there arrested for the sum for which he had become bail. Being, however, relieved from this embarrassment, through the interference of Mr. Laughlin Maclane, and Dr. Sleigh, whose friendship he had probably acquired at the college of Edinburgh, and having a strong desire to see foreign countries, he embarked on board of a Dutch vessel, bound to Rotterdam; whence he repaired to Brussels, and afterwards visited a great part of Flanders and Brabant. At Louvain he made some stay, and obtained the degree of Bachelor of Physic. He next accompanied an English gentleman to Geneva; where he was recommended, as a travelling companion, to a young man of a sordid

mind, who, by the death of an uncle, had unexpectedly come into the possession of a considerable fortune. With a person of a disposition so contrary to his own, Goldsmith could not long continue. Accordingly a disagreement happened, on their reaching the south of France, which ended in their parting; and our author was left to struggle with all the difficul-. ties a man could experience, who was in a foreign country, without friends or money. Yet his ardour for travelling was not abated; and he persisted in his design, although he was obliged to perform the greatest part of his tour on foot, and was frequently beholden (as he had already been in Flanders) to his German flute,

an instrument on which he played tolerably well, for a night's lodging. At length his curiosity being gratified, he bent his course towards England, and landed at Dover in the year 1757.

His situation, on his arrival in London, was altered, without being improved; for he was still a stranger, and still destitute. "The world was all before him;" but the means of present subsistence were not easily to be obtained. He applied to several apothecaries for employment; but his uncouth appearance, and broad Irish accent, rendered him the object only of ridicule and contempt. In so forlorn a state, he submitted to the humble condition of an assistant in the

laboratory of a chemist, near FishStreet Hill. From this drudgery he was released by the kindness of Dr. Sleigh, who received him into his family, and liberally invited him to share his purse, till some means could be devised for his maintenance. Goldsmith, unwilling to be a burden to his friend, shortly after accepted of the place of usher to a boarding-school kept by the late Dr. Milner, a dissenting clergyman, at Peckham. Whilst in this situation, it is said that he wrote some criticisms for the Monthly Review, which obtained him reputation sufficient to determine him to follow the bent of his genius: and having, at the commencement of his literary career, resolved to observe strictly

the rules of economy, he, on his return to London, took a lodging in Green-Arbour Court, in the Old Bailey; where several of his most successful pieces were written.

The earliest of his performances, that can now be discovered, bears the date of 1758, and is entitled The memoirs of a protestant condemned to the galleys of France for his religion, translated from the original published at the Hague. In 1759 appeared An enquiry into the present state of polite learning in Europe; and in October of the same year he began the Bee, a periodical publication, which ceased at the end of eight numbers. The following year he became known to Dr. Smollett, and composed several