consultation it was agreed that he should enter on the study of the law. His biographer seems to blame the decision, and to consider that his idle and expensive habits, and his thoughtless disposition, were little fitted for the severe study, and the constant application required by that arduous profession. We have seen, however, that he could not enter into the church, for which he certainly was not eminently adapted; and the profession of medicine will not yield her honours and emoluments to that unaspiring indolence that had fled from the toilsome pursuit of legal studies. Amidst all his follies, and unusually great they were, it may be presumed that Goldsmith possessed qualities which assured the attachment and forgiveness of his friends. Certainly they seem to have regarded him with indulgence and liberality. His uncle Contorine provided him with funds for his journey to England, and his subsequent residence at the Temple. He set out for London, and took Dublin in the way here by accident he met one to whom the simplicity of this child of nature fell an easy prey; a sharper engaged him in play, and stripped him of all his money; and once again he returned to his mother's house, without a shilling in his pocket.

Well might his friends consider that such habitual imprudence, such absurdity passing all common bounds, would form a bar to his success in any profession. The law was at once relin

quished; and after some consultation he was fixed at Edinburgh as a student of medicine, about the end of the year 1752. His attention to the studies indispensable to his future success was far from being regular. Dissipation and play allured him from the class room, and both his health and purse suffered under the too frequent demands that pleasure made. His easy temper and goodhumoured qualities made him a favorite with the students; he entered into their wild pranks and frolics; told his story, or sang his song, with the humour which characterizes his country, and is said to have written poems, of which no specimen is preserved. Before he left Edinburgh he had acquired the friendship of Mr. L. Maclean and Dr. Sleigh, who rescued him from the unpleasant consequences of becoming security for a brother student 11 to a considerable amount. He now set out for Holland to complete his professional studies at Leyden, and narrowly escaped shipwreck on his passage. A letter from him on his arrival is preserved, which may be read with interest. 'If Leyden, however, was his object, (says Mr. Campbell), with the usual eccentricities of his motives, he set out to reach it by way of Bourdeaux.'

11 About the beginning of the year 1754, he arrived at Sunderland, near Newcastle, where he was arrested at the suit of one Barclay, a tailor in Edinburgh, to whom he had given security for his friend.' Life in Evans's Ed. of Goldsmith's Poetical Works, p. iii.

TO THE REV. THOMAS CONTORINE.

Leyden (no date).

DEAR SIR,

Some

I SUPPOSE by this time I am accused of either neglect or ingratitude, and my silence imputed to my usual slowness of writing. But believe me, sir, when I say, that till now I had not an opportunity of sitting down with that ease of mind which writing required. You may see by the top of the letter that I am at Leyden; but of my journey hither you must be informed. time after the receipt of your last, I embarked for Bourdeaux, on board a Scotch ship, called the St. Andrew, Capt. John Wall, Master. The ship made a tolerable appearance, and, as another inducement, I was let to know that six agreeable passengers were to be my company. Well, we were but two days at sea when a storm drove us into a city of England, called Newcastle-uponTyne. We all went ashore to refresh us, after the fatigue of our voyage. Seven men and I were one day on shore, and on the following evening, as we were all very merry, the room door bursts open; enters a sergeant and twelve grenadiers, with their bayonets screwed, and put us all under the king's arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I could to prove

my innocence, however I remained in prison with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then. Dear sir, keep all this a secret, or at least say it was for debt, for if it were once known at the university, I should hardly get a degree; but hear how Providence interposed in my favour. The ship was gone on to Bourdeaux before I got from prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and every one of the crew were drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a ship at that time ready for Holland, I embarked, and in nine days, thank my God, I arrived safe at Rotterdam, whence I travelled by land to Leyden, and whence I now write.

You may expect some account of this country, and though I am not well qualified for such an undertaking, yet I shall endeavour to satisfy some part of your expectations. Nothing surprised

me more than the books every day published descriptive of the manners of this country. Any young man who takes it into his head to publish his travels, visits the countries he intends to describe, passes through them with as much inattention as his valet-de-chambre; and consequently not having a fund himself to fill a volume, he applies to those who wrote before him, and gives us the manners of a country not as he must have seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years before. The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former

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times. He in every thing imitates a Frenchman but in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is exactly 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 pair of breeches, so that his hips reach almost up to his armpits. This well clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or 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 superfluous moisture. While the woman, deprived of this amusement, overflown 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