was popular in Ireland in the early part of the seventeenth century. The roof is off, but the walls remain, and seem still to be haunted by the shade of the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, the original Doctor Primrose in “The Vicar of Wakefield,” while his wife, hospitable as of yore, still seems to invite the passing stranger to taste her gooseberry wine. The famous inn,—since rebuilt out of all resemblance to its former self,—immortalized by Goldsmith, and known as the Three Pigeons, where were drawn the “inspired nut-brown draughts,” and “where village statesmen talked with looks profound,” is but a little distance from the house. The country all around Lishoy—for that is the name of the townland in which Toberclare, this Mecca of the Goldsmith student, is situated—is well wooded and cultivated. The drive from Athlone to “Sweet Auburn” is one of the most delightful in Ireland. As the reputed locale of “The Deserted Village,” Auburn, or Lishoy, as it was formerly known, has an unusual share of interest for the literary pilgrim.
Goldsmith was not born at Lishoy, as is sometimes stated, but in Pallas, a village in the County Longford, his father being at the time a poor curate and farmer. The infancy of Oliver was, however, spent in Lishoy, and there is little doubt but that the scenes of his childhood became afterward the imaginative sources whence he drew the picture of “Sweet Auburn,” though it is doubtless true that the descriptions are general enough in character to apply to many localities in England as well as Ireland:
“Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheer’d the labouring swain;
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delay’d.
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please;
How often have I loitered o’er thy green,
Where humble happiness endear’d each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm!
The shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm:
The never-failing brook, the busy mill;
The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill;
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age, and whispering lovers made.”
Attempts have been made from time to time to justify the procedure, which is customary here, of stripping the hawthorn of its blossoms to sell to tourists; and to explain that it is a perfectly legitimate and artistic thing to have hung the old broken plates and cups of the erstwhile Three Pigeons on the walls of the new inn. Sir Walter Scott attempted to justify all this as “a pleasing tribute to the poet,” but there is a hollow mockery about it all that will make the true pilgrim hasten to commune with
“The never-failing brook, the busy mill;”
and