you to your own choice what to write. While I live, know you have a true friend in yours, &c. &c. &c. "OLIVER GOLDSMITH. "P. S.-Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you mind) to your agreeable family, and give my service to my 5 mother, if you see her; for, as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still. Direct to me, in Physic, in Edinburgh." 66 Student Nothing worthy of preservation appeared from his pen during his residence in Edinburgh; and indeed his poetical powers, 10 highly as they had been estimated by his friends, had not as yet produced anything of superior merit. He made on one occasion a month's excursion to the Highlands. I set out the first day on foot," says he, in a letter to his uncle Contarine, "but an illnatured corn I have on my toe has for the future prevented that 15 cheap mode of travelling; so the second day I hired a horse, about the size of a ram, and he walked away (trot he could not) as pensive as his master." During his residence in Scotland his convivial talents gained him at one time attentions in a high quarter, which, however, 20 he had the good sense to appreciate correctly. "I have spent," says he, in one of his letters, "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 as unworthy my calling as a physician." Here 25 we again find the origin of another passage in his autobiography, under the character of the “Man in Black," wherein that worthy figures as a flatterer to a great man. "At first," says he, "I was surprised that the situation of a flatterer at a great man's table could be thought disagreeable; there was no great 30 trouble in listening attentively when his lordship spoke, and laughing when he looked round for applause. This, even good manners might have obliged me to perform. I found, however, too soon, his lordship was a greater dunce than myself, and from that moment flattery was at an end. I now rather aimed 35 at setting him right than at receiving his absurdities with submission: to flatter those we do not know is an easy task; but to flatter our intimate acquaintances, all whose foibles are strongly in our eyes, is drudgery insupportable. Every time I now opened my lips in praise, my falsehood went to my conscience; his lordship soon perceived me to be very unfit for his service: Í 5 was therefore discharged; my patron at the same time being graciously pleased to observe that he believed I was tolerably good-natured and had not the least harm in me." 66 After spending two winters at Edinburgh, Goldsmith prepared to finish his medical studies on the Continent, for which 10 his uncle Contarine agreed to furnish the funds. 'I intend,' said he, in a letter to his uncle, "to visit Paris, where the great Farheim, Petit, and Du Hamel 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 coun15 trymen, as I am perfectly acquainted with that language, and few who leave Ireland are so. I shall spend the 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 20 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 £20. And now, dear sir, let me here acknowledge the humility of the 25 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 you But I stop here, to inquire how your health goes on? How does my cousin Jenny, and has she 30 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 hardly hear from you. Give my-how shall I express it? - give 35 my earnest love to Mr. and Mrs. Lawder." Mrs. Lawder was Jane, his early playmate-the object of his valentine his first poetical inspiration. She had been for some time married. Medical instruction, it will be perceived, was the ostensible motive for this visit to the Continent, but the real one, in all probability, was his long-cherished desire to see foreign parts. This, however, he would not acknowledge even to himself, but sought to reconcile his roving propensities with some grand moral purpose. "I esteem the traveller who instructs the 5 heart," says he, in one of his subsequent writings, "but I despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond." He, of course, was to 10. travel as a philosopher, and in truth his outfits for a Continental tour were in character. "I shall carry just £33 to France," said he, "with good store of clothes, shirts, &c., and that with economy will suffice." He forgot to make mention of his flute, which it will be found had occasionally to come in play when 15 economy could not replenish his purse, nor philosophy find him a supper. Thus slenderly provided with money, prudence, or experience, and almost as slightly guarded against "hard knocks" as the hero of La Mancha, whose head-piece was half iron, half pasteboard, he made his final sally forth upon the 20 world; hoping all things; believing all things; little anticipating the checkered ills in store for him; little thinking when he penned his valedictory letter to his good uncle Contarine, that he was never to see him more; never to return after all his wandering to the friend of his infancy; never to revisit his 25 early and fondly remembered haunts at "sweet Lissoy" and Ballymahon. CHAPTER V The agreeable Fellow-Passengers. - Risks from Friends picked up by the Wayside. -Sketches of Holland and the Dutch. - Shifts while a poor Student at Leyden.-The Tulip-Speculation - The provident Flute. Sojourn at Paris. -Sketch of Voltaire.—Travelling Shifts of a Philosophic Vagabond. His usual indiscretion attended Goldsmith at the very outset of his foreign enterprise. He had intended to take shipping at Leith for Holland; but on arriving at that port, he found a 30 ship about to sail for Bordeaux, with six agreeable passengers, whose acquaintance he had probably made at the inn. He was not a man to resist a sudden impulse; so, instead of embarking for Holland, he found himself ploughing the seas on his way 5 to the other side of the Continent. Scarcely had the ship been two days at sea, when she was driven by stress of weather to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here "of course "Goldsmith and his agreeable fellow-passengers found it expedient to go on shore and "refresh themselves after the fatigues of the voyage." "Of 10 course" they frolicked and made merry until a late hour in the evening, when, in the midst of their hilarity, the door was burst open, and a sergeant and twelve grenadiers entered with fixed bayonets, and took the whole convivial party prisoners. It seems that the agreeable companions with whom our 15 greenhorn had struck up such a sudden intimacy, were Scotchmen in the French service, who had been in Scotland enlisting recruits for the French army. In vain Goldsmith protested his innocence; he was marched off with his fellow-revellers to prison whence he with difficulty 20 obtained his release at the end of a fortnight. With his customary facility, however, at palliating his misadventures, he found everything turn out for the best. His imprisonment saved his life, for during his detention the ship proceeded on her voyage, but was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and 25 all on board perished. Goldsmith's second embarkation was for Holland direct, and in nine days he arrived at Rotterdam, whence he proceeded, without any more deviations, to Leyden. He gives a whimsical picture, in one of his letters, of the appearance of the Hol30 landers. "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times: he in everything imitates a Frenchman but in his easy, disengaged air. He is vastly ceremonious, and is, perhaps, exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the 35 downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a lank head of hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribband; no coat, but seven waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company or 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 5 but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove of coals, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats, and at this chimney, dozing Strephon° lights his pipe." In the same letter he contrasts Scotland and Holland. "There, 10 hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here, it is 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 can never see a Dutchman in his own house, but 15 I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox." The country itself awakened his admiration. "Nothing," said he, "can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, present themselves; but when you enter their towns, you are charmed 20 beyond description. No misery is to be seen here, every one is usefully employed." And again, in his noble description in The Traveller: "To men of other minds my fancy flies, Imbosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. 25 30 30 335 35 He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures 40 of Gaubius on chemistry and Albinus on anatomy; though his |