closed, that of having been an inmate of the Duke of Hamilton; on what occasion, in what capacity, or by whose introduction does not appear; but it is evident he did not like his position in the family. In the letter to Bryanton from Edinburgh, it will be remembered, he alludes to the Duchess, with whom, it is possible, some acquaintance may have been afterwards formed through her Irish connexions.

"To the Rev. Thomas Contarine.

"MY DEAR UNCLE,

"After having spent two winters in Edinburgh, I now prepare to go to France the 10th of next February. I have seen all that this country can exhibit in the medical way, and therefore intend to visit Paris, where the great Mr. Farhein, Petit, and Du Hammel de Monceau instruct their pupils in all the branches of medicine. They speak French, and consequently I shall have much the advantage of most of my countrymen, as I am perfectly acquainted with that language, and few who leave Ireland are so.

"Since I am upon so pleasing a topic as self applause, give me leave to say that the circle of science which I have run through, before I undertook the study of physic, is not only useful, but absolutely necessary to the making a skilful physician. Such sciences enlarge our understanding, and sharpen our sagacity; and what is a practitioner without both but an empiric, for never yet was a disorder found entirely the same in two patients. A quack, unable to distinguish the particularities in each disease, prescribes at a venture: if he finds such a disorder may be called by the general name of fever for instance, he has a set of remedies which he applies to cure it, nor does he desist till his medicines are run out, or his patient has lost his life. But the skilful physician distinguishes the . symptoms, manures the sterility of nature, or prunes her luxuriance; nor does he depend so much on the efficacy of medicines as on their proper application. I shall spend this spring and summer in Paris, and the beginning of next winter go to Leyden. The great Albinus is still alive there, and 'twill be proper to go, though only to have it said that we have studied in so famous a university.

"As I shall not have another opportunity of receiving money from your bounty till my return to Ireland, so I have drawn for the last sum that I hope I shall ever trouble you for; 'tis 201. And now, dear Sir, let me here acknowledge the humility of the station in which you found me; let me tell how I was despised by most, and hateful to myself. Poverty, hopeless poverty, was my lot, and Melancholy was beginning to make me her own. When youbut I stop here, to inquire how your health goes on? How does my cousin Jenny, and has she recovered her late complaint? How does my poor Jack Goldsmith? I fear his disorder is of such a nature as he won't easily recover. I wish, my dear Sir, you would make me happy by another letter before I go abroad, for there I shall

He means no doubt in contradistinction to other Continental medical schools, where they may have lectured in Latin.

hardly hear from you. I shall carry just 337. to France, with good store of clothes, shirts, &c. &c., and that with economy will serve.

"I have spent more than a fortnight every second day at the Duke of Hamilton's, but it seems they like me more as a jester than as a companion; so I disdained so servile an employment; 'twas unworthy my calling as a physician.*

"I have nothing new to add from this country; and I beg, dear Sir, you will excuse this letter, so filled with egotism. I wish you may be revenged on me, by sending an answer filled with nothing but an account of yourself.

66

"I am, dear Uncle,

"Your most devoted

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

"Give my-how shall I express it? Give my earnest love to Mr. and Mrs. Lawder.”

CHAPTER V.

Quits Edinburgh.-Letter from Leyden.-Anecdotes.-Journey on the Continent.

To have gained the regard of men of sense and character, who had abundant opportunities in the familiar intercourse of students, of judging justly of his heart and understanding, is proof that his general conduct was free from reproach. Neither is there any doubt that they had formed a high estimate of his learning and talents. By their assistance he was saved from arrest; and quitting Edinburgh, though probably not with all the wealth (337) he had calculated upon, is said to have passed a short time in the north of England for the gratification of his curiosity; where we shall see that the first object of interest in his eyes was the beauty of the "farmers' daughters."

At Sunderland he was said by his Edinburgh acquaintance to have been arrested by one Barclay, a tailor; and at Newcastle, according to others, the same misfortune occurred to him again.t Strange as it may seem, these stories originated with the Poet himself, in order to conceal the fact of imprisonment upon another, though unfounded charge, the mere name of which he believed might

Notice has been taken in a preceding page of his allusions to the situation of dependant to a great man, as if something of that kind lingered in his recollection. By an obliging communication from the Rev. Dr. Bliss of Oxford, the writer is informed that the venerable president of Magdalen College, in relation to this subject, states, that his tutor at Queen's, a Mr. M- -, a north countryman, who had known Goldsmith, told a story of his getting into debt to a tailor in Newcastle, and of either being arrested, or going off without payment. All these accounts, no doubt, originated with the Poet himself, for the reason assigned to his uncle.

cause his degree to be withheld. This charge, and the story at length, is told in the following letter to his uncle, written from Leyden, which he desired to visit as a favourite school of physic, though accident carried him thither sooner than originally intended. The escape from perishing by shipwreck which it describes, is another of those singular occurrences that throw an air of romance over parts of his history, that nevertheless there are not the slightest reasons to disbelieve.

"DEAR SIR,

"To the Rev. Thomas Contarine.

Leyden (the date wanting, but no doubt April or May, 1754.)

"I suppose by this time I am accused of either neglect or ingratitude, and my silence imputed to my usual slowness of writing. But believe me, Šir, when I say, that till now I had not the opportunity of sitting down with that ease of mind which writing required. You may see by the top of the letter that I am at Leyden; but of my journey hither you must be informed.

"Sometime before the receipt of your last I embarked for Bourdeaux, on board a Scotch ship called the St. Andrew's, Captain John Wall master. The ship made a tolerable appearance; and as another inducement, I was let to know that six agreeable passengers were to be my company. Well, we were but two days at sea, when a storm drove us into a city of England called Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We all went on shore to refresh us after the fatigues of our voyage. Seven men and I were one day on shore; and on the following evening, as we were all very merry, the room door bursts open; enters a sergeant, and twelve grenadiers with their bayonets screwed, and puts us all under the King's arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence; however, I remained in prison with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then. Dear Sir, keep this a secret, or at least say it was for debt; for if it were once known at the University, I should hardly get a degree. But hear how Providence interfered in my favour: the ship was gone on to Bourdeaux before I got from prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and every one of the crew were drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a ship at that time ready for Holland: I embarked, and in nine days, thank my God, I arrived safe at Rotterdam; whence I travelled by land to Leyden; and whence I now write. You may expect some account of this country; and though I am not well qualified for such an undertaking, yet I shall endeavour to satisfy some part of your expectations. Nothing surprised me more than the books every day published descriptive of the manners of this country. Any young man who takes it into his head to publish his travels, visits the countries he intends to describe; passes through them with as much inattention as his valet de chambre; and consequently not having a fund himself to fill a volume, he applies to those

66

who wrote before him, and gives us the manners of a country, not as he must have seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years before.

"The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times; he in every thing imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat, laced with black riband: no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or to make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! Why, she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats. "A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats and at this chimney, dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy, healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his superfluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amusement, overflows with such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of visage which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. "A Dutch woman and Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; but must say, that of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter is most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty, while the higher class of women want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable. Their pleasures here are very dull, though very various. You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy,-as good an amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in harlequin, who is generally a magician; and in consequence of his diabolical art, performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass from which another was drinking. "Twas not his face they laughed at, for that was masked. They must have seen something vastly queer in the wooden sword, that neither I, nor you, sir, were you there, could see.* "In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house is forsaken, and all people are on the ice; sleds drawn by horses, and skating, are at that time the reigning amusements. They have boats here that slide on the ice, and are driven by the winds. When they

*This description of the Dutch drama would seem (by the remarks of Mr. D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii. p. 165,) not to be overcharged.

spread all their sails they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their motion is so rapid that the eye can scarcely accompany them. Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and very convenient they sail in covered boats drawn by horses; and in these you are sure to meet people of all nations. Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the English play at cards. Any man who likes company may have them to his taste. For my part, I generally detached myself from all society, and was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty: wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottoes, vistas, presented themselves; but when you enter their towns, you are charmed beyond description. No misery is to be seen here: every one is usefully employed.

"Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. There, hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here, 'tis all a continued plain. There, you might see a well-dressed duchess issuing from a dirty close; and here, a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip planted in dung; but I never see a Dutchman in his own house, but I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox.

66

Physic is by no means taught so well here as in Edinburgh; and in all Leyden there are but four British students, owing to all necessaries being so extremely dear, and the professors so very lazy (the chemical professor excepted,) that we don't much, care to come hither. I am not certain how long my stay here may be; however I expect to have the happiness of seeing you at Kilmore, if I can, next March.

"Direct to me, if I am honoured with a letter from you, to Madam Diallion's at Leyden.

"Thou best of men, may Heaven guard and preserve you, and those you love!

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

Nothing imparts a better idea of the philosophical indifference of the Poet to evils merely temporary or physical, than the little concern expressed about an event that would have been, to other men, a theme of loud and angry complaint-the being imprisoned a fortnight on an unfounded suspicion. His only anxiety seems to have been respecting his degree; and however conscious of innocence, he probably believed, from the equivocal situation in which he was found and the general attachment of the Stuarts then prevailing in Scotland, that difficulties might occur in proving it to the satisfaction of the College authorities. It is believed, that testimonials of conduct and character from his acquaintance in Edinburgh were found necessary previous to his final enlargement.

In Ireland a story is told, that being plunged into further difficulties by the departure of the ship with a portion of his baggage on board, he was recommended to follow her on his release from prison rather than proceed to Holland, but exclaimed with characteristic simplicity, "What is the use of that? Sure it will be sent