For three years Oliver remained under the care of his vagabond teacher.  He looked up to him with a kind of awed wonder, and many years afterwards he drew a picture of him in his poem The Deserted Village.

    “There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
    The village master taught his little school. 
    A man severe he was, and stern to view;
    I knew him well, and every truant knew: 
    Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace
    The day’s disasters in his morning face;
    Full well they laugh’d, with counterfeited glee
    At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
    Full well the busy whisper circlin round
    Convey’d the dismal tidings when he frown’d. 
    Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
    The love he bore to learning was in fault;
    The village all declared how much he knew: 
    ’Twas certain he could write, and cypher too;
    Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
    And ev’n the story ran—­that he could gauge: 
    In arguing, too, the parson own’d his skill;
    For ev’n though vanquish’d, he could argue still;
    While words of learned length and thund’ring sound,
    Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
    And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
    That one small head should carry all he knew.”

But after three years of school under wonderful Paddy Byrne, Goldsmith became very ill with smallpox.  He nearly died of it, and when he grew better he was plainer than ever, for his face was scarred and pitted by the disease.  Goldsmith had been shy before his illness, and now when people laughed at his pock-marked face he grew more shy and sensitive still.  For the next seven years he was moved about from school to school, always looked upon by his fellows as dull of wit, but good at games, and always in the forefront in mischief.

At length, when Goldsmith was nearly seventeen, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar.  As you know, in those days sizars had to wear a different dress from the commoners.  Oliver’s elder brother had gone as a commoner and Oliver had hoped to do the same.  But as his father could not afford the money he was obliged, much against his will, to go as a sizar.  Indeed had it not been for the kindness of an uncle he could not have gone to college at all.

Awkward and shy, keen to feel insults whether intended or not, Goldsmith hated his position as sizar.  He did not like his tutor either, who was a coarse, rough man, so his life at college was not altogether happy.  He was constantly in want of money, for when he had any his purse was always open to others.  At times when he was much in need he wrote street ballads for five shillings each, and would steal out at night to have the joy of hearing them sung in the street.