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While Goldsmith was an Irishman, Swift was an Englishman who chanced to be born of Irish parents in Dublin.  In comparing these men Thackeray says:  “I think I would rather have had a cold potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than to have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner.  No; the Dean was not an Irishman, for no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart.”

Charles Goldsmith was a clergyman, passing rich on forty pounds a year.  He had a nice little family of eight children, and what became of the seven who went not astray I do not know.  But the smallest and homeliest one of the brood became the best-loved man in London.  These sickly boys who have been educated only because they were too weak to work—­what a record their lives make!

Little Oliver had a pug-nose and bandy legs, and fists not big enough to fight, but he had a large head, and because he was absent-minded, lots of folks thought him dull and stupid, and others were sure he was very bad.  In fact, let us admit it, he did steal apples and rifle birds’ nests, and on “the straggling fence that skirts the way,” he drew pictures of Paddy Byrne, the schoolmaster, who amazed the rustics by the amount of knowledge he carried in one small head.  But Paddy Byrne did not love art for art’s sake, so he applied the ferule vigorously to little Goldsmith’s anatomy, with a hope of diverting the lad’s inclinations from art to arithmetic.  I do not think the plan was very successful, for the pockmarked youngster was often adorned with the dunce-cap.

“And, Sir,” said Doctor Johnson, many years after, “it must have been very becoming.”

It seems that Paddy Byrne “boarded round,” and part of the time was under the roof of the rectory.  Now we all know that schoolmasters are dual creatures, and that once away from the schoolyard, and having laid aside the robe of office, are often good, honest, simple folks.  In his official capacity Paddy Byrne made things very uncomfortable for the pug-nosed little boy, but, like the true Irishman that he was, when he got away from the schoolhouse he was sorry for it.  Whether dignity is the mask we wear to hide ignorance, I am not sure, yet when Paddy Byrne was the schoolmaster he was a man severe and stern to view; but when he was plain Paddy Byrne he was a first-rate good fellow.

Evenings he would hold little Oliver on his knee, and instead of helping him in his lessons would tell him tales of robbers, pirates, smugglers—­everything and anything in fact that boys like:  stories of fairies, goblins, ghosts; lion-hunts and tiger-killing in which the redoubtable Paddy was supposed to have taken a chief part.  The schoolmaster had been a soldier and a sailor.  He had been in many lands, and when he related his adventures, no doubt he often mistook imagination for memory.  But the stories had the effect of choking the desire in Oliver for useful knowledge, and gave instead a thirst for wandering and adventure.