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OLIVER GOLDSMITHS LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK I.

1728. Charles Goldsmith, descended from a family which had long
been settled in Ireland, and held various offices or dignities
in connexion with the established church,* was a protestant
clergyman with an uncertain stipend, which, with the help of
some fields he farmed, and occasional duties performed for the
rector of the adjoining parish of Kilkenny West (the reverend
Mr. Green) who was uncle to his wife, averaged forty pounds
a year. In May, 1718, he had married Anne, the daughter of
the reverend Oliver Jones, who was master of the school at
Elphiti, to which he had gone in boyhood; and before 1728
four children had been the issue of the marriage.
A new birth was but a new burthen; and little dreamt
the humble village preacher, then or ever, that from the
date of that tenth of November on which his Oliver was
born, his own virtues and very foibles were to be a legacy of
pleasure to many generations of men. For they who have
loved, laughed, or wept, with the father of the man in black
in the Citizen of the World, the preacher of the Deserted
Village, or the hero of the Vicar of Wakefield, have
given laughter, love, and tears, to the reverend Charles
Goldsmith.

1730. The death of the rector of Kilkenny West improved his
jilt. 2. fortunes. He succeeded in 1730 to this living of Ms wife's
uncle; t his income of forty pounds was raised to nearly two
hundred; and Oliver had not completed his second year
when the family moved from Pallasrnore to a respectable
house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of
Lissoy, " in the county of Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny

of Charles Goldsmith's family Bible, still preserved by one of Ma descendants in
Athlone, Life, i. 14. The leaf is unfortunately torn, and the exact year does not
now appear upon it, but it is certain that Mr. Mason states it correctly.

* Many particulars of them -will bo found in Mr. Shaw Mason's volume quoted
above, and which is stated to have boon '' drawn up from the communications of
"the clergy,¹' f Percy Memoir, 2.