Ballymahon, the little foreign-looking town near his native place, figures conspicuously in Goldsmith's early life. After his father's death, which took place while he was at college, his mother removed thither, and thither during vacations Oliver betook himself. Again, when he quitted college, he spent two years among his relations, with no fixed aim; sometimes he was with his uncle Contarine in Roscommon; sometimes at Lissoy, where now his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, lived in the old house; at other times he was with his brother Henry, who, officiating as curate, lived at Pallasmore in the house where Oliver was born, and, to eke out his small salary, kept a school, in which Oliver assisted him. No place was so dear to him, however, as Lissoy, where he entered into all the rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law with fullest enjoyment. There is no doubt that, had he had sufficient means, he would have continued to live here a country life, and the world would most probably have lost a poet. As it is, he has made the life and characters of Lissoy familiar to all the world, in both The Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield. No man drew more from real, and especially from his own past life, than Goldsmith. The last years he spent in the country he was a tutor in the family of a country gentleman in the county of Roscommon, of the name of Flinn; and the nature of his impressions regarding such a situation he is supposed to have recorded in the history of The Man in Black.