Living in actual need as far as money was concerned, and a destitution of interest more to be pitied, Oliver passed in obscurity through the University. The Rev. Charles Goldsmith, dying in 1747, made the position of his son even more precarious and pathetic, and a career of mishap and misunderstanding still harder to endure. We find dear Noll failing in scholarships, or losing through mere negligence the prizes he had gained, and, lastly, with a philosophic indifference to the transitory nature of mortal learning, pawning the books he ought to have studied. It was a doleful business. He had, as he said, "a knack of hoping." It must have been a clever trick, for it never quite failed. He wrote ballads that were bought up eagerly, and merrily sung, cheering the poor in the common streets of Dublin. He made a shilling or two now and then upon these transactions. These, we can imagine, brought him more pride and pleasure than academic prowess could have afforded. One night he gave a supper to his friends, who were all of a lively and hilarious order, and was for this, before his assembled guests, thrashed by his tutor for his breach of college discipline. Selling his remaining books and his clothes, he fled from this scene of many sorrows. At Dublin, Goldsmith's diligence, however faulty, was enough to gain for him commendation from time to time, but no distinction worth mentioning. His worst crime is seen in a riot in which he was not a ringleader. He scraped into his scrapes as he scraped through his examinations. These days were most desolate. His flight was not final. Reconciled to his condition, he graduated in 1749, his name as usual the last upon the list. When, later in life, he penned his _Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning_, he wrote from bitter experience. Allied with Johnson in the feeling of humiliation at the position of a sizar in a College, Goldsmith went further, and questioned the whole policy of education at our schools and Universities. It is hardly too much to hold him one of the pioneers of modern methods, and those new, slowly-growing principles, which mark our present somewhat broader enlightenment.