ONE

NE of the most pleasing novels of a modern cast is The Vicar of Wakefield. Its author, OLIVER GOLDSMITH, was born in the year 1731, at Pallas in the county of Longford in Ireland, according to his epitaph in Westminster Abbey; but another account mentions Elphin as his birth-place. His character was eccentric; his pursuits were desultory. His father, who was a clergyman, gave him a classical education, and sent him from school to Dublin college. Like Swift, he is said to have exhibited no peculiar marks of quickness in this period of his life, and he did not take his bachelor's degree till two years after the usual time.

As he was intended for the study of physic, he removed to the university of Edinburgh in 1751, where he staid three years; but he seems not to have brought with him to this seminary much steadiness of application or ardour for professional studies, and he was obliged to quit it clandestinely on account of a debt he had contracted; it is said, for a fellow-student, but probably the consequence of that mutual accommodation which often subsists between young

VOL. XXIII.

and thoughtless companions. He was pursued, and arrested at Sunderland; but was released through the friendship of two fellow-students. The world was now all before him, and he therefore resolved to see it, and accordingly embarked immediately for Holland; and poor as he was; and struggling with difficulties of every kind, performed a tour, mostly on foot, through that country, Flanders, and part of Germany. He passed some time at the universities of Paris and Louvain, and took a bachelor's degree of phys sic at the latter of these seminaries. He thence accompanied an English gentleman to Geneva, and was there recommended as a travelling tu tor to a man of fortune. Jult maso) An eccentric genius is but ill calculated for a guide our author scarcely possessed one qualification for the office, natural taste excepted and probably the youth, who had just succeeded to a large fortune, was as impatient of being guided, as his tutor was unused to guide. Be that as it may, their connexion was soon dissolved by a disagreement, and poor Goldsmith was left alone in the south of France, friendless and destitute in a foreign country, to find his way home, or pursue his tour as he could. Uncomfortable as many circumstances in this exq cursion must have been, it was here that the young poet laid in those images which afterwards produced his beautiful poem of The Tra veller, great part of which was written in the countries which he describes; and, though no doubt a melancholy thought would sometimes intrude, as he found himself, mud njiw spluɖ

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,"

wandering on foot by the banks of the Scheldt or the Poy his mode of travelling was incontestably more favourable to reflection, and gave more opportunity to the ideas to sink leisurely into his mind, than if he had been borne along through half Europe by the rattling wheels of a postchaise.

As a literary man, he was received by the convents with that hospitality which they so laudably practised; and he tells his readers no more than the literal truth, when, in his Traveller, he represents himself as leading "with tuneless pipe the sportive choir" of the French peasants; for to the little knowledge which he had of the German flute he was often obliged for a lodging and a dinner.

When Goldsmith returned to England, a few pence in his pocket were the whole of his finances; he knew no one, and had no recommendations; and in this manner was he launched upon the great metropolis, with his pressing wants, and only his talents to provide for them. Without introduction, and of no promising appearance as to externals, he offered himself as journeyman to several apothecaries without success, and was at length obliged to accept of employment in the laboratory of a chemist near Fish-Street-Hill.

It was not long before he found out one of his old college friends, the same who had assisted in liberating him from the arrest, who, though he with difficulty recognised him through the forJorn appearance he made, generously shared his purse with him while he staid in London.