Unhappily,

certain that he encountered every form of distress. though he wrote many letters to Ireland, some of them described from recollection as compositions of singular ease and humour, all are lost. But Doctor Ellis, an Irish physician of eminence and ex-student of Leyden, remembered his fellow-student when years had made him famous, and said (much, it may be confessed, in the tone of ex-post-facto prophecy) that in all his peculiarities it was remarked there was about him an elevation of mind, a philosophical tone and manner, and the language and information of a scholar. Being much in want of the philosophy, it is well that his friends should have given him credit for it; though his last known scene in Leyden showed greatly less of the philosophic mind than of the gentle, grateful heart. Bent upon leaving that city, where he had now been nearly a year without an effort for a degree, he called upon Ellis, and asked his assistance in some trifling sum. It was given; but, as his evil, or (some might say) his good genius would have it, he passed a florist's garden on his return, and seeing some rare and high-priced flowers which his uncle Contarine, an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and long been in search of, he ran in without other thought than of immediate pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of the roots, and sent them off to Ireland. He left Leyden next day, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand.

CHAPTER V.

TRAVELS. 1755-1756.

1755.

To understand what was probably passing in Goldsmith's mind at this curious point of his fortunes when, without any settled prospect in life, and devoid even of all apparent t. 27. means of self-support, he quitted Leyden, the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, the first literary piece which a few years afterwards he published on his own account, will in some degree serve as a guide. The Danish writer, Baron de Holberg, was much talked of at this time, as a celebrated person recently dead. His career impressed Goldsmith. It was that of a man of obscure origin, to whom literature, other sources having failed, had given great fame and high worldly station. On the death of his father, Holberg had found himself involved in all that dis"tress which is common among the poor, and of which the great "have scarcely any idea." But persisting in a determination to

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be something, he resolutely begged his learning and his bread, and so succeeded that "a life begun in contempt and penury ended in opulence and esteem." Goldsmith had his thoughts more especially fixed upon this career, when at Leyden, by the accident of its sudden close in that city. The desire of extensive travel, too, his sister told Mr. Handcock, had been always a kind of passion with him. "Being of a philosophical turn," says his later associate and friend, Doctor Glover, "and at that time possessing a body "capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified "at danger, this ingenious, unfortunate man became an enthusiast "to the design he had formed of seeing the manners of different "countries." And an enthusiast to the same design, with precisely the same means of indulging it, Holberg had also been. "His ambition," I turn again to the Polite Learning, "was not to "be restrained, or his thirst of knowledge satisfied, until he had "seen the world. Without money, recommendations, or friends, "he undertook to set out upon his travels, and make the tour of "Europe on foot. A good voice, and a trifling skill in music, were the only finances he had to support an undertaking so "extensive; so he travelled by day, and at night sung at the "doors of peasants' houses to get himself a lodging. In this 66 manner, while yet very young, Holberg passed through France, "Germany, and Holland." With exactly the same resources, still also very young, Goldsmith quitted Leyden, bent upon the travel which his Traveller has made immortal.

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It was in February, 1755. For the exact route he took, the nature of his adventures, and the course of thought they suggested, it is necessary to resort for the most part to his published writings. His letters of the time have perished. It was common talk at the dinner table of Reynolds that the wanderings of the philosophic vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield had been suggested by his own, and he often admitted at that time, to various friends, the accuracy of special details. "He frequently used to talk," says Foote's biographer Mr. Cooke, who became very familiar with Goldsmith in later life, "of his distresses on the continent, "such as living on the hospitalities of the friars in convents, 'sleeping in barns, and picking up a kind of mendicant livelihood "by the German flute, with great pleasantry." If he did not make more open confession than to private friends, it was to please the booksellers only; who could not bear that any one so popular with their customers as Doctor Goldsmith had become, should lie under the horrible imputation of a poverty so deplorable. "Countries wear very different appearances," he had written in the first edition of the Polite Learning, “to travellers of different "circumstances. A man who is whirled through Europe in a

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"post-chaise, and the pilgrim who walks the grand tour on foot, "will form very different conclusions. Haud inexpertus loquor." In the second edition, the haud inexpertus loquor disappeared; but the experience had been already set down in the Vicar of Wakefield.

Louvain attracted him of course, as he passed through Flanders; and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of medical bachelor, which, as early as 1763, is found in one of the Dodsley agreements appended to his name. Though this is by no means certain, it is yet likely enough. The records of Louvain University were destroyed in the revolutionary wars, and the means of proof or disproof lost; but it is improbable that any false assumption of a medical degree would have passed without question among the distinguished friends of his later life, even if it escaped the exposure of his enemies. Certain it is, at any rate, that he made some stay at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, and informed himself of its modes of study. "I always forgot "the meanness of my circumstances when I could converse upon "such subjects." Some little time he also seems to have passed at Brussels. Of his having examined at Maestricht an extensive cavern, or stone quarry, at that time much visited by travellers, there is likewise trace. It must undoubtedly have been at Antwerp (a "fortification in Flanders ") that he saw the maimed, deformed, chained, yet cheerful slave, to whom he refers in that charming essay, in the second number of the Bee, wherein he argues that happiness and pleasure are in ourselves, and not in the objects offered for our amusement. And he afterwards remembered, and made it the subject of a striking allusion in his Animated Nature, how, as he approached the coast of Holland, he looked down upon it from the deck, as into a valley; so that it seemed to him at once a conquest from the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. He did not travel to see that all was barren; he did not merely outface the poverty, the hardship, and fatigue, but made them his servants, and ministers to entertainment and wisdom.

Before he passed through Flanders good use had been made of his flute; and when he came to the poorer provinces of France, he found it greatly serviceable. "I had some knowledge of "music," says the vagabond, "with a tolerable voice; I now "turned what was once my amusement into a present means of "subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, "and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very "merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their "wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards night"fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured

"me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day. I once "or twice attempted to play for people of fashion; but they "always thought my performance odious, and never rewarded me "even with a trifle." In plain words, he begged, as Holberg had done; supported by his cheerful spirit, and the thought that Holberg's better fate might also yet be his. Not, we may be sure, the dull round of professional labour, but intellectual distinction, popular fame, the applause and wonder of his old Irish associates, were now within the sphere of Goldsmith's vision; and what these will enable a man joyfully to endure, he afterwards bore witness to. "The perspective of life brightens upon us when terminated "by objects so charming. Every intermediate image of want, "banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from their distant "influence. With these in view, the patriot, philosopher, and "poet, have looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and "rested on their straw with cheerful serenity." Straw, doubtless, was his own peasant-lodging often; but from it the wanderer arose, refreshed and hopeful, and bade the melody and sport resume, and played with a new delight to the music of enchanting verse already dancing in his brain.

Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,

Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please,
How often have I led thy sportive choir,

With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire,
Where shading elms along the margin grew,
And, freshen'd from the wave, the zephyr flew !
And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still,
But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill,
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour.
Alike all ages: dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze;
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.
So bless'd a life these thoughtless realms display;
Thus idly busy rolls their world away.

Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,
For honour forms the social temper here:
Honour, that praise which real merit gains,
Or e'en imaginary worth obtains,

Here passes current-paid from hand to hand,
It shifts, in splendid traffic, round the land;
From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,
And all are taught an avarice of praise :
They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem,

Till, seeming bless'd, they grow to what they seem.

Arrived in Paris, he rested some brief space, and, for the time, a sensible improvement is to be observed in his resources.

This is

not easily explained; for, as will appear a little later in our history, many applications to Ireland of this date remained altogether without answer, and a sad fate had fallen suddenly on his best friend. But in subsequent communication with his brother-in-law Hodson, he remarked, with that strange indifference to what was implied in such obligations which is not the agreeable side of his character, that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a debtor; and in Paris, if anywhere, he would find many hearts made liberal by the love of learning. His early memoir-writers assert with confidence, that in at least some small portion of these travels he acted as companion to a young man of large fortune (nephew to a pawnbroker, and articled-clerk to an attorney); and there are passages in the philosophic vagabond's adventures, which, if they did not themselves suggest the assertion (as they certainly supply the language) of those first biographers, would tend to bear it out. "I was to be the young "gentleman's governor, with a proviso that he should always be "permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a fortune of two "hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West "Indies; and all his questions on the road were, how much "money could be saved. Such curiosities as could be seen for "nothing, he was ready enough to look at; but if the sight of "them was to be paid for, he usually asserted that he had been "told they were not worth seeing; and he never paid a bill that "he would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling "was."

Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so thrifty a young gentleman, but he certainly seems to have been present, whether as a student or a mere visitor, at the fashionable chemical lectures of the day ("I have seen as bright a circle of "beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court "at Versailles"); to have seen and admired the celebrated actress Mademoiselle Clairon (of whom he speaks in an essay at the close of the second number of the Bee); and to have had leisure to look quietly around him, and form certain grave and settled conclusions on the political and social state of France. He says, in his Animated Nature, that he never walked about the environs of Paris that he did not look upon the immense quantity of game running almost tame on every side of him, as a badge of the slavery of the people. What they wished him to observe as an object of triumph, he added, he regarded with a secret dread and compassion. Nor was it the badge of slavery that had alone arrested his attention. If on every side he saw this, he saw liberty at but a little distance beyond; and in the fifty-sixth letter of the Citizen of the World, more than ten years before the Animated