brought up his eight children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides those hungry children. He kept an open table; round which sate flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day, can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and butter-milk; the poor cottier still asks his honour's charity, and prays God bless his Reverence for the sixpence: the ragged pensioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There's still a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlour-table, profusion, confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he has a half dozen of Irish dependents[errata 1] who take a per centage of his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith[1] left but little provision
- ↑ "In May this year (1768), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, for whom he had been unable to obtain preferment in the church. . . . . . .
. . . . "To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the moderate stipend of which, forty pounds a-year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother's lines. It has been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which, after having been held at more than one place in the vicinity, was finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his talents and industry gave it celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of the neighbouring gentry received their education. A fever breaking out among the boys about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but re-assembling at Athlone, he continued his scholastic labours there until the time of his death, which happened,
Errata
