CHAP. I.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS.

was subject to the most particular humours, even so his 1737.
elder sister described his school-clays to Doctor Percy, bishop -E& 9
of Dromore, when that divine and his friends were gathering
materials for his biography. That he seemed to possess
two natures, was the learned comment at once upon his
childhood and his manhood.* And there was sense in it;
in so far as it represented that continued struggle, happily
always unavailing, carried on against feelings which God'
had given him, by fears and misgivings he had to thank
the world for. ., .

" Why Noll! " eiclaimed a visitor at uncle John's, "'you
" are become a fright I When do you mean to get hand-
" some again ? " Oliver moved in silence to the window. The
speaker, a thoughtless and notorious scapegrace of the
Goldsmith family, repeated the question with a worse sneer:
and "I mean to get better, sir, when you do ! "t was the boy's
retort, which has delighted his biographers for its quickness
of repartee, though it was probably something more'than
smartness. Another example of precocious wit occurred
also at uncle John's, when his nephew was still a mere
child. There was company one clay, to a little dance; and
the fiddler who happened to be engaged on the occasion, being
a fiddler who reckoned himself a wit, received suddenly an
Oliver for his Eowland that he had not come prepared for.
During a pause between two country dances, the party
had been greatly surprised by little Noll quickly jumping up

* " Oliver was from Ms earliest infancy," writes his sister to Dr. Percy, '"very
"different from other children, subject to particular humours, for the most part
" uncommonly serious and reserved, hut when in gay spirits none ever so agreeahle
"ashe." Percy Memoir, 4. "He was such a compound of absurdity, envy,
1' and malice, contrasted with the opposite virtues of kindness, generosity, and
" heuevolence," says Mr. Thomas Davies (who, had actor as he was, seems to have
been a still worse philosopher), "that he might he said to consist of two distinct
"souls, and influenced hy the agency of a good and had spirit," Life of Gwnyok,
11. 147-8. t Prior, I 29, 30.ume. _ § MangtVs &t«yt 14i», .409