CHAP. V.

QUITS EDINBURGH.-LETTER FROM LEYDEN.-ANECDOTES.JOURNEY ON THE CONTINENT.

To have gained the regard of men of sense and character, who had abundant opportunities in the familiar intercourse of students, of judging justly of his heart and understanding, is proof that his general conduct was free from reproach. Neither is there any doubt that they had formed a high estimate of his learning and talents. By their assistance he was saved from arrest; and quitting Edinburgh, though probably not with all the wealth (331.) he had calculated upon, is said to have passed a short time in the north of England for the gratification of his curiosity; where we shall see that the first object of interest in his eyes was the beauty of the “farmers' daughters."

At Sunderland he was said by his Edinburgh acquaintance to have been arrested by one Barclay a tailor; and at Newcastle, according to others, the same misfortune occurred to him again.*

* By an obliging communication from the Rev. Dr. Bliss of Oxford, the writer is informed that the venerable president of Magdalen College, in relation to this subject, states, that his tutor at Queen's, a Mr. Ma north countryman, who

had known Goldsmith, told a story of his getting into debt to a tailor in Newcastle, and of either being arrested, or going off without payment. All these accounts, no doubt, originated with the Poet himself, for the reason assigned to his uncle.

Strange as it may seem, these stories originated with the Poet himself, in order to conceal the fact of imprisonment upon another, though unfounded charge, the mere name of which he believed might cause his degree to be withheld. This charge, and the story at length, is told in the following letter to his uncle, written from Leyden, which he desired to visit as a favourite school of physic, though accident carried him thither sooner than originally intended. The escape from perishing by shipwreck which it describes, is another of those singular occurrences that throw an air of romance over parts of his history, that nevertheless there are not the slightest reasons to disbelieve.

"To the Rev. Thomas Contarine.

"DEAR SIR,

66

Leyden (the date wanting, but no doubt April or May, 1754.)

"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.

"Sometime after the receipt of your last I embarked for Bourdeaux, on board a Scotch ship called the St. Andrew's, Captain 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 Newcastleupon-Tyne. We all went on shore to refresh us after the fatigues 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 puts 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 this all 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 interfered 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.

Y cu 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 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 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 arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or to 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, overflows 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 and Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; but must say, that of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter is most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty, while the higher class of women want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable. Their pleasures here are very dull, though very various. You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy,—as good an amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in harlequin, who is generally a magician; and in consequence of his diabolical art, performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass from which another was drinking. 'Twas not his