Clairon, of whom he afterwards wrote so sympathetically in The Bee. From the French capital he passed to Germany; thence to Switzerland. It is at Geneva-at. Voltaire's recently purchased residence of "Les Délices " -that Mr. Forster conjecturally places an incident which Goldsmith afterwards described in his memoirs of the philosopher of Ferney. "The person who writes this Memoir," he says, "who had the honour and pleasure of being his [Voltaire's] acquaintance, remembers to have seen him in a select company of wits of both sexes at Paris, when the subject happened to turn upon English taste and learning. Fontenelle, who was of the party, and who being unacquainted with the language or authors of the country he undertook to condemn, with a spirit truly vulgar began to revile both. Diderot, who liked the English, and knew something of their literary pretensions, attempted to vindicate their poetry and learning, but with unequal abilities. The company quickly perceived that Fontenelle was superior in the dispute, and were surprised at the silence which Voltaire had preserved all the former part of the night, particularly as the conversation happened to turn upon one of his favourite topics. Fontenelle continued his triumph till about twelve o'clock, when Voltaire appeared at last roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his defence with the utmost elegance mixed with spirit, and now and then let fall the finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his harangue lasted till three in the morning. I must confess that, whether from national partiality, or from the elegant sensibility of his manner, I never was so much charmed, nor did I ever

remember so absolute a victory as he gained in this dispute." Goldsmith, it will be seen, places this occurrence at Paris, and, as one of his later editors, Mr. Gibbs, pertinently enough points out, the transference of the scene to "Les Délices" involves the not very explicable presence in Switzerland of Diderot and Fontenelle, to say nothing of the "select company of wits of both sexes." But these discrepancies, due to haste, to confusion, or perhaps to the habit, already referred to, of "loading" his narrative, do not make it necessary to conclude that Goldsmith had not seen and heard Voltaire.

In Switzerland Goldsmith remained some time, chiefly at Geneva, visiting from thence Basle, Berne, and other places. He speaks, in the "Animated Nature," of woodcocks flushed on Mount Jura, of a frozen cataract seen at Schaffhausen, of a very savoury dinner" eaten . on the Alps. Later, he passed into Piedmont, and makes reference to its floating bee-houses. Florence, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Venice, were next journeyed to, and Padua, for which city is also claimed the credit of his medical degree. In Italy, where every peasant was a musician, his flute had lost its charm, and he seems to have subsisted, if we again accept him as the prototype of George Primrose, chiefly by disputation. "In all the foreign universities and convents, there are upon certain days philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night." Thus he fought his way from city to city until, at the end of 1755, he

turned his steps homewards. On the 1st of February, 1756, he landed at Dover, "his whole stock of cash," says Glover, "amounting to no more than a few halfpence." His wanderings had occupied exactly one

year.

A

CHAPTER III.

T the time of Goldsmith's second arrival in England, for, as will be remembered, he had already paid an unpremeditated visit to Newcastle a year earlier, his previous career could certainly not be described as a success. If his schooldays had been but moderately promising, his college life might almost be called discreditable. He had tried many things and failed. He had estranged his sole remaining parent; he had sorely taxed the patience of the rest of his relations; and he had, latterly, been living as a wanderer on the face of the earth. This was his record in the past. And yet, read by the light of his subsequent story, he had unconsciously gone through a course of training, and accumulated a stock of experience, of which little or nothing was to be lost. He had looked at sorrow close, and learned to sympathize with poverty; he had known men and cities; he had studied character in its undress. If he had profited but slenderly by the precepts of Gaubius and Albinus, his "education through the senses" had been progressing as silently and as surely as the fame of Marcellus. What he had seen of foreign countries was to stand him in good stead in his first long poem; what he had collected con

cerning professors and academies he would weave into the "Enquiry into Polite Learning in Europe"; what he had observed in the byway and the crowd would supply him with endless touches of shrewd and delicate discrimination in his "Essays" and his "Citizen of the World." And somehow, he had already, as his letters testify, acquired that easy and perspicuous style of writing, which comes to few men as a gift. Who shall say, then, that his life had been a failure, when, in its assimilative period, so much had been achieved? Meanwhile, he had landed at Dover, and the world was all before him where to choose.

The close connection between his works and his biography, added to the habit of regarding the adventures of his "Philosophic Vagabond" as an exact transcript of his own experiences, has occasionally led to the including, in that biography, of some incidents which may have no other basis than his fictions. Thus, either from his subsequent account, in The British Magazine, of the vicissitudes of a strolling player, or from the theatrical attempts of George Primrose in the "Vicar," it has been asserted that his first endeavour at what he somewhere calls "his sole ambition, a livelihood," was as a low comedian in a barn-an assertion which has been thought to receive some slender confirmation from the fact that he is known to have expressed a desire in later life to play the part of "Scrub" in Farquhar's "Beaux Stratagem." Another vaguely reported story represents him as engaged for some time as usher at a provincial school, under a feigned name: and that his difficulties, during this period, were extreme, may be gathered from