In the evening he again turned his back on the city, taking his way "where Liffey rolls her dead dogs to the sea," along to the wall on the shore, whence be delighted to see the sun sink into the waters, gilding ocean, ships, and city as it vanished.

Alas, it was beneath the dignity of verse to tell us what we should most gladly have known.

For, "The muse nor can, nor will declare, What is my work, and what my studies there." What serious nourishment Burke was laying in for his understanding we cannot learn from any other source.

He describes himself as spending three hours almost every day in the public library; "the best way in the world," he adds oddly enough, "of killing thought." I have read some history, he says, and among other pieces of history, "I am endeavouring to get a little into the accounts of this, our own poor country,"-- a pathetic expression, which represents Burke's perpetual mood, as long as he lived, of affectionate pity for his native land.
Of the eminent Irishmen whose names adorn the annals of Trinity College in the eighteenth century, Burke was only contemporary at the University with one, the luckless sizar who in the fulness of time wrote the _Vicar of Wakefield_.

There is no evidence that at this time he and Goldsmith were acquainted with one another.