Oliver Goldsmith had a keen ear for the meteorological allusion. His once idyllic but now deserted village, for example, is described as a place
Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting Summer's lingering blooms delay'd.
There too, the village schoolmaster, as we all no doubt re member, would utter "words of learned length and thundering sound", while the austere, celestial demeanour of the village parson is compared to
Some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
Goldsmith showed little promise of his future greatness in his early years. Successive adolescent attempts to become a clergyman, a lawyer or a doctor failed and, after some time wandering on the Continent, he settled in London. There he published the works for which he is so well remembered - the poems The Deserted Village and The Traveller, the play She Stoops to Conquer, and the novel The Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith, by all accounts was a shy and awkward person, sadly marked by smallpox, and is portrayed by his contemporaries as a somewhat vain, naive, improvident individual, prone to some extravagance in dress. Yet he was also seen as soft at heart, simple and generous by nature and was acknowledged as a brilliant conversationalist.
Perhaps it is when addressing Poetry personified that Goldsmith's lyricism can be seen to embark on a meteorological crescendo:
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let Thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime.
A certain hint of meteorological inspiration can also be gleaned from his contemplation of the delights of Italy in The Traveller:
Far to the right, where Apennine ascends,
Bright as the summer, Italy extends.
The sons of Italy were surely blest,
Whatever fruits in different climes are found,
That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground.
His father, Charles Goldsmith, was rector of the local church at Lissoy, Co Westmeath, which is popularly supposed to have been the inspiration for the Sweet Auburn of The Deserted Village. Before that, the family lived near Pallas, Co Longford, where the accepted wisdom has it that Oliver Goldsmith was born, 270 years ago today, on November 10th, 1728.