irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and fluteplaying, or, of winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate, sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college repu- 5 tation, perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, as tradition affirms, because he had the bad taste to appear before his examiner in flaming scarlet breeches. After this rebuff, tutoring was next tried. But he had no sooner saved some thirty pounds by teach- 10 ing, than he threw up his engagement, bought a horse, and started once more for America, by way of Cork. In six weeks he had returned penniless, having substituted for his roadster a sorry jade, to which he gave the contemptuous name of Fiddleback. He had also the simpli- 15 city to wonder, on this occasion, that his mother was not rejoiced to see him again. His next ambition was to be a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he was decoyed into gambling, lost every 20 farthing, and came home once more in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching, Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of 25 his social qualities than of his studies; and two years later he left the Scottish capital for Leyden, rather, it may be conjectured, from a restless desire to see the world than really to exchange the lectures of Monro for the lectures of Albinus. At Newcastle (according to his own 30 account) he had the good fortune to be locked up as a Jacobite, and thus escaped drowning, as the ship by which he was to have sailed to Bordeaux sank at the mouth of the Garonne. Shortly afterwards he arrived in Leyden. Gaubius and other Dutch professors figure 35

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sonorously in his future works; but whether he had much experimental knowledge of their instructions may be doubted. What seems undeniable is, that the old seduction of play stripped him of every shilling; so that, 5 like Holberg before him, he set out deliberately to make the tour of Europe on foot. 'Haud inexpertus loquor,' he wrote in after days, when praising this mode of locomotion. He first visited Flanders. Thence he passed to France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself 10 mainly by his flute, and by occasional disputations at convents or universities. Sir,' said Boswell to Johnson, 'he disputed his passage through Europe.' When, on the 1st February, 1756, he landed at Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he had sent home to his brother in Ireland 15 his first rough sketch for the poem of The Traveller.

He was now seven-and-twenty. He had seen and suffered much, but he was to have further trials before drifting definitely into literature. Between Dover and London, it has been surmised, he made a tentative appearance 20 as a strolling player. His next ascertained part was that of an apothecary's assistant on Fish Street Hill. From this, with the opportune aid of an Edinburgh friend, he proceeded to use an eighteenth-century phrase-a poor physician in the Bankside, Southwark, where least of all, 25 perhaps, was London's fabled pavement to be found. So little of it, in fact, fell to Goldsmith's share, that we speedily find him reduced to the rank of reader and corrector of the press to Samuel Richardson, printer, of Salisbury Court, author of Clarissa. Later still he is 30 acting as help or substitute in Dr. Milner's 'classical academy' at Peckham. Here, at last, chance seemed to open to him the prospect of a literary life. He had already, says report, submitted a manuscript tragedy to Richardson's judgement; and something he said at Dr. Milner's table attracted the attention of an occasional

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visitor there, the bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the Monthly Review. He invited Dr. Milner's usher to try his hand at criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs' the antiqua 5 mater of Grub Street'-in other words, he was engaged for bed, board, and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-allwork to his master's magazine.

The arrangement thus concluded was not calculated to endure. After some five months of labour from nine till 10 two, and often later, it came suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming, but mere incompatibility of temper would probably supply a sufficient ground for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the bookseller and his wife treated him 15 ill, and denied him ordinary comforts; added to which the lady, a harder taskmistress even than the antiqua mater above referred to, joined with her husband in 'editing' his articles, a course which, hard though it may seem, is not unprecedented. However this may be, either in 20 September or October, 1757, he was again upon the world, existing precariously from hand to mouth. By a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior suggests, possibly means no more than author], I make a shift to live.' So he 25 wrote to his brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations were cannot be definitely stated; but, if not prepared before, they probably included the translation of a remarkable work issued by Griffiths and others in the ensuing February. This was 30 the Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion, being the authentic record of the sufferings of one Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a book of which Michelet has said that it is written as if between earth and heaven.' Marteilhe, who died at Cuylenberg 35

in 1777, was living in Holland in 1758; and it may be that Goldsmith had seen or heard of him during his own stay in that country. The translation, however, did not bear Goldsmith's name, but that of James Willington, one of 5 his old class-fellows at Trinity College. Nevertheless, Prior says distinctly that Griffiths (who should have known) declared it to be by Goldsmith. Moreover, the French original had been catalogued in Griffiths' magazine in the second month of Goldsmith's servitude, To a circumstance which colourably supplies the reason for its subsequent rendering into English.

The publication of Marteilhe's Memoirs had no influence upon Goldsmith's fortunes, for, in a short time, he was again installed at Peckham, in place of Dr. Milner 15 invalided, waiting hopefully for the fulfilment of a promise by his old master to procure him a medical appointment on a foreign station. It is probable that, with a view to provide the needful funds for this expatriation, he now began to sketch the little volume after20 wards published under the title of An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, for towards the middle of the year we find him addressing long letters to his relatives in Ireland to enlist their aid in soliciting subscriptions for this book. At length the desired 25 advancement was obtained,-a nomination as physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny. For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then-like Roderick Random-he 30 presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for the more modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December, 1758. The curt official record states that he was 'found not qualified.' What made matters worse, the necessity for a decent appearance before the examiners 35 had involved him in new obligations to Griffiths,

out of which arose fresh difficulties. To pay his landlady, whose husband was arrested for debt, he pawned the suit he had procured by Griffiths' aid; and he also raised money on some volumes which had been sent him for review. Thereupon ensued an angry and humiliating 5 correspondence with the bookseller, as a result of which Griffiths, nevertheless, appears to have held his hand.

and it was here also that,

By this time Goldsmith had moved into those historic but now non-existent lodgings in 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, which have been photographed for ever in 10 Irving's Tales of a Traveller. It was here that the foregoing incidents took place; early in 1759, in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one chair,' the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him composing (or more prob- 15 ably correcting the proofs of) The Enquiry. 'At least spare invective 'till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish'd,' -he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths' and then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions shall not appear the dictates of 20 necessity but of choice.' The Enquiry came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author's name, but it was an open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously, in a duodecimo of some two 25 hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible to keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author's knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings, can have been but that of an external spectator. Still, in an age when critical 30 utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous, it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages, besides, bear upon the writer's personal experiences, and serve to piece the imperfections of his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth, 35