Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/94

 letters which already show his characteristic style. He made a trip to the highlands in the spring of 1753, but the Scots and their country were not very congenial to his tastes. He speaks with respect of Alexander Monro, the professor of anatomy, but soon decided to finish his studies on the continent. At the end of 1753 he started, intending to go to Paris and Leyden. He was released by two friends, Sleigh and Lauchlan Macleane [q. v.], from a debt incurred on behalf of a friend, and sailed for Bordeaux. The ship was driven into Newcastle, where Goldsmith went ashore with some companions, and the whole party was arrested on suspicion of having been enlisting for the French service in Scotland. Goldsmith was in prison for a fortnight, during which the ship sailed and was lost with all the crew. He found another ship sailing for Rotterdam, took a passage and went to Leyden. Here he was befriended by a fellow-countryman named Ellis. He soon set off on a fresh journey, stimulated perhaps by the precedent of Baron Holberg (1684–1754), whose travels he describes in his ‘Polite Learning’ (ch. v.). Ellis lent him a small sum, which he spent upon some bulbs for his uncle Contarine. He started with ‘one clean shirt’ and next to no money.

The accounts given of his travels are of doubtful authenticity. They have been constructed from the story of George Primrose in the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ assumed to be autobiographical from occasional hints in his books, and from reports of his conversation and missing letters. Goldsmith probably amused himself with travellers' tales, taken too seriously by his friends. He started about February 1755; his biographers trace him to Louvain, to Paris, Strasburg, Germany, and Switzerland; thence to Italy, where he is supposed to have visited Venice, and to have studied at Padua for ‘six months’ (Works, 1812, i. 36), to Carinthia (mentioned in the ‘Traveller’), and back through France to England, landing at Dover 1 Feb. 1756. He is said to have acted as tutor to a stingy pupil, either from Paris to Switzerland, or from Geneva to Marseilles; but he travelled chiefly on foot, paying for the hospitality of peasants by playing on his flute. In Italy, where every peasant played better than himself, he supported himself by disputing at universities or convents. It seems very improbable that Goldsmith could have disputed to any purpose, or that disputation was then at all profitable. Perhaps the anecdote was suggested by ‘the Admirable Crichton.’ He is reported to have taken the M.B. degree at Louvain, or again at Padua (M'Donnell in , ii. 346). He says in his ‘Polite Learning’ (ch. viii.) and ‘Percy’ that he had heard chemical lectures in Paris, and in No. 2 of the ‘Bee’ he describes the acting of Mlle. Clairon. In the ‘Animated Nature’ (v. 207) he speaks of walks round Paris, of having flushed woodcocks on the Jura in June and July, and of having seen the Rhine frozen at Schaffhausen. He speaks of hearing Voltaire talk in ‘his house at Monrion,’ near Lausanne, and in his ‘Life of Voltaire’ gives a detailed account of a conversation at Paris between Voltaire, Diderot, and Fontenelle. Voltaire was certainly in Switzerland during the whole of 1755, and Goldsmith may have seen him at Monrion; but Diderot was certainly at Paris; Fontenelle, then aged 98, could not possibly have taken the part described by Goldsmith; and the conversation, for which Goldsmith vouches, must be set down as pure fiction. He was no doubt in Switzerland, Padua, and Paris; but all details are doubtful.

He reached London in great destitution. Stories are told that he tried acting (probably an inference from his ‘Adventures of a Strolling Player’ in the ‘British Magazine’), and that he was usher in a country school (, Historical Survey of South of Ireland, pp. 286–9). He became assistant to a chemist named Jacob on Fish Street Hill. After a time he met his friend Dr. Sleigh, who received him kindly, and he managed to set up as a physician in Bankside, Southwark. He told a friend (, i. 215) that he ‘was doing very well;’ but his dress was tarnished and his shirt a fortnight old. Reynolds (ib.) repeated an anecdote of the pains which he took to carry his hat so as to conceal a patch in his coat. From the statement of an old Edinburgh friend (Dr. Farr) it appears that he had written a tragedy, which he had shown to Richardson, and that he had a scheme for travelling to Mount Sinai, to decipher the ‘written mountains.’ A salary of 300l. per annum had been left for the purpose. Boswell says that he had been a corrector of the press, possibly to Richardson. About the end of 1756 he became usher in a school at Peckham kept by Dr. Milner, a dissenting minister, whose daughter and one of whose pupils, Samuel Bishop, preserved a few traditions of his flute-playing, his fun with the boys, and his pecuniary imbecility. Milner's son had known Goldsmith at Edinburgh, and Dr. Milner wanted an assistant, on account of an illness which proved fatal not long after (Percy Memoir, p. 45). At Milner's house he met a bookseller named Griffiths, proprietor of the ‘Monthly Review,’ one of the chief periodicals of the day. Early in 1757 he agreed to lodge with Griffiths, and work for the review