OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES.

the demonstrations of Euclid; and for this, all his life
wards, eveii more than. poet Gray,* did poor Goldsmith
war with mathematics. Never had he stood up in his
that this learned savage did not outrage and insult
Having the misery to mistake malice for wit, the comic as
as tragic faculty of Mr. Wilder found endless recreation !
the awkward, ugly, " ignorant," most sensitive young no.£»^
There was no pause or limit to the strife between tlxo*
The tutor's brutality rose even to personal violence ; *••)
pupil's shame and suffering hardened into reckless i
and the college career of Oliver Goldsmith was
a wretched failure.

* Gray, while yet as young as Goldsmith, complained from
West in muoli the same language that Goldsmith might have employed in l>t* I > '
if at this early time of life ha had. been blessed with such a friend. ' ' I have 01 it 1 *• ' '
"lectures daily and hourly since I came last, supported by the hopes of I'**
" shortly at full liberty to give myself up to my friends and classical coxnptmto
"who, poor souls ! though I see them fallen into great contempt with most i»t*«J
"hero, yofc I cannot help sticking to them, and oub of a spirit of obstinacy (I i»l* i!
" love them the better for it ; and indeed what can I do else ? Mustlplmiffo 5
"metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; nature has not fumiHlxo* 1
" with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics ? Alas ! I cannot MOI
" too nraoh light ; I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two maku ft!
' ' but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly ; * n t
" these bo the profits of life, give me the amusements of it. The people I liulj
"all around 1110, it seems, know all this and more, and yet I do not know oiv
"thorn who in spires me with any ambition of being like him." Gray's H"V>!
Ed, Mitibrd (1835), ii. 7-9. " Grray regretted his want of mathematical kno'wlt'*l|
says Norton MlehollB, "yet he would never allow that it was necessary, in t»l
" to form the mind to a habit of reasoning or attention. Does not Locke reqriil in
"much attention as Euclid ?" &c. &c. Works, v. 52.

t Percy Memoir, 16. "Theaker Wilder, a man of the most morose and mofttl
' ' temper, wlio thenceforth, persecuted him with unremitting cruelty, especially »i»tj
" quarterly examinations, when he would insult him before his fellow studttntj
" sarcastic taunts and ironical applauses of the severest malignity." " Hts w*
"younger son," Hays Mr. Shaw Mason, "of the family of Castle Wilder, iti
" ooimty of Longford," Statistical Account, iii, 357. "I well remember, " vw!
Dr. Wilson to Malone, "for he -was in the class below me, that his tutor (WiltJ
" examining him in the Son. Soph. Class, commenced his judgments with «, /IJ
"and eoiujhided them with a Valde JB&ie. 'T was a mistake that the good J>ci
" (the tutor) often fell into, to think he was witty when he was simply mallcttt n
Prwr, }, (>4. company . 423