harassed and put in fear by the native population. His father,
Charles Goldsmith, studied in the reign of Queen Anne at the
diocesan school of Elphin, became attached to the daughter of the
schoolmaster, married her, took orders, and settled at a place
called Pallas in the county of Longford. There he with
difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could earn,
partly as a curate and partly as a farmer.

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. That spot
was then, for all practical purposes, almost as remote from the
busy and splendid capital in which his later years were passed,
as any clearing in Upper Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia
now is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture to make a
pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to perform
the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far
from any high road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is
often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting car to pieces;
and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly
built wheels cannot be dragged.

While Oliver was still a child, his father was presented to a
living worth about 200 pounds a year, in the county of Westmeath.
The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the wilderness
for a spacious house on a frequented road, near the village of
Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters by a maid-servant,
and was sent in his seventh year to a village school kept by an
old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but
reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible
fund of stories about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, about the
great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan,