LETTER II,

TO THE REV. THOMAS CONTARINE.1

MY DEAR UNCLE,

[EDINBURGH] May 8, 1753.2

In your letter (the only one I received from Kilmore), you call me the philosopher who carries all his goods about him. Yet how can such a character fit me, who have left behind in Ireland every thing I think worth possessing; friends that I loved, and a society that pleased while it instructed? Who but must regret the loss of such enjoyments? Who but must regret his absence from Kilmore, that ever knew it as I did? Here as recluse as the Turkish Spy at Paris, I am almost unknown to every body, except some few who attend the professors of physic as I do.

Apropos, I shall give you the professors' names, and, as far as occurs to me, their characters; and first, as most deserving, Mr. Munro, 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. Plume, Professor of Chemistry, understands his business well, but delivers himself so ill, that he is but little regarded. Alston, Professor of Materia Medica, speaks much, but little to the purpose. The Professors of Theory and Practice (of Physic) say nothing but what we may find in books .laid before us, and speak that in so drowsy and heavy a

1 Mr. Contarine had married Goldsmith's aunt. At this time he held the living of Kilmore, near Carrick-on-Shannon. He is said to have come of the Contarini of Venice.-ED.

2 First published in Prior's 'Life,' 1837.—ED.

manner, that their hearers are not many degrees in a better state than their patients.

You see, then, dear Sir, that Munro1 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 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! How many happy years do I wish you! and nothing but want of health can take from you happiness, since you so well pursue the paths that conduct to virtue. I am, my dear Uncle, your most obliged,

Most affectionate nephew,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

P.S.-I draw this time for 6l., and will draw next October but for 4l., as I was obliged to buy every thing since I came to Scotland, shirts not even excepted. I am a little more early the first year than I shall be for the future, for I absolutely will not trouble you before the time hereafter.

My best love attend Mr. and Mrs. Lawder, and Heaven preserve them! I am again your dutiful nephew, O. G.

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. This letter would be too long if it contained the description I intend giving of that country, so shall make it the subject of my next.*

1 Alexander Monro, 1697-1767; since termed "the father of the medical school of Edinburgh." Dr. Alston is again mentioned in the Introduction to Botany contributed to Brookes''Natural History,' 1763; see the Prefaces in vol. iv.-ED.

2 This promised letter, if written, is not known to exist.-ED.

LETTER III.'

TO ROBERT BRYANTON, ESQ., AT BALLYMAHON, IRELAND.

MY DEAR BOB,

EDINBURGH, September 26, 1753.

How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an excuse) might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence! I might tell how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with business, you know, I was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen. But I suppress those and twenty more as plausible, and as easily invented, since they might all be attended with a slight inconvenience,—of being known to be lies. Let me then speak truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No turn-spit dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better than I do him I now address.

1

Yet what shall I say, now I am entered? Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country; where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarcely able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove nor brook lend their music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants forget their poverty. Yet with all these disadvantages, enough to call him down to humility, a Scotchman is one of the proudest things alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them. If mankind should happen to despise them, they are masters of their own admiration, and that they can plentifully bestow upon themselves.

1 See Goldsmith to Grainger at p. 410.-ED.

From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this country enjoys; namely, the gentlemen here are much better bred than among us. No such character here as our fox-hunter; and they have expressed great surprise when I informed them, that some men in Ireland of one thousand pounds a-year, spend their whole lives in running after a hare, drinking to be drunk, and getting every girl with child that will let them. Truly, if such a being, equipped in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the same astonishment that a countryman does King George on horseback.

The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Now that I have mentioned dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; in the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between two countries at war. The ladies indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady directress: so they dance much, say nothing, and thus concludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman, that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.

Now I am come to the ladies, and to show that I love Scotland, and every thing that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my head that denies it, that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand times finer and handsomer than the Irish. To be sure now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly

surprised at my partiality ;-but tell them flatly I don't value them or their fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or—, a potato; for I say it, and will maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I am in a great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves. But to be less serious; where will you find a language so prettily become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? And the women here speak it in its highest purity; for instance, teach one of your young ladies at home to pronounce the "Whoar wull I gong?" with a becoming widening of mouth, and I'll lay my life they'll wound every hearer.

We have no such character here as a coquet; but, alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago, I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's1 (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover) when the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her beauty to her ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot ; her battered husband, or more properly, the guardian of her charms, sat by her side. Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults in her faultless form. "For my part," says the first, “I think, what I always thought, that the Duchess has too much of the red in her complexion.' "Madam, I am of your opinion," says the second. has a palish cast, too much on the delicate order."—" And let me tell you," adds the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue,3 3 "that the Duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth." At this, every

"I think her face

1 Kirkcudbright. He assumed the title in 1730, on the death of a distant relation; but though he always voted at the election of the Representative Peers, his title was not legally allowed till 1773, when it was restored to his son John. He used to stand in the lobby of the old Assembly Rooms, selling gloves to those who frequented this fashionable resort, except on the night of the Peers' Ball, when he assumed his sword, and took his place as a noble among those who, on other days, were his customers.-B.

2 This duchess was the youngest of "the beautiful Miss Gunnings." Her marriage with his "battered" grace (James, fourth Duke of Hamilton) was so hasty that it was effected with a "bed-curtain" ring, at "halfan-hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel," as Horace Walpole relates in his 'Letters '(Feb. 27, 1752). See also note to Letter IV., p. 425.-ED.

3 Percy has here-" puckered up so as scarcely to admit a pea."-Ed.