The

scholar. Thus he obtained sometimes money, sometimes lodging, though he must have had other resources. foreign Universities afford similar facilities to poor scholars with those presented by the monasteries. Goldsmith resided at Padua for several months, and is said to have taken a degree at Louvain. His tour under such circumstances would have yielded one of the most entertaining books in the world, had it been written. He spent about twelve months in these wanderings, and landed in England in the year 1756, after having perambulated France, Italy, and part of Germany.

VOLTAIRE, FONTENELLE, AND DIDEROT.

During Goldsmith's brief sojourn at Paris, he is said to have been introduced to Voltaire, whom " no man ever exceeded 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 remembers to have seen him [Voltaire,] 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; he 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."

This is a good story, but not a true one. Lord Macaulay cautions his readers against Goldsmith's travelling tales, for strict veracity was never one of his virtues; "and a man who

is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was present at a most interesting conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now, it is certain that Voltaire was never within a hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the Continent."—Memoir : Encyclopædia Britannica, 1856.

GOLDSMITH RETURNS TO ENGLAND.

On the 1st of February, 1756, Oliver, "the Philosophic Vagabond,” landed at Dover, without a single farthing in his pocket, friendless, and without any calling. His only thought was to get to London, and throw himself upon the world. But how was this to be done by a pennyless man? His flute and his philosophy were no longer of any avail, nor would the learned give the vagrant scholar a supper or a night's lodg ing. "I was left," he writes, "without friends, recommendations, money, or impudence, and that in a country where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep me unemployed." In the ten days' or a fortnight's struggle which it took him to get to London, he attempted low comedy in a barn in Kent, which is thought to have suggested his Adventures of a Strolling Player. And at one of the towns on the road, he begged to be hired in an apothecary's shop.

We get a glimpse of the strange bedfellows with which misery had made him acquainted from an incident of his after-life. Ten or twelve years later, in the days of his social elevation, he startled a polished circle at Sir Joshua Reynolds's by dating an anecdote from the time when he "lived among the beggars of Axe-lane." There is an uncertain story, too, of Goldsmith's employment as an usher for some months, under a feigned name, which had nearly involved him in worse distress; the Dublin Doctor (Radcliffe) to whom he had applied for a character, having saved him from the suspicion of imposture.

By the middle of the month he was houseless, in the loneliness of the streets of London. He applied to the apothe caries for a situation, but they asked him for a character, and he had none to give. At length, a chemist and druggist named Jacob, at the upper corner of Monument-yard, on

Fish-street-hill,* engaged Oliver as shopman. This could not have been a disagreeable employment: he was really fond of chemistry, and was remembered favourably by the celebrated Black. While in this situation, Goldsmith was recognised by an old fellow-student at Edinburgh, the kind quaker Sleigh, known later as an eminent physician, as Barry's first patron, and Burke's friend: he was cleverly satirized as Dr. Sligo, in Foote's farce of The Devil on Two Sticks. Through the advice and help of Dr. Sleigh he rose to prac tise physic "in a humble way," at Bankside, Southwark, chiefly among the riverside poor. One day, his old schoolmate and college companion, Beatty, met him 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, yet he assumed a prosperous air: "he was practising physic," he said, "and doing very well"-though he was at the moment pinched with poverty. One of his poor patients was a journeyman-printer, who, one day, induced by the doctor's rusty black patched suit, suggested that his master, who had been kind to clever men, might be serviceable to him. This master was Samuel Richardson, who printed his own novels of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, at his office in Salisbury-court, now square, and at the top of the court, No. 76, Fleet-street. He engaged Oliver as his "reader," an occupation which he alternated with his medical duties.

Richardson resided in Salisbury-court, where he wrote his Pamela. He admitted Goldsmith to his parlour: here he began to form literary acquaintances, among whom was Dr. Young, the author of Night Thoughts, then in the height of fashion. This set Oliver's imagination teeming he commenced a tragedy, which he showed to Dr. Farr, one of his Edinburgh fellow-students, who was then in London, attending the hospitals and lectures.

:

"Early in January [1756, says Dr. Farr] he called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room, I recognised 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

* Conversation Sharp used to point out the shop which was shown to him in his youth as the benevolent Mr. Jacob's.-(Forster.) We remember the same shop carried on by Jacob's successors.

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 production, so far as he had written, to Mr. Richardson, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism on the performance."

The tragedy was unfinished, and Dr. Farr heard no more of it; but he remembers that Goldsmith had in his head a Quixotic scheme 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; he has been tempted by the salary of 3007. which had been bequeathed for the purpose.

GOLDSMITH AN USHER AT PECKHAM.

Early in 1757, Oliver obtained, through the interest of an Edinburgh fellow-student, Mr. Milner, the office of assistant in his father's, Dr. Milner's, classical school at Peckham, in Surrey it is now called Goldsmith House. The Doctor's daughter, Miss Milner, at the end of the last century, recollected their old usher, how he played tricks on the servants and boys, told entertaining stories, and played the flute to everybody; gave away his salary to beggars, and in sweetmeats to the boys. But this was his bitterest time; and of this state of slavery he had such bitter recollection, as to be always offended at the slightest allusion to it. An acquaintance happening to use the proverbial phrase, "Oh, that is all a holiday at Peckham," Goldsmith reddened, and asked if he meant to affront him. He is thought to point to this employment in his account of the hardships of an usher's life in the Vicar of Wakefield, where he says: "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."*

Once, he was touched to the quick by a piece of schoolboy pertness: "When amusing his young companions during play hours with the flute, and expatiating on the pleasures

* In 1839, the Editor wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine, "Not long ago we met an elderly lady at dinner, since dead, who told us that an acquaintance of hers had been flogged by Goldsmith, when he was usher at Peckham school."

derived from music, in addition to its advantages in society as a gentlemanly acquirement, a pert boy, looking at his situation and personal advantages with something of contempt, rudely replied to the effect that he surely could not consider himself a gentleman; an offence which, though followed by chastisement, disconcerted him and pained him. extremely." Mr. Prior tells this story, which he had from a son of the above lad: he adds, when the despised usher was a celebrated man, the lad, grown to man's estate, and walking with his newly-married wife, met his old teacher in London. Goldsmith recognised him, and embraced him with delight, still as his pet boy at school he used to cram with fruit and sweatmeats. "Come, my boy," he said, as his eye fell upon a basket-woman at the corner of the street-" Come, Sam, I am delighted to see you. I must treat you to something. What shall it be? Will you have some apples? Sam,' added Goldsmith, suddenly, "have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam ? Have you got an engraving," &c.

"THE MONTHLY REVIEW."

Oliver was still the Peckham usher. Dr. Milner was an occasional contributor to the Monthly Review, then conducted by its projector and proprietor, the bookseller Griffiths. One day, Griffiths dined with Dr. Milner at Peckham, when Goldsmith's conversation induced him to ask him to try his hand on an article. This he did, and thenceforth assisted Griffiths regularly in his Review, boarded and lodged in his house, and received a salary. They agreed, in April, 1757, for a year, but parted at the end of half that period. Goldsmith complained that his articles were twisted about and interpolated by Griffiths and his wife; and they alleged that Oliver did not produce the stipulated quantity of MS. in the month; but Mr. Prior, having made prize of Griffiths's own copy of his Review, in which the names of the different authors are regularly inscribed, has fathered on Goldsmith various short essays deserving a place in his works, but which had not been previously so recognised.

Goldsmith continued his contributions to the Monthly Review, and six magazines, and thus supported himself for some months.