OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES.

1757. kept a school there; his son* was among these young Edin-
Mi. 29. burgh fellow-students with Oliver, come up, like Farr, Sleigh,
and others, to their London examinations ; and thus it
happened that the office of assistant at the Peckham
academy befell. "All my ambition now is to live," he may
well be supposed to have said, in the words he afterwards
placed in the mouth of young Primrose. He seems to have
been installed at nearly the beginning of 1757. An attempt
has been made to show that it was an earlier year, but on
grounds too unsafe to oppose to known dates in his life. The
. good people of Peckham have also cherished traditions of
Goldsmith House, as what was once the school is now fondly
designated; which may not safely be admitted here. Broken
window-panes have been religiously kept, for the supposed
treasure of his hand-writing ;f and old gentlemen, once
Doctor Milner's scholars, have claimed, against every reason-
able evidence, the honour of having been whipped by the
author of the Vicar of Wakefield. But nothing is with
certainty known, save what a daughter of the school-master
has related.

At the end of the century Miss Hester Milner, " an
"intelligent lady, the youngest, and only remaining of
" Doctor Milner's ten daughters," was still alive, and very
willing to tell what she recollected of their old usher. An
answer he had given herself one day to -a question which, as
it interested her youth, had happily not ceased to occupy
and interest her old age, seemed to have retained all the
strong impre&sion which it first made upon her. Her
father being a presbyterian divine, she could hardly fail to

* Afterwards a physician in large practice at Maidstone, where his ten sisters
kept house for him till all died but the youngest,
f I derived this from a History of Islington, lent to me by Mr. Jerrold. only full of papers. But