charming. Every countrywoman 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 spread all their sails, they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their motion is so rapid 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 eye, 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. Physic is by no means taught here so well as in Edinburgh; and in all Leyden there are but four British * The narrow streets, or lanes, in Edinburgh are called closes. 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 Madame Diallion's, at Leyden. Thou best of men, may Heaven guard and preserve you, and those you love! OLIVER GOLDSMITH. LETTER III. TO DANIEL HODSON, ESQ. AT LISHOY, NEAR BALLYMAHON, IRELAND. + DEAR SIR,-It may be four years since my last letters went to Ireland, and to you in particular; I received no answer, probably because you never wrote to me. My brother Charles, however, informs me of the fatigue you were at in soliciting a subscription to assist me, not only among my friends and relations, but acquaintance in general. Though my pride might feel some repugnance at being thus relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution. How much am I obliged to you, to them, for such generosity, or (why should not your virtues have the proper name?) for such charity to me at that juncture! Sure I am born to ill fortune, to be so much a debtor and unable to repay. But to say no more of this too many professions of gratitude are often considered as indirect petitions for future favours-let me only add, that my not receiving that supply was the cause of my present establishment at London. You may easily imagine 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. I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there is nothing in it at which I should blush, or which * Professor Gaubius.-B. + Mr Hodson married Goldsmith's eldest sister.-B. U mankind could censure, I see no reason for making it a secret; in short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is more apt to introduce us to the gates of the Muses than poverty; but it were well if they only left us at the door; the mischief is, they sometimes choose to give us their company at the entertainment, and Want, instead of being gentleman-usher, often turns master of the ceremonies. Thus, upon hearing I write, no doubt you imagine I starve; and the name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. But whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pair of stairs high, I still remember them with ardour-nay, my very country comes in for a share of my affection. Unaccountable fondness for country, this maladie du pais, as the French call it! Unaccountable that he should still have an affection for a place who never received when in it above common civility; who never brought any thing out of it except his brogue and his blunders. Surely my affection is equally ridiculous with the Scotchman's, who refused to be cured of the itch, because it made him " unco thoughtful of his wife and bonny Inverary." But now to be serious, let me ask myself what gives me a wish to see Ireland again? The country is a fine one perhaps? No. There is good company in Ireland? No. The conversation there is generally made up of a smutty toast, or a bawdy song; the vivacity supported by some humble cousin, who has just folly enough to earn his dinner.—Then perhaps there's more wit and learning among the Irish? O lord! no. There has been more money spent in the encouragement of the Podareen mare there in one season, than given in rewards to learned men since the times of Usher. All their productions in learning amount to perhaps a translation, or a few tracts in divinity; and all their productions in wit to just nothing at all. Why the plague then so fond of Ireland? Then, all at once, because you, my dear friend, and a few more, who are exceptions to the general picture, have a residence there. This is it that gives me all the pangs I feel in separation. I confess I carry this spirit sometimes to the souring the pleasures I at present possess. If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for Lishoy fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night from Peggy Golden. If I climb Flamstead Hill, than where Nature never exhibited a more magnificent prospect- I confess it fine-but then I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature. Before Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear from you is, that you sally out in visits among the neighbours, and sometimes make a migration from the blue bed to the brown. I could from my heart wish that you, and she, and Lishoy, and Ballymahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex; though upon second thoughts this might be attended with a few inconveniencies: therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mahomet, why Mahomet shall go to the mountain; or, to speak plain English, as you cannot conveniently pay me a visit, if next summer I can contrive to be absent six weeks from London, I shall spend three of them among my friends in Ireland. But first, believe me, my design is purely to visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions, neither to excite envy nor solicit favour in fact, my circumstances are adapted to neither. I am too poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance. : You see, dear Dan, how long I have been talking about myself; but attribute my vanity to my affection: as every man is fond of himself, and I consider you as a second self, I imagine you will consequently be pleased with these instances of egotism. [Some mention of private family affairs is here omitted.] My dear Sir, these things give me real uneasiness, and I could wish to redress them; but at present there is hardly a kingdom in Europe in which I am not a debtor. I have already discharged my most threatening and pressing demands, for we must be just before we can be grateful. For the rest, I need not say (you know I am) your affectionate kinsman, OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Temple Exchange Coffeehouse, near Temple Bar, Where you may direct an answer. LETTER IV. TO DANIEL HODSON, ESQ. AT LISHOY, NEAR BALLYMAHON, IRELAND. [No date, but written in the summer of 1758.] DEAR SIR,-You cannot expect regularity in one who is regular in nothing. Nay, were I forced to love you by rule, I dare venture to say I could never do it sincerely. Take me, then, with all my faults. Let me write when I please; for you see I say what I please, and am only thinking aloud when writing to you. I suppose you have heard of my intention of going to the East Indies. The place of my destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel; and I go in quality of physician and surgeon, for which the Company has signed my warrant, which has already cost me ten pounds. I must also pay fifty pounds for my passage, and ten pounds for my sea stores; and the other incidental expenses of my equipment will amount to sixty or seventy pounds more. The salary is but trifling, viz. one hundred pounds per annum ; but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less than one thousand pounds per annum, for which the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade, with the high interest which money bears, viz. twenty pounds per cent, are the inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate-which induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniencies of life. I am certainly wrong not to be contented with what I already possess, trifling as it is; for should I ask myself one serious question,— What is it I want? what can I answer? My desires are capricious as the bigbellied woman's, who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, it is true; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived on more precarious terms? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the Marquis of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller that employed him : and why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions? Yet, upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know you have in |