty
village, in a country where such are carefully encouraged by all
proprietors of lands, is wholly improbable." He farther fancies that
Goldsmith's morbid imagination "had converted a few mud cabins into a
beautiful village, and, perhaps, their turbulent and vindictive
occupants into injured, and innocent, and expatriated peasants." Lastly,
and most unfortunately of all, he adds, "Proprietary rights can not
always be exercised by landlords in Ireland, even in a reasonable
manner, without extreme jealousy on the part of the people.
Circumstances, therefore, which daily occur in England, and produce
neither concern nor notice, excite in the former loud complaint, if not
open hostility. Any thing resembling severity becomes speedily known and
loudly censured; and such impressions, however untrue, taken up and
acted upon by the imagination and eloquence of a poet, are dangerous
assailants of reputation."
The revolting case of the expulsion of the tenants from the estate of
the Gerrards, at Ballinasloe, in Ireland, occurring at the moment at
which I write this, in which 270 poor people are turned out to the
elements, their houses pulled to the ground, themselves chased from the
roadside ditches, where they had sought a night's shelter from the
piercing wind, and the fires which they had made to warm themselves
extinguished--all this is a fearful answer to such writings, and too
awful proof of the correctness of the poet's statements. So far from
Irish landlords not destroying villages, so far from "any thing like
severity" being speedily known and resisted, the inquiries caused by
this one flagrant case have shown to the horrified public, that in no
country in the world are the rights of the peasantry so totally
disregarded; in no country has the outrage of The Deserted Village been
so often enacted. The scene which Goldsmith so pathetically describes,
of the poor villagers whose homes had been destroyed, whose native
haunts had been made to cast them forth, going on toward the shore
seeking for an asylum beyond the ocean, was not a solitary scene. It has
been reacted again and again. It has been repeated from that hour to
this; and every year and almost every day sees sad thousands bidding
adieu to their birth-places, and crowding on board the ships that carry
them to a more hospitable country:
"Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented toil, and hospitable care,
And kind, connubial tenderness are there;
And piety, with wishes placed above,
And steady loyalty, and faithful love."
In five years, it is shown by official documents, that 72,000 persons
have been thus cast out of their homes and expatriated, and that the
process of this exterminating system has, within twenty years, made
outcasts of no less than two millions and a half of peasantry!
Seeing this wholesale depopulation, which has not merely gone on
formerly, but is going on at this hour, in the face of all enlightened
and humane England, it is quite too late to call in question the truth
of the poet's descriptions. We no longer wonder that, in opposition to
popular opinion, he stood boldly forward, at the moment that he issued
his poem to the world, in assertion of the truth of his descriptions,
and we deplore the fact that his noble sentiments have not sooner become
national and availing.
Under all these circumstances, Auburn or Lissoy, which you will, will
always be visited with enthusiasm by the genuine lovers of purest poetry
and of kindly humanity. The visitor will not find all there that he
naturally looks for. He will not find the country very beautiful, or the
mill, the brook, the ale-house as rural and picturesque as he could
wish; but he will find the very ground on which Oliver Goldsmith ran in
the happy days of his boyhood; the ruins of the house in which that
model of a village preacher--simple, pious, and warm-hearted, justly,
indeed, dear to all the country--lived, the father of the poet; the
ruins of the house in which the poet himself spent a happy childhood,
cherishing under such a parent one of the noblest spirits which ever
glowed for truth and humanity; fearing no ridicule, contracting no
worldliness, never abating, spite of harsh experience and repeated
imposition, one throb of pity or of generous sympathy for the wretched.
The ground where such a man was reared is indeed holy. Goldsmith
himself, not less than his father and brother, was one of the most
genuine Christian preachers that ever lived. The sermons of the father
and the brother perished with their hearers, but those of the poet live
forever in his writings. And how many of the personal characteristics of
"the village preacher," which in his father he celebrates, lived in
himself!
"Unpracticed he to fawn or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
For other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."
How often did he present this trait in his own life! How zealous he was
to help any one that he could; how careless to help himself! Thus, when
requested by the minister to say if he could be of any service to him,
he said, "Yes, he had a brother, a worthy clergyman, whom he would
gladly see promoted." At this time he was in great distress himself. At
another time, Lord North sent to him a Dr. Scott, with a _carte
blanche_, to induce him to write for the ministry; but Goldsmith was not
to be bought. "I found him," said the doctor, "in a miserable set of
chambers in the Temple; I told him my authority; I told him that I was
empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions, and, would you
believe it! he was so absurd as to say, '_I can earn as much as will
supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance,
therefore, you offer is unnecessary to me_;' and so I left him," added
Dr. Scott, "in his garret."
How completely was this Dr. Primrose! How thoroughly was he the same man
in every thing. When his aid was needed by his fellow-man,
"Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began."
It is because he embodied himself in all he wrote that his writings
command such undecaying interest; for in impressing his own heart on his
page, he impressed there nature itself in its most unselfish and
generous character. Every circumstance, therefore, connected with "The
Deserted Village" of such a man will always be deeply interesting to the
visitor of the spot, and we must for that reason notice one or two facts
of the kind before quitting Lissoy. Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, met by
Mr. Davis in his travels in the United States, said, "The name of the
schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. I remember him well. He was, indeed, a man
severe to view. A woman, called Walsey Cruse, kept the ale-house. I have
often been in the house. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and
stood opposite the house. I was once riding with Brady, titular Bishop
of Ardagh, when he observed to me, 'Ma foi, Best, this huge, overgrown
bush is mightily in the way; I will order it to be cut down!' 'What,
sir,' said I, 'cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn bush, that supplies so
beautiful an image in The Deserted Village!' 'Ma foi!' exclaimed the
bishop, 'is that the hawthorn bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the
edge of the ax, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch!'"
In other places the schoolmaster is called, not Paddy Burns, but Thomas
Byrne, evidently the same person. He had been educated for
school-teaching, but had gone into the army, and, serving in Spain
during the reign of Queen Anne, became quarter-master of the regiment.
On the return of peace he took up his original calling. He is
represented to be well qualified to teach; little more than writing,
reading, and arithmetic were wanted, but he could translate
extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse, in considerable
elegance. But his grand accomplishment was the narration of his
adventures, which was commonly exercised in the ale-house; at the same
time that, when not in a particular humor for teaching, he would edify
his boys in the school with one of his stories. Among his most eager
listeners was Oliver, who was so much excited by what he heard, that his
friends used to ascribe his own love of rambling to this cause. The
schoolmaster was, in fact, the very man to raise the imagination in the
young poet. He was eccentric in his habits, of a romantic turn, wrote
poetry, was well versed in the fairy superstitions of the country, and,
what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth.