No More Learning

We trust, however, it was
but a poetical passion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness
and exhales itself in rhyme. While Oliver was thus piping and poetizing at
the parsonage, his uncle Contarine received a visit from Dean Goldsmith of
Cloyne; a kind of magnate in the wide but improvident family connection,
throughout which his word was law and almost gospel. This august dignitary
was pleased to discover signs of talent in Oliver, and suggested that as he
had attempted divinity and law without success, he should now try physic.
The advice came from too important a source to be disregarded, and it was
determined to send him to Edinburgh to commence his studies. The Dean
having given the advice, added to it, we trust, his blessing, but no money;
that was furnished from the scantier purses of Goldsmith's brother, his
sister (Mrs. Hodson), and his ever-ready uncle, Contarine.

It was in the autumn of 1752 that Goldsmith arrived in Edinburgh. His
outset in that city came near adding to the list of his indiscretions and
disasters. Having taken lodgings at haphazard, he left his trunk there,
containing all his worldly effects, and sallied forth to see the town.
After sauntering about the streets until a late hour, he thought of
returning home, when, to his confusion, he found he had not acquainted
himself with the name either of his landlady or of the street in which she
lived. Fortunately, in the height of his whimsical perplexity, he met the
cawdy or porter who had carried his trunk, and who now served him as a
guide.

He did not remain long in the lodgings in which he had put up. The hostess
was too adroit at that hocus-pocus of the table which often is practiced in
cheap boarding-houses. No one could conjure a single joint through a
greater variety of forms. A loin of mutton, according to Goldsmith's
account, would serve him and two fellow-students a whole week. "A brandered
chop was served up one day, a fried steak another, collops with onion sauce
a third, and so on until the fleshy parts were quite consumed, when finally
a dish of broth was manufactured from the bones on the seventh day, and the
landlady rested from her labors. " Goldsmith had a good-humored mode of
taking things, and for a short time amused himself with the shifts and
expedients of his landlady, which struck him in a ludicrous manner; he
soon, however, fell in with fellow-students from his own country, whom he
joined at more eligible quarters.

He now attended medical lectures, and attached himself to an association of
students called the Medical Society. He set out, as usual, with the best
intentions, but, as usual, soon fell into idle, convivial, thoughtless
habits. Edinburgh was indeed a place of sore trial for one of his
temperament. Convivial meetings were all the vogue, and the tavern was the
universal rallying-place of good-fellowship. And then Goldsmith's
intimacies lay chiefly among the Irish students, who were always ready for
a wild freak and frolic. Among them he was a prime favorite and somewhat of
a leader, from his exuberance of spirits, his vein of humor, and his talent
at singing an Irish song and telling an Irish story.

His usual carelessness in money matters attended him. Though his supplies
from home were scanty and irregular, he never could bring himself into
habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present
finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity
or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous
swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than
himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his
fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present
which of the two should treat the whole party to the play. The moment the
proposition had bolted from his lips his heart was in his throat. "To my
great though secret joy," said he, "they all declined the challenge. Had it
been accepted, and had I proved the loser, a part of my wardrobe must have
been pledged in order to raise the money. "

At another of these meetings there was an earnest dispute on the question
of ghosts, some being firm believers in the possibility of departed spirits
returning to visit their friends and familiar haunts. One of the disputants
set sail the next day for London, but the vessel put back through the
stress of weather. His return was unknown except to one of the believers in
ghosts, who concerted with him a trick to be played off on the opposite
party. In the evening, at a meeting of the students, the discussion was
renewed; and one of the most strenuous opposers of ghosts was asked whether
he considered himself proof against ocular demonstration? He persisted in
his scoffing. Some solemn process of conjuration was performed, and the
comrade supposed to be on his way to London made his appearance. The effect
was fatal. The unbeliever fainted at the sight, and ultimately went mad. We
have no account of what share Goldsmith took in this transaction, at which
he was present.

The following letter to his friend Bryanton contains some of Goldsmith's
impressions concerning Scotland and its inhabitants, and gives indications
of that humor which characterized some of his later writings.

"_Robert Bryanton, at Ballymahon, Ireland_.

"EDINBURGH, September 26, 1753.

"MY DEAR BOB--How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an
excuse) might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence. I might tell
how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry
at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with business
you know I was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen.
But I suppress those and twenty more as plausible, and as easily invented,
since they might be attended with a slight inconvenience of being known to
be lies. Let me then speak truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from
the mother's side) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still
prevents my writing at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in
Ireland. No turn-spit-dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than
I sit down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better
than I do him I now address.

"Yet what shall I say now I am entered? Shall I tire you with a description
of this unfruitful country; where I must lead you over their hills all
brown with heath, or their valleys scarcely able to feed a rabbit? Man
alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in
this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal
landscape. No grove, nor brook, lend their music to cheer the stranger, or
make the inhabitants forget their poverty. Yet with all these disadvantages
to call him down to humility, a Scotchman is one of the proudest things
alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them. If mankind should
happen to despise them, they are masters of their own admiration, and that
they can plentifully bestow upon themselves.

"From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this
country enjoys--namely, the gentlemen here are much better bred than among
us. No such character here as our fox-hunters; and they have expressed
great surprise when I informed them that some men in Ireland of one
thousand pounds a year spend their whole lives in running after a hare, and
drinking to be drunk. Truly if such a being, equipped in his hunting dress,
came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the same
astonishment that a countryman does King George on horseback.

"The men here have generally high cheek bones, and are lean and swarthy,
fond of action, dancing in particular. Now that I have mentioned dancing,
let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here. When a
stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by
the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; in the other end
stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more intercourse
between the sexes than there is between two countries at war. The ladies
indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh; but an embargo is laid on any
closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress,
or intendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman to walk a
minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence.
After five or six couple have thus walked the gantlet, all stand up to
country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid
lady directress; so they dance much, say nothing, and thus concludes our
assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such profound silence resembled
the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honor of Ceres; and the
Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a
very great pedant for my pains.

"Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love Scotland, and
everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and will
give him leave to break my head that denies it--that the Scotch ladies are
ten thousand times finer and handsomer than the Irish. To be sure, now, I
see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my partiality--but
tell them flatly, I don't value them--or their fine skins, or eyes, or good
sense, or----, a potato;--for I say, and will maintain it; and as a
convincing proof (I am in a great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch
ladies say it themselves. But to be less serious; where will you find a
language so prettily become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? And the
women here speak it in its highest purity; for instance, teach one of your
young ladies at home to pronounce the 'Whoar wull I gong? ' with a becoming
widening of mouth, and I'll lay my life they'll wound every hearer.

"We have no such character here as a coquette, but alas! how many envious
prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be
surprised, my lord is but a glover), [Footnote: William Maclellan, who
claimed the title, and whose son succeeded in establishing the claim in
1773. The father is said to have voted at the election of the sixteen Peers
for Scotland, and to have sold gloves in the lobby at this and other public
assemblages. ] when the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her
beauty to her ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage)
passed by in her chariot; her battered husband, or more properly the
guardian of her charms, sat by her side. Straight envy began, in the shape
of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults in her
faultless form. --'For my part,' says the first, 'I think what I always
thought, that the duchess has too much of the red in her complexion. '
'Madam, I am of your opinion,' says the second; 'I think her face has a
palish cast too much on the delicate order. ' 'And let me tell you,' added
the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue, 'that
the duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth. '--At this every lady drew
up her mouth as if going to pronounce the letter P.

"But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom I have
scarcely any correspondence! There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here;
and 'tis certain they have handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and
poor man is society only for himself, and such society the world lets me
enjoy in great abundance. Fortune has given you circumstances, and nature a
person to look charming in the eyes of the fair. Nor do I envy my dear Bob
such blessings, while I may sit down and laugh at the world and at
myself--the most ridiculous object in it. But you see I am grown downright
splenetic, and perhaps the fit may continue till I receive an answer to
this. I know you cannot send me much news from Ballymahon, but such as it
is, send it all; everything you send will be agreeable to me.

"Has George Conway put up a sign yet; or John Binley left off drinking
drams; or Tom Allen got a new wig? But I leave you to your own choice what
to write. While I live, know you have a true friend in yours, etc. , etc.

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

"P. S. --Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you mind) to your
agreeable family, and give my service to my mother, if you see her; for, as
you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still. Direct
to me, ----, Student in Physic, in Edinburgh. "

Nothing worthy of preservation appeared from his pen during his residence
in Edinburgh; and indeed his poetical powers, 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 ill-natured corn I have on my toe has for the future prevented that
cheap mode of traveling; 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, 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 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 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 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: I 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. "

After spending two winters at Edinburgh, Goldsmith prepared to finish his
medical studies on the Continent, for which 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 traveler who
instructs the heart," says he, in one of his subsequent writings, "but
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 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, etc. , 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 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 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
early and fondly-remembered haunts at "sweet Lissoy" and Ballymahon.




CHAPTER FIVE

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--TRAVELING 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 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 plowing the seas on his way 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
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 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-revelers to prison, whence he with difficulty 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
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 Hollanders. "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 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 ribbon; 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 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 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 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,
grottoes, vistas, present themselves; but when you enter their towns you
are charmed beyond description. No misery is to be seen here; every one is
usefully employed. " And again, in his noble description in The Traveler:

"To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Imbosom'd in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;
Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world before him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign. "

He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures of Gaubius on
chemistry and Albinus on anatomy; though his studies are said to have been
miscellaneous, and directed to literature rather than science. The
thirty-three pounds with which he had set out on his travels were soon
consumed, and he was put to many a shift to meet his expenses until his
precarious remittances should arrive. He had a good friend on these
occasions in a fellow-student and countryman, named Ellis, who afterward
rose to eminence as a physician. He used frequently to loan small sums to
Goldsmith, which were always scrupulously paid. Ellis discovered the innate
merits of the poor awkward student, and used to declare in after life that
"it was a common remark in Leyden, that in all the peculiarities of
Goldsmith, an elevation of mind was to be noted; a philosophical tone and
manner; the feelings of a gentleman, and the language and information of a
scholar. "

Sometimes, in his emergencies, Goldsmith undertook to teach the English
language. It is true he was ignorant of the Dutch, but he had a smattering
of the French, picked up among the Irish priests at Ballymahon. He depicts
his whimsical embarrassment in this respect, in his account in the Vicar of
Wakefield of the _philosophical vagabond_ who went to Holland to teach
the natives English, without knowing a word of their own language.
Sometimes, when sorely pinched, and sometimes, perhaps, when flush, he
resorted to the gambling tables, which in those days abounded in Holland.
His good friend Ellis repeatedly warned him against this unfortunate
propensity, but in vain. It brought its own cure, or rather its own
punishment, by stripping him of every shilling.

Ellis once more stepped in to his relief with a true Irishman's generosity,
but with more considerateness than generally characterizes an Irishman, for
he only granted pecuniary aid on condition of his quitting the sphere of
danger. Goldsmith gladly consented to leave Holland, being anxious to visit
other parts. He intended to proceed to Paris and pursue his studies there,
and was furnished by his friend with money for the journey. Unluckily, he
rambled into the garden of a florist just before quitting Leyden. The tulip
mania was still prevalent in Holland, and some species of that splendid
flower brought immense prices. In wandering through the garden Goldsmith
recollected that his uncle Contarine was a tulip fancier. The thought
suddenly struck him that here was an opportunity of testifying, in a
delicate manner, his sense of that generous uncle's past kindnesses. In an
instant his hand was in his pocket; a number of choice and costly
tulip-roots were purchased and packed up for Mr. Contarine; and it was not
until he had paid for them that he bethought himself that he had spent all
the money borrowed for his traveling expenses. Too proud, however, to give
up his journey, and too shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend's
liberality, he determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and
good luck for the means of getting forward; and it is said that he actually
set off on a tour of the Continent, in February, 1775, with but one spare
shirt, a flute, and a single guinea.

"Blessed," says one of his biographers, "with a good constitution, an
adventurous spirit, and with that thoughtless, or, perhaps, happy
disposition which takes no care for to-morrow, he continued his travels for
a long time in spite of innumerable privations. " In his amusing narrative
of the adventures of a "Philosophic Vagabond" in the Vicar of Wakefield, we
find shadowed out the expedients he pursued. "I had some knowledge of
music, 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 toward nightfall, I played one of
my merriest tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence
for the next day; but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to
entertain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance
odious, and never made me any return for my endeavors to please them. "

At Paris he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, then in great vogue,
where he says he witnessed as bright a circle of beauty as graced the court
of Versailles.
His love of theatricals, also, led him to attend the
performances of the celebrated actress Mademoiselle Clairon, with which he
was greatly delighted. He seems to have looked upon the state of society
with the eye of a philosopher, but to have read the signs of the times with
the prophetic eye of a poet. In his rambles about the environs of Paris he
was struck with the immense quantities of game running about almost in a
tame state; and saw in those costly and rigid preserves for the amusement
and luxury of the privileged few a sure "badge of the slavery of the
people. " This slavery he predicted was drawing toward a close. "When I
consider that these parliaments, the members of which are all created by
the court, and the presidents of which can only act by immediate direction,
presume even to mention privileges and freedom, who till of late received
directions from the throne with implicit humility; when this is considered,
I cannot help fancying that the genius of Freedom has entered that kingdom
in disguise. If they have but three weak monarchs more successively on the
throne, the mask will be laid aside and the country will certainly once
more be free. " Events have testified to the sage forecast of the poet.

During a brief sojourn in Paris he appears to have gained access to
valuable society, and to have had the honor and pleasure of making the
acquaintance of Voltaire; of whom, in after years, he wrote a memoir. "As a
companion," says he, "no man ever exceeded him when he pleased to lead the
conversation; which, however, was not always the case. In company which he
either disliked or despised, few could be more reserved than he; but when
he was warmed in discourse, and got over a hesitating manner, which
sometimes he was subject to, it was rapture to hear him. His meager visage
seemed insensibly to gather beauty; every muscle in it had meaning, and his
eye beamed with unusual brightness. The person who writes this memoir,"
continues he, "remembers to have seen him in a select company of wits of
both sexes at Paris, when the subject happened to turn upon English taste
and learning. Fontenelle (then nearly a hundred years old), who was of the
party, and who being unacquainted with the language or authors of the
country he undertook to condemn, with a spirit truly vulgar began to revile
both. Diderot, who liked the English, and knew something of their literary
pretensions, attempted to vindicate their poetry and learning, but with
unequal abilities. The company quickly perceived that Fontenelle was
superior in the dispute, and were surprised at the silence which Voltaire
had preserved all the former part of the night, particularly as the
conversation happened to turn upon one of his favorite topics. Fontenelle
continued his triumph until about twelve o'clock, when Voltaire appeared at
last roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his
defense with the utmost defiance mixed with spirit, and now and then let
fall the finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his harangue
lasted till three in the morning. I must confess that, whether from
national partiality or from the elegant sensibility of his manner, I never
was so charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory as he gained
in this dispute. "

Goldsmith's ramblings took him into Germany and Switzerland, from which
last mentioned country he sent to his brother in Ireland the first brief
sketch, afterward amplified into his poem of The Traveler.

At Geneva he became traveling tutor to a mongrel young gentleman, son of a
London pawnbroker, who had been suddenly elevated into fortune and
absurdity by the death of an uncle. The youth, before setting up for a
gentleman, had been an attorney's apprentice, and was an arrant pettifogger
in money matters. Never were two beings more illy assorted than he and
Goldsmith. We may form an idea of the tutor and the pupil from the
following extract from the narrative of the "Philosophic Vagabond. "

"I was to be the young gentleman's governor, but with a proviso that he
should always be permitted to govern himself. My pupil, in fact, understood
the art of guiding in money concerns much better than I. He was heir to a
fortune of about two hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the
West Indies; and his guardians, to qualify him for the management of it,
had bound him apprentice to an attorney. Thus avarice was his prevailing
passion; all his questions on the road were how money might be saved--which
was the least expensive course of travel--whether anything could be bought
that would turn to account when disposed of again in London. Such
curiosities on the way 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 that they were not worth seeing. He never paid a bill
that he would not observe how amazingly expensive traveling was; and all
this though not yet twenty-one. "

In this sketch Goldsmith undoubtedly shadows forth his annoyances as
traveling tutor to this concrete young gentleman, compounded of the
pawnbroker, the pettifogger, and the West Indian heir, with an overlaying
of the city miser. They had continual difficulties on all points of expense
until they reached Marseilles, where both were glad to separate.

Once more on foot, but freed from the irksome duties of "bear leader," and
with some of his pay, as tutor, in his pocket, Goldsmith continued his
half-vagrant peregrinations through part of France and Piedmont, and some
of the Italian States. He had acquired, as has been shown, a habit of
shifting along and living by expedients, and a new one presented itself in
Italy. "My skill in music," says he, in the "Philosophic Vagabond," "could
avail me nothing in a country where every peasant was a better musician
than I; but by this time I had acquired another talent, which answered my
purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In all the 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. " Though a poor wandering scholar, his
reception in these learned piles was as free from humiliation as in the
cottages of the peasantry. "With the members of these establishments," said
he, "I could converse on topics of literature, _and then I always forgot
the meanness of my circumstances_. "

At Padua, where he remained some months, he is said to have taken his
medical degree. It is probable he was brought to a pause in this city by
the death of his uncle Contarine, who had hitherto assisted him in his
wanderings by occasional, though, of course, slender remittances. Deprived
of this source of supplies he wrote to his friends in Ireland, and
especially to his brother-in-law Hodson, describing his destitute
situation. His letters brought him neither money nor reply. It appears from
subsequent correspondence that his brother-in-law actually exerted himself
to raise a subscription for his assistance among his relatives, friends,
and acquaintance, but without success. Their faith and hope in him were
most probably at an end; as yet he had disappointed them at every point, he
had given none of the anticipated proofs of talent, and they were too poor
to support what they may have considered the wandering propensities of a
heedless spendthrift.

Thus left to his own precarious resources, Goldsmith gave up all further
wandering in Italy, without visiting the south, though Rome and Naples must
have held out powerful attractions to one of his poetical cast. Once more
resuming his pilgrim staff, he turned his face toward England, "walking
along from city to city, examining mankind more nearly, and seeing both
sides of the picture. " In traversing France his flute--his magic flute--was
once more in requisition, as we may conclude, by the following passage in
his Traveler:

"Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleased 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 freshened from the wave the zephyr flew;
And haply though my harsh note falt'ring still,
But mocked all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill;
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance forgetful of the noontide 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. "




CHAPTER SIX

LANDING IN ENGLAND--SHIFTS OF A MAN WITHOUT MONEY--THE PESTLE AND
MORTAR--THEATRICALS IN A BARN--LAUNCH UPON LONDON--A CITY NIGHT
SCENE--STRUGGLES WITH PENURY--MISERIES OF A TUTOR--A DOCTOR IN THE
SUBURB--POOR PRACTICE AND SECOND-HAND FINERY--A TRAGEDY IN EMBRYO--PROJECT
OF THE WRITTEN MOUNTAINS


After two years spent in roving about the Continent, "pursuing novelty," as
he said, "and losing content," Goldsmith landed at Dover early in 1756. He
appears to have had no definite plan of action. The death of his uncle
Contarine, and the neglect of his relatives and friends to reply to his
letters, seem to have produced in him a temporary feeling of loneliness and
destitution, and his only thought was to get to London and throw himself
upon the world. But how was he to get there? His purse was empty. England
was to him as completely a foreign land as any part of the Continent, and
where on earth is a penniless stranger more destitute? His flute and his
philosophy were no longer of any avail; the English boors cared nothing for
music; there were no convents; and as to the learned and the clergy, not
one of them would give a vagrant scholar a supper and night's lodging for
the best thesis that ever was argued. "You may easily imagine," says he, in
a subsequent letter to his brother-in-law, "what difficulties I had to
encounter, left as I was without friends, recommendations, money, or
impudence, and that in a country where being born an Irishman was
sufficient to keep me unemployed. Many, in such circumstances, would have
had recourse to the friar's cord or the suicide's halter. But, with all my
follies, I had principle to resist the one, and resolution to combat the
other. "

He applied at one place, we are told, for employment in the shop of a
country apothecary; but all his medical science gathered in foreign
universities could not gain him the management of a pestle and mortar. He
even resorted, it is said, to the stage as a temporary expedient, and
figured in low comedy at a country town in Kent. This accords with his last
shift of the "Philosophic Vagabond," and with the knowledge of country
theatricals displayed in his Adventures of a Strolling Player, or may be a
story suggested by them. All this part of his career, however, in which he
must have trod the lowest paths of humility, are only to be conjectured
from vague traditions, or scraps of autobiography gleaned from his
miscellaneous writings.

At length we find him launched on the great metropolis, or rather drifting
about its streets, at night, in the gloomy month of February, with but a
few half-pence in his pocket. The deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and
inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time, and to a stranger
in such a plight. Do we want a picture as an illustration? We have it in
his own words, and furnished, doubtless, from his own experience.

"The clock has just struck two; what a gloom hangs all around! no sound is
heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. How few appear in
those streets, which but some few hours ago were crowded! But who are those
who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness
at the doors of the opulent? They are strangers, wanderers, and orphans,
whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses
are too great even for pity. Some are without the covering even of rags,
and others emaciated with disease; the world has disclaimed them; society
turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and
hunger. _These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and
been flattered into beauty. _ They are now turned out to meet the
severity of winter. Perhaps now, lying at the doors of their betrayers,
they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may
curse, but will not relieve them.

"Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot
relieve! Poor houseless creatures! The world will give you reproaches, but
will not give you relief. "

Poor houseless Goldsmith! we may here ejaculate--to what shifts he must
have been driven to find shelter and sustenance for himself in this his
first venture into London! Many years afterward, in the days of his social
elevation, he startled a polite circle at Sir Joshua Reynolds' by
humorously dating an anecdote about the time he "lived among the beggars of
Axe Lane. " Such may have been the desolate quarters with which he was fain
to content himself when thus adrift upon the town, with but a few
half-pence in his pocket.

The first authentic trace we have of him in this new part of his career, is
filling the situation of an usher to a school, and even this employ he
obtained with some difficulty, after a reference for a character to his
friends in the University of Dublin. In the Vicar of Wakefield he makes
George Primrose undergo a whimsical catechism concerning the requisites for
an usher. "Have you been bred apprentice to the business? " "No. " "Then you
won't do for a school. Can you dress the boys' hair? " "No. " "Then you won't
do for a school. Can you lie three in a bed? " "No. " "Then you will never do
for a school. Have you a good stomach? " "Yes. " "Then you will by no means
do for a school. I have been an usher in a boarding-school myself, and may
I die of an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be under-turnkey in Newgate.
I was up early and late; I was browbeat by the master, hated for my ugly
face by the mistress, worried by the boys. "

Goldsmith remained but a short time in this situation, and to the
mortifications experienced there we doubtless owe the picturings given in
his writings of the hardships of an usher's life. "He is generally," says
he, "the laughingstock of the school. Every trick is played upon him; the
oddity of his manner, his dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal
ridicule; the master himself now and then cannot avoid joining in the
laugh; and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill-usage, lives in a
state of war with all the family. "--"He is obliged, perhaps, to sleep in
the same bed with the French teacher, who disturbs him for an hour every
night in papering and filleting his hair, and stinks worse than a carrion
with his rancid pomatums, when he lays his head beside him on the bolster. "

His next shift was as assistant in the laboratory of a chemist near Fish
Street Hill. After remaining here a few months, he heard that Dr. Sleigh,
who had been his friend and fellow-student at Edinburgh, was in London.
Eager to meet with a friendly face in this land of strangers, he
immediately called on him; "but though it was Sunday, and it is to be
supposed I was in my best clothes, Sleigh scarcely knew me--such is the tax
the unfortunate pay to poverty. However, when he did recollect me, I found
his heart as warm as ever, and he shared his purse and friendship with me
during his continuance in London. "

Through the advice and assistance of Dr. Sleigh, he now commenced the
practice of medicine, but in a small way, in Bankside, Southwark, and
chiefly among the poor; for he wanted the figure, address, polish, and
management, to succeed among the rich. His old schoolmate and college
companion, Beatty, who used to aid him with his purse at the university,
met him about this time, decked out in the tarnished finery of a
second-hand suit of green and gold, with a shirt and neckcloth of a
fortnight's wear.

Poor Goldsmith endeavored to assume a prosperous air in the eyes of his
early associate. "He was practicing physic," he said, "and _doing very
well! _" At this moment poverty was pinching him to the bone in spite of
his practice and his dirty finery. His fees were necessarily small, and ill
paid, and he was fain to seek some precarious assistance from his pen. Here
his quondam fellow-student, Dr. Sleigh, was again of service, introducing
him to some of the booksellers, who gave him occasional, though starveling
employment. According to tradition, however, his most efficient patron just
now was a journeyman printer, one of his poor patients of Bankside, who had
formed a good opinion of his talents, and perceived his poverty and his
literary shifts. The printer was in the employ of Mr. Samuel Richardson,
the author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison; who combined the
novelist and the publisher, and was in flourishing circumstances. Through
the journeyman's intervention Goldsmith is said to have become acquainted
with Richardson, who employed him as reader and corrector of the press, at
his printing establishment in Salisbury Court; an occupation which he
alternated with his medical duties.

Being admitted occasionally to Richardson's parlor, he began to form
literary acquaintances, among whom the most important was Dr. Young, the
author of Night Thoughts, a poem in the height of fashion. It is not
probable, however, that much familiarity took place at the time between the
literary lion of the day and the poor Aesculapius of Bankside, the humble
corrector of the press. Still the communion with literary men had its
effect to set his imagination teeming. Dr. Farr, one of his Edinburgh
fellow-students, who was at London about this time, attending the hospitals
and lectures, gives us an amusing account of Goldsmith in his literary
character.

"Early in January he called upon me one morning before I was up, and, on my
entering the room, I recognized my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty,
full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly
reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished
our breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he
had brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he began
to read; and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety
was immediately blotted out. I then most earnestly pressed him not to trust
to my judgment, but to take the opinion of persons better qualified to
decide on dramatic compositions. He now told me he had submitted his
productions, so far as he had written, to Mr. Richardson, the author of
Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism on
the performance. "

From the graphic description given of him by Dr. Farr, it will be perceived
that the tarnished finery of green and gold had been succeeded by a
professional suit of black, to which, we are told, were added the wig and
cane indispensable to medical doctors in those days. The coat was a
second-hand one, of rusty velvet, with a patch on the left breast, which he
adroitly covered with his three-cornered hat during his medical visits; and
we have an amusing anecdote of his contest of courtesy with a patient who
persisted in endeavoring to relieve him from the hat, which only made him
press it more devoutly to his heart.

Nothing further has ever been heard of the tragedy mentioned by Dr. Farr;
it was probably never completed. The same gentleman speaks of a strange
Quixotic scheme which Goldsmith had in contemplation at the time, "of going
to decipher the inscriptions on the _written mountains_," though he
was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be
supposed to be written. "The salary of three hundred pounds," adds Dr.
Farr, "which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation. " This was
probably one of many dreamy projects with which his fervid brain was apt to
teem. On such subjects he was prone to talk vaguely and magnificently, but
inconsiderately, from a kindled imagination rather than a well-instructed
judgment. He had always a great notion of expeditions to the East, and
wonders to be seen and effected in the Oriental countries.




CHAPTER SEVEN

LIFE OP A PEDAGOGUE--KINDNESS TO SCHOOLBOYS--PERTNESS IN RETURN--EXPENSIVE
CHARITIES--THE GRIFFITHS AND THE "MONTHLY REVIEW"--TOILS OF A LITERARY
HACK--RUPTURE WITH THE GRIFFITHS


Among the most cordial of Goldsmith's intimates in London during this time
of precarious struggle were certain of his former fellow-students in
Edinburgh. One of these was the son of a Dr. Milner, a dissenting minister,
who kept a classical school of eminence at Peckham, in Surrey. Young Milner
had a favorable opinion of Goldsmith's abilities and attainments, and
cherished for him that good will which his genial nature seems ever to have
inspired among his school and college associates. His father falling ill,
the young man negotiated with Goldsmith to take temporary charge of the
school. The latter readily consented; for he was discouraged by the slow
growth of medical reputation and practice, and as yet had no confidence in
the coy smiles of the muse. Laying by his wig and cane, therefore, and once
more wielding the ferule, he resumed the character of the pedagogue, and
for some time reigned as vicegerent over the academy at Peckham. He appears
to have been well treated by both Dr. Milner and his wife, and became a
favorite with the scholars from his easy, indulgent good nature. He mingled
in their sports, told them droll stories, played on the flute for their
amusement, and spent his money in treating them to sweetmeats and other
schoolboy dainties. His familiarity was sometimes carried too far; he
indulged in boyish pranks and practical jokes, and drew upon himself
retorts in kind, which, however, he bore with great good humor. Once,
indeed, he was touched to the quick by a piece of schoolboy pertness. After
playing on the flute, he spoke with enthusiasm of music, as delightful in
itself, and as a valuable accomplishment for a gentleman, whereupon a
youngster, with a glance at his ungainly person, wished to know if he
considered himself a gentleman. Poor Goldsmith, feelingly alive to the
awkwardness of his appearance and the humility of his situation, winced at
this unthinking sneer, which long rankled in his mind.

As usual, while in Dr. Milner's employ, his benevolent feelings were a
heavy tax upon his purse, for he never could resist a tale of distress, and
was apt to be fleeced by every sturdy beggar; so that, between his charity
and his munificence, he was generally in advance of his slender salary.
"You had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me take care of your money," said Mrs.
Milner one day, "as I do for some of the young gentlemen. "--"In truth,
madam, there is equal need! " was the good-humored reply.

Dr. Milner was a man of some literary pretensions, and wrote occasionally
for the "Monthly Review," of which a bookseller, by the name of Griffiths,
was proprietor. This work was an advocate for Whig principles, and had been
in prosperous existence for nearly eight years. Of late, however,
periodicals had multiplied exceedingly, and a formidable Tory rival had
started up in the "Critical Review," published by Archibald Hamilton, a
bookseller, and aided by the powerful and popular pen of Dr. Smollett.
Griffiths was obliged to recruit his forces. While so doing he met
Goldsmith, a humble occupant of a seat at Dr. Milner's table, and was
struck with remarks on men and books which fell from him in the course of
conversation. He took occasion to sound him privately as to his inclination
and capacity as a reviewer, and was furnished by him with specimens of his
literary and critical talents. They proved satisfactory. The consequence
was that Goldsmith once more changed his mode of life, and in April, 1757,
became a contributor to the "Monthly Review," at a small fixed salary, with
board and lodging, and accordingly took up his abode with Mr. Griffiths, at
the sign of the Dunciad, Paternoster Row. As usual we trace this phase of
his fortunes in his semi-fictitious writings; his sudden transmutation of
the pedagogue into the author being humorously set forth in the case of
"George Primrose," in the Vicar of "Wakefield. " "Come," says George's
adviser, "I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning; what do you
think of commencing author like me? You have read in books, no doubt, of
men of genius starving at the trade; at present I'll show you forty very
dull fellows about town that live by it in opulence. All honest, jog-trot
men, who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics, and are
praised: men, sir, who, had they been bred cobblers, would all their lives
only have mended shoes, but never made them. " "Finding" (says George) "that
there is no great degree of gentility affixed to the character of an usher,
I resolved to accept his proposal; and having the highest respect for
literature, hailed the _antiqua mater_ of Grub Street with reverence.
I thought it my glory to pursue a track which Dryden and Otway trod before
me. Alas, Dryden struggled with indigence all his days; and Otway, it is
said, fell a victim to famine in his thirty-fifth year, being strangled by
a roll of bread, which he devoured with the voracity of a starving man. "

In Goldsmith's experience the track soon proved a thorny one. Griffiths was
a hard business man, of shrewd, worldly good sense, but little refinement
or cultivation. He meddled, or rather muddled with literature, too, in a
business way, altering and modifying occasionally the writings of his
contributors, and in this he was aided by his wife, who, according to
Smollett, was "an antiquated female critic and a dabbler in the 'Review. '"
Such was the literary vassalage to which Goldsmith had unwarily subjected
himself. A diurnal drudgery was imposed on him, irksome to his indolent
habits, and attended by circumstances humiliating to his pride. He had to
write daily from nine o'clock until two, and often throughout the day;
whether in the vein or not, and on subjects dictated by his taskmaster,
however foreign to his taste; in a word, he was treated as a mere literary
hack. But this was not the worst; it was the critical supervision of
Griffiths and his wife which grieved him: the "illiterate, bookselling
Griffiths," as Smollett called them, "who presumed to revise, alter, and
amend the articles contributed to their 'Review. ' Thank heaven," crowed
Smollett, "the 'Critical Review' is not written under the restraint of a
bookseller and his wife. Its principal writers are independent of each
other, unconnected with booksellers, and unawed by old women! "

This literary vassalage, however, did not last long. The bookseller became
more and more exacting. He accused his hack writer of idleness; of
abandoning his writing-desk and literary workshop at an early hour of the
day; and of assuming a tone and manner _above his situation_.
Goldsmith, in return, charged him with impertinence; his wife with meanness
and parsimony in her household treatment of him, and both of literary
meddling and marring. The engagement was broken off at the end of five
months, by mutual consent, and without any violent rupture, as it will be
found they afterward had occasional dealings with each other.

Though Goldsmith was now nearly thirty years of age, he had produced
nothing to give him a decided reputation. He was as yet a mere writer for
bread. The articles he had contributed to the "Review" were anonymous, and
were never avowed by him.