His tutor, a great brute--let his name be known: it was Wilder--proceeded sometimes to actual corporeal castigation; and, with Oliver's natural tendency to poetry rather than to dry classical and mathematical studies, like many other poets, including Scott and Byron, he cut no great figure at college; and, like the latter, detested it. Among his cotemporaries at the college was Edmund Burke, but they appear to have known little of each other. To add to Goldsmith's uncomfortable position, there occurred a riot of the students, who, hearing that one of their body had been arrested in Fleet-street, rushed to the rescue, seized the bailiffs, dragged them to the college, and pumped them soundly in the old cistern. They next attempted to break open Newgate, and make a general jail delivery, but failed for want of cannon. In the subsequent inquiry Goldsmith came in, not for any severe punishment, but for a college censure. Feeling his self-respect deeply wounded by his brutal tutor entering his chambers on one occasion when he had a party of merry comrades there, and in their presence inflicting personal chastisement upon him, he quitted college, selling his books, and set off to Cork to embark for some foreign country; but his money failed; he was compelled to sell his clothes from his back, and, brought to the utmost condition of misery and starvation, he thus reached his brother's house, who again clothed him, and brought him back to college, endeavoring to propitiate the brutal tutor. His father dying, he was reduced to the deepest distress. His generous uncle Contarine helped him all he could, but, with Oliver's careless habits, he was still often reduced to the utmost straits. He was sometimes compelled to pawn his books, and borrow others to study from. His condition became that of squalid poverty, and at length he was driven to the extremity of writing street-ballads, which he found a ready sale for, at five shillings a copy, at a shop known as the sign of the Reindeer, in Mountrath-street. Eventually obtaining the degree of B.A., he quitted the University, and, as we have seen, retreated to his own native neighborhood and friends.