Professor of Anatomy: this man has brought the science he teaches to as much perfection as it is capable of; and not content with barely teaching anatomy, he launches out into all the branches of physic, when all his remarks are new and useful. 'Tis he, I may venture to say, that draws hither such a number of students from most parts of the world, even from Russia. He is not only a skilful physician, but an able orator, and delivers things in their nature obscure in so easy a manner, that the most unlearned may understand him. You see, then, dear Sir, that Monro is the only great man among them; so that I intend to hear him another winter, and go then to hear Albinus, the great professor at Leyden. I read with satisfaction a science the most pleasing in nature, so that my labours are but a relaxation, and, I may truly say, the only thing here that gives me pleasure. How I enjoy the pleasing hope of returning with skill, and to find my friends stand in no need of my assistance! I have been a month in the Highlands. I set out the first day on foot, but an ill-natured corn I have got on my toe has for the future prevented that cheap method of travelling; so the second day I hired a horse, of about the size of a ram, and he walked away (trot he could not) as pensive as his master. In three days we reached the Highlands; but this letter would be too long if it contained the description I intend giving of that country.'Life, vol. i. p. 145.

'Edinburgh, Dec. 1753.

'Since I am upon so pleasing a topic as self-applause, give me leave to say that the circle of science which I have run through, before I undertook the study of physic, is not only useful, but absolutely necessary to the making a skilful physician. Such sciences enlarge our understanding and sharpen our sagacity; and what is a practitioner without both but an empiric? for never yet was a disorder found entirely the same in two patients. A quack, unable to distinguish the particularities in each disease, prescribes at a venture: if he finds such a disorder may be called by the general name of fever for instance, he has a set of remedies which he applies to cure it, nor does he desist till his medicines are run out, or his patient has lost his life. But the skilful physician distinguishes the symptoms, manures the sterility of nature, or prunes her luxuriance; nor does he depend so much on the efficacy of medicines as on their proper application. I shall spend this spring and summer in Paris, and the beginning of next winter go to Leyden. The great Albinus is still alive there, and 'twill be proper to. go, though only to have it said that we have studied in so famous a university.

'As I shall not have another opportunity of receiving money from your bounty till my return to Ireland, so I have drawn for the last sum that I hope I shall ever trouble you for; 'tis 20l. And now, dear Sir, let me here acknowledge the humility of the station in which you found me; let me tell how I was despised by most, and hateful to myself. Poverty, hopeless poverty, was my lot, and Melancholy was be ginning to make me her own. When you - but I stop.

'I have spent more than a fortnight every second day at the Duke

of

of Hamilton's, but it seems they like me more as a jester than as a companion; so I disdained so servile an employment; 'twas unworthy my calling as a physician.'-Ibid. p. 157.

Goldsmith, by his own account in a subsequent letter, embarked at Leith for Bourdeaux, with the intention of beginning his continental studies, not at Leyden, as he had originally designed, but at the then celebrated school of Montpellier; but being forced by stress of weather into the Tyne, he was arrested at Newcastle, on suspicion of belonging, like most of his fellow-passengers, to a party of Highland Jacobites, recruited for the military service of the French King. His friend Macleane said this was a romance that he was in fact arrested at Sunderland, on the suit of an Edinburgh tailor, one Barclay, who chanced to hear of the vessel putting into the Tyne-and that he was ultimately set at liberty by the benefaction of himself and another college friend, Mr. Sleigh. However this may have been, (and we incline to adopt Macleane's version,) Goldsmith had shortly afterwards found his way to his original destination, Leyden. Of the letter in which (May, 1754) he communicated his arrival there to his uncle, Malone gave the first biographer only the romantic paragraph; Mr. Prior prints it entire, and we subjoin a specimen of the part that is new :

'The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times; he in everything imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat, laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or to make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! Why, she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.

'A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy, healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his superfiuous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amusement, overflows with such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of visage which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch woman and Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. Their ordinary

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. For my part, I generally detach myself from all society, and am wholly taken up in observing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty: wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottoes, vistas, present 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.'-Ibid. p. 164.

Goldsmith remained nearly a year at Leyden, but left that university also without taking any degree. We have but few anecdotes of his stay there. In one of his essays he tells us that when talking one day with Gaubius about the diminished number of English students, the Doctor asked whether the Edinburgh professors were rich? Their salaries,' said Goldsmith, 'seldom exceed 30l.; all the rest depends on the number of scholars they can attract to pay them fees.' 'Poor men,' said Gaubius; 'I heartily wish they were better provided for: while their salaries remain at this rate, they will continue to draw all the English to their lectures.' Some other particulars were supplied to Mr. Prior by the late Matthew Weld Hartstonge, of Dublin:-that well-known and amiable enthusiast about literary matters had noted them down from the conversation of Dr. Ellis, one of Goldsmith's Leyden fellow-students, who ultimately became clerk to the Irish House of Commons, and died in 1791. According to Dr. Ellis

'He was often in great pecuniary distress, and obliged to borrow small sums from anybody that could help him; occasionally he gained a little by giving lessons in English; and sometimes he resorted to play, the forlorn hope of the necessitous, as well as the amusement of the idle. Such poverty and such habits interfered but little, however, with his good-humour; he was usually gay and cheerful, and when taxed with imprudence for risking such small sums as he possessed, admitted the fact and promised amendment. In all his peculiarities it was remarked that there was about him an elevation of mind, a philosophical tone and manner, which, added to the information of a scholar, made him an object of interest to such as could estimate character.'

Having had a successful run at play one night, Goldsmith called next morning on Ellis, and counted out a considerable sum,

which

which he said would now enable him to travel over the continent in comfort. Ellis congratulated him, and advised him to keep it untouched for the purpose he had in view; but Goldsmith, the same evening, was seduced to the old haunt and lost every guilder. Seeing his penitence and distress, Ellis advanced him something on condition that he should immediately set off, and thus break from his dangerous associates. Goldsmith agreed; but walking into a florist's garden, remembered his uncle Contarine's love of tulips, and purchased on the spot a parcel of roots to be sent to him in Ireland, which 'effort of affectionate gratitude,' as Mr. Prior calls it, again reduced him so low that he ultimately quitted Leyden 'with scarcely any money and but one clean shirt.'

These travels, in the course of which Goldsmith is supposed to have taken the degree of bachelor in medicine at Louvain,* carried him through a considerable part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and as far as Padua in Italy; and how well he observed nature, both animate and inanimate, in spite of all the disadvantages and distresses to which his progress must have been exposed, we have ample evidence in his beautiful poem of the Traveller, and in various detached passages of his works on Natural History, which Mr. Prior has brought together with considerable skill. Of the letters which he is known to have addressed to his Irish friends during this wandering year Mr. Prior has recovered nothing. We know that he travelled almost always on foot, mainly depended, everywhere but in Italy, on the supplies by which the grateful peasants repaid his flute, and in Italy gained something by maintaining a thesis at a university, but more from the kindness of Irish priests and monks: it seems also to be certain that for a time he acted as tutor to a wealthy young Englishman; he never stated the fact distinctly, but if it had not been so, we should be quite at a loss to understand by what means he could have found access to such distinguished society as he represents himself to have occasionally mixed in while at Paris. In one of his essays, for example, he mentions having dined with Voltaire one day in a large company at his house at Monrion,' when he observed that the English exhibited prodigies of valour at Dettingen, but soon lessened their well-bought conquest by lessening the merit of those they had conquered;' and again, in his sketch of Voltaire's Life he says:

* The records of this university perished during the revolutionary war. † In his Essay on Polite Learning, 1759, p. 161, we read: whirled through Europe in a post-chaise, and the pilgrim who walks the grand tour on foot, will form very different conclusions haud inexpertus loquor. But when this essay was to be reprinted with his name, the confession in Latin was omitted.

A man who is

As

As a companion 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 had 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, who had the honour and the pleasure of being his acquaintance, 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, who was of the party, and who was 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 turned upon one of his favourite topics.

'Fontenelle continued his triumph till 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 elegance, 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 much charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory as he gained in this dispute.' - Works, vol. iii. p. 224.

From Switzerland Goldsmith sent his brother Henry the first sketch of his Traveller,' about eighty lines; and he also sent to a friend in Dublin a detailed journal of his excursion, which struck several who read it as a most remarkable performance, but which perished soon after in a fire. He seems to have landed at Dover in a thoroughly forlorn condition on the 1st of February, 1756, and a week later is found wandering about the streets of London, soliciting employment of any kind among the druggists. Ten years afterwards Goldsmith astonished a brilliant company at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, by beginning a story with When I lived among the beggars of Axe Lane--:' it was most probably to this painful period that he referred. An obscure chemist at last took compassion on him; and the author of the Traveller' anno ætatis 28 - was too happy to earn his bread by spreading plasters and pounding in his mortar. The lat excellent Richard Sharp, of Park Lane, remembered being carrie in his early life by a friend of Goldsmith's (then recently dea.

U2