singing of songs. . . In the evenings of summer strolling up the Inny's banks to fish or play the flute, otter-hunting by the course of the Shannon, learning French from the Irish priests, or winning a prize for throwing the sledge-hammer at the fair of Ballymahon." At length he presented himself to the Bishop of Elphin for ordination, but was rejected as unqualified. An engagement as a tutor followed. In the course of a year he managed to save £30, buy a horse, and start a second time for Cork, to take shipping for America. He appears on this occasion to have paid for his passage, but to have lost it by not being at hand when the vessel sailed. At the end of six weeks he returned penniless. "And now, my dear mother," he said, "after having struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder you are not more rejoiced to see me." His uncle came forward with £50, and Oliver was in 1752 sent to London to study law. While in Dublin on his way to England, he was seduced into play, and lost everything; and in bitter shame, and after much physical suffering, returned home, and was forgiven. He now for a time lived alternately with his brother and his good- natured uncle, telling stories, writing verses, and accompanying his cousin's harpsichord- playing with the flute. Again Mr. Contarine advanced something to start him in life, and in the autumn of 1752, Oliver, in his twenty-fourth year, left Ireland for ever, and proceeded to Edinburgh to study medicine. There he had but an unhappy time, managing as best he could to eke out his small allowances by teaching. We hear of a tour in the Highlands; and then he visits the Continent, takes out a degree equivalent to that of Medical Bachelor, at Leyden, and travels through France, supporting himself mainly by playing on his flute, as he afterwards described in his well-known poem, The Traveller. Goldsmith's remarks on the state of things in France at this period show considerable foresight. He had an interview with Voltaire, visited Switzerland, and despatched to his brother Henry eighty lines of poetry afterwards published in The Traveller. It is likely that he visited Milan, Verona, Mantua, and Florence, and that he received another medical degree at Padua. He did not find travelling in Italy so easy as in France — in his own words: "My skill in music could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was a better musician than I." On 1st February 1756 he landed at Dover on his return, and a few days later found him penniless and friendless in the streets of Loudon. It is on record that, to enable him to reach the metropolis, he had been obliged to give a comic performance in a barn. For a time he procured employment at an apothecary's, living in a wretched lodging. This may have been the period of his life to which he referred a few years later, when he startled a polite circle at Sir Joshua Reynolds's by speaking of something having occurred "when I lived among the beggars at Axe-lane." He was next a reader in the office of Mr. Richardson, the printer, author of Clarissa; and in the beginning of 1757 was installed as usher at a school at Peckham. This he afterwards regarded as about the most miserable of the many miserable experiences of his life. He probably referred to it when he wrote: "The usher is generally the laughing-stock of the school. Every trick is played upon him; the oddity of his manner, his dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal ridicule; the master himself now and then cannot avoid joining in the laugh; and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill usage, lives in a state of war with all the family." Yet even here he found solace in the society of children, delighting them with his stories, and amusing them with his flute and conjuring tricks. After a few weeks, Mr. Griffiths, a friend of his employer's, engaged him to assist in editing the Monthly Review, one of the many periodicals that at this period enjoyed an ephemeral existence in London. Goldsmith afterwards averred that all he had written for this review was tampered with by Griffiths or his wife. Hopeless of success as an author, he returned to Peckham school, where he commenced his Inquiry into Polite Learning. His next change was to get an appointment to the Coromandel Coast, which he lost through want of means to procure an outfit; after which he unsuccessfully offered himself for the position of naval hospital mate. The opening of 1759 found him engaged on a life of Voltaire. Amid all his troubles and changes he must have been gradually making a name for himself, for we read of Percy, author of the Reliques, seeking an introduction, and stumbling up the dark stairs of his poor lodging. In October 1759 he commenced the Bee, a threepenny weekly after the manner of the Rambler, which saw but eight numbers. He continued to contribute to various magazines — the first of his delightful series of "Chinese Letters" appearing in the Public Ledger, 24th January 1760. These essays led to an acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, who ever afterwards continued his truest friend and best adviser. To present a respectable
