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SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE.

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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 meagre 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 defence 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, afterwards amplified into his poem of the "Traveller."

At Geneva he became travelling 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 could 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,

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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 travelling was; and all this though not yet twenty-one."

In this sketch Goldsmith undoubtedly shadows forth his annoyances as travelling 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

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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 illness 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 brotherin-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