But another, in which, after a painful silence, he
replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he
meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker
grew good,--is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and
'exquisite sensibility of contempt' with which he was to enter upon the
battle of life.
In June, 1744, after anticipating in his own person, the plot of his
later play of 'She Stoops to Conquer' by mistaking the house of a
gentleman at Ardagh for an inn, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin.
The special dress and semi-menial footing of a sizar or poor
scholar--for his father, impoverished by the imprudent portioning of his
eldest daughter, could not afford to make him a pensioner--were scarcely
calculated to modify his personal peculiarities. Added to these, his
tutor elect, Dr. Theaker Wilder, was a violent and vindictive man, with
whom his ungainly and unhopeful pupil found little favour. Wilder had a
passion for mathematics which was not shared by Goldsmith, who, indeed,
spoke contemptuously enough of that science in after life.
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