Descending into Piedmont he observed the floating beehouses of which he speaks so pleasantly in the Animated Nature. After this, proofs of his having seen Florence, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, are apparent; and in Carinthia the incident occurred with which his famous couplet has too hastily reproached a people, when, sinking with fatigue, after a long day's toilsome walk, he was turned from a peasant's hut at which he implored a lodging. At Padua he is supposed to have stayed some little time; and here, it has been asserted, though in this case also the official records are lost, he received his degree. Here, or at Louvain, or at some other of these foreign universities where he always boasted himself hero in the disputations to which his Philosophic Vagabond refers, there can hardly be a question that the degree, a very simple and accessible matter at any of them, was actually conferred. Of his having also taken a somewhat close survey of those countless academic institutions of Italy, in the midst of which Italian learning at this time withered, evidence is not wanting; and he always thoroughly discriminated the character of that country and its people. But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. It is a hard struggle to return to England; but his steps are now bent that way. My skill in music,' says the Vagabond, 'could avail me nothing in Italy, 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. In this manner, then, 'I fought my way towards England; walked along from 'city to city; examined mankind more nearly; and, if I 'may so express it, saw both sides of the picture.' It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his countrymen. Stern o'er each bosom Reason holds her state With daring aims irregularly great; Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by! The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the comfort. At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single farthing in his pocket; and from the Lords of Human Kind it was much more difficult to get one, than from the careless good-humoured peasants of France or Flanders. In the struggle of ten days or a fortnight which it took him to get to London, there is reason to suspect that he attempted a comic performance in a country barn; and, at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an apothecary's shop. In the middle of February he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON Streets. He thought he might find employment as an usher; and there is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a bare subsistence this way for some few months, under a feigned name: which had involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliffe), to whom he had been suddenly called on to apply for a character, and whose good-humoured acquiescence in his private appeal saved him from suspicion of imposture. Goldsmith showed his gratitude by a long, and, it is said, a most delightful letter to Radcliffe, descriptive of his travels; now unhappily lost. He also wrote again to his more familiar Irish friends, but his letters were again unanswered. He went among the London apothecaries, and asked them to let him spread plaisters for them, pound in their mortars, run with their medicines: but they, too, asked him for a character, and he had none to give. At last a chemist of the name of Jacob took compassion upon him; and the late Conversation Sharp used to point out a shop at the corner of Monument Yard on Fish Street Hill, shown to him in his youth as this benevolent Mr. Jacob's. Ten or twelve years later, Goldsmith startled a brilliant circle at Sir Joshua's with an anecdote of 'When 'I lived among the beggars of Axe Lane,' just as Napoleon, fifty years later, appalled the party of crowned heads at Dresden with his story of 'When I was a lieutenant in the ' regiment of La Fère.' The experience with the beggars will of course date before that social elevation of mixing and selling drugs on Fish Street Hill. Thus employed, he met one day an old fellow-student of the Edinburgh time. It was Sunday, and he was in the best clothes he had, but the friend of two years gone did not know him. 'Such,' he said, in relating this, 'is 'the tax the unfortunate pay to poverty.' He did not fail to leave to the unfortunate the lessons they should be taught by it. Doctor Sleigh (Foote's Doctor Sligo, honorably named in an earlier page of this narrative), recol lected him at last; and, added Goldsmith, 'I found his 'heart as warm as ever.' With the help of this warm heart, he now rose from the apothecary's drudge to be physician, ' in a humble way,' in Bankside, Southwark. It was not a thriving business: Poor physician to the Poor: but it seemed a change for the better, and hope was strong in him. An old Irish acquaintance and school-fellow (Beatty) met him in the streets. He was in a suit of green and gold, miserably old and tarnished; his shirt and neckcloth appeared to have been worn at least a fortnight; but he said he was practising physic, and doing very well! It is hard to confess failure to one's school-fellow. Our next glimpse, though not more satisfactory, is more professional. The green and gold have faded quite out, into a rusty full-trimmed black suit: the pockets of which, like those of the poet in Garrick's farce, overflow with papers. The coat is second-hand velvet, legacy of a more successful brother of the craft; the cane, the wig, have served more fortunate owners; and the humble practitioner of Bankside is feeling the pulse of a patient humbler than himself, whose courteous entreaties to be allowed to relieve him of the hat he keeps pressed over his heart, he more courteously but firmly declines. Beneath the hat is a large patch in the rusty velvet, which he thus conceals. But he cannot conceal the starvation which again threatens. Even the poor printer's-workman he attends, can see how hardly in that respect it goes with him; and finds courage one day to suggest that his master has been |