his way to Holland, wanders through France on foot where, "when I approached a peasant's house in the evening I played one of my most merry tunes, which procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the following day; but I must own that when I attempted to entertain persons of higher rank, they always thought my performance odious, nor ever made me any return for my endeavor to please them." At Louvain he seems to have stayed long enough to get the degree of M. B. by which he obtained, he says, "authority to stay." He visited Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, and Maestricht. In Switzerland he stayed some time, visiting Voltaire near Geneva. From thence he passed into Italy, wandering on foot as before, through Piedmont, visiting Milan, Venice, Florence, Verona, Mantua, and Padua. In Italy, however, where he found every peasant a musician, his German flute no longer availed him, but, as "In all foreign universities and convents, there are upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night." And so for a year he wandered, seeing far more, he says, than if "whirled along in a coach," and gaining more, let us add, than many a rich man's son who makes the grand tour in an automobile to-day.

At last he turned his steps toward London. He landed at Dover on the 1st of February, "his whole stock of cash amounting to no more than a few halfpence." Now followed a time of sore trouble and necessity. Those of his immediate family on whom he had so often depended for assistance, were quite unable to help him. Henceforth he could look to no one but himself. At first it is difficult to find out what he did do; it is conjectured that he may have taught in a provincial school, or even turned strolling player. When he arrived in London he tried his hand as assistant to an apothecary (i.e., a druggist), but finding that one of his old College friends was then in London, he visited him, and through his help endeavored to set up as a doctor. Always preoccupied with the subject of clothes, he invested in a suit of green and gold. As he could not afford a new one, he bought it second-hand. It was tarnished and with an unfortunate patch on the left breast. This he carefully hid when on his visits by holding his hat over it. But he had no skill in the exercise of his profession, and consequently met with no success. He next proposed to start off for the East on a commission to decipher sanscrit inscriptions, but instead of this he accepted a position as assistant in the school of a Dr. Milner, at Peckham. Of his unhappy experiences there we have probably an account in the "Vicar of Wakefield," where he

makes one of his characters say, "I have been an usher at a boarding-school myself; and may I die by an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be an under turnkey at Newgate. I was up early and late, browbeat by the master, hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys within, and never permitted to stir out to meet civility abroad." In others of his writings and in the memoirs of the time, he refers bitterly to the hardships of such an existence.

Nevertheless it was in this uncongenial atmosphere that Goldsmith at last met with the opportunity which was eventually to lead to the exercise of his true vocation.

Mr. Griffiths, a book-seller, whose shop in Paternoster Row was to be for a time the future scene of Oliver Goldsmith's labors, met him one evening at Dr. Milner's house. Struck by a remark of the usher's, Mr. Griffiths asked if he would not write some criticisms for his journal. Goldsmith complied with alacrity, and entered into a contract by which he was to supply critical articles in return for a fixed salary. This agreement lasted but a short time, and from 1758 to 1764 Goldsmith wrote many miscellaneous criticisms and odd pieces for various periodicals, earning at best a precarious existence. At the latter date, however, began the flowering time of his genius. Although after this his lavish generosity in spending all that he had forced him

to continue his hack-work and general compilations, every original production, poem, novel, essay, or play was henceforth to prove a masterpiece in its own line.

"The Traveler; or a Prospect of Society, a Poem," was published in 1764, although the title page bears the date 1765. The extraordinary success which attended its appearance caused the reproduction of many of his anonymous essays and other pieces which up to this time had met with few admirers.

The exact time of the first sale of the manuscript of "The Vicar of Wakefield" is a matter of some controversy. There is evidence to show that Benjamin Collins of Salisbury, printer, acquired a third share in 1672 in a new book entitled "The Vicar of Wakefield." It was at a somewhat later date that Boswell in his "Life of Johnson" gives the story "authentically," as he says, "from his own exact narration" in the following words. It is Dr. Johnson who is speaking: "I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already

changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told his landlady I should soon return, and having gone to the book-seller, sold it for sixty pounds; and he discharged the rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." Whether two shares in the book only were sold at this time for the sixty pounds must be matter of doubt. The "Vicar of Wakefield" was printed by Benjamin Collins for F. Newbery, of London, in 1766.

But although from this time Goldsmith was on the whole better paid for his work and his success as poet, author, and very soon dramatist, was well assured, his lavishly generous disposition continued to involve him in endless difficulties. It is some consolation that he was known and appreciated by the brilliant set of painters, poets, writers, and wits of his time, and they have left abundant records of their esteem. One of them, Mr. Percy, soon to become a bishop, draws the following touching picture: A friend of his (Dr. Percy himself) paying him a visit at the beginning of March, 1759, found him in lodgings there so poor and miserable that he should