(From the rare etching by Bretherton after Bunbury's drawing.)]

Goldsmith could make nothing of mathematics, and held this science
fit only for mean intellects. Later in his life this delightful
philosopher confided to Malone that he still held the study in a kind
of scorn, seeing that he could himself turn an ode of Horace into
English better than any of the mathematicians. There is scarcely an
infinitesimal sign of the principle of mathematical precision about
the career of Oliver Goldsmith. Yet in Scotland, possibly because the
virtue of prudence is infectious, during this period, for some time
and by some miracle, Noll cultivated a habit to which he was
throughout his career very slightly addicted--he paid his way. Yet
when he was leaving this centre of learning we find Uncle Contarine
once more besought, and this time for twenty rapidly forthcoming
sterling pounds, to carry Mr. Oliver to the Continent for the
completion of his medical education. The wandering spirit had seized
him. Paris and Leyden, with their learned lecturers, were but pretexts
for travelling and fulfilling the long-cherished hope of seeing
foreign lands. He thirsted for deep draughts of experience flowing
from the hidden springs of unknown climes. Professor Masson wittily
tells us that as Goldsmith had planned to go to Paris, of course
he arrived in the end at Leyden. Having secured those necessary
munitions of war which to the full extent of his means Uncle Contarine
unfailingly provided, Goldsmith set sail in a ship bound for Bordeaux.
At Newcastle he was, by mistake, arrested as a political prisoner and
retained in durance as a Jacobite. The ship sailed without him. It
sank; every life was lost. Soon after reaching Leyden, Goldsmith left
that seat of learning for his wanderings through Europe, his only
aids to this majestic design being a fine voice and an instrument of
music--some sort of flute, we must presume. It was a queer pilgrimage.
The peasantry gave the minstrel food by day and a bed at night.
Village after village welcomed him. He left Leyden penniless. He
might have had a useful coin or two to help him, but that, espying
some lovely flowers, he could not resist buying all his poor purse
permitted and sending them to Uncle Contarine. No long-suffering
uncle, in all the chronicles and all the untold trials of uncles,
deserved better of a nephew than this good old man.

Goldsmith's ramble through Europe was one of the maddest es