A year's engagement as a tutor followed, and from it he returned home with thirty pounds in his pocket, and was the undisputed owner of a good horse. Thus furnished and mounted he set off for Cork with a vision of going to America, but returned presently with only five shillings and a horse he had bought for one pound seventeen.
Law was the next thing thought of, and his uncle Contarine, who had married his father's sister, came forward with fifty pounds. With this sum Oliver started for London, but gambled it all away in Dublin. In bitter shame he wrote to his uncle, confessed, and was forgiven, and the good uncle then made up a small purse to carry him to Edinburgh for the study of medicine.
No traditions remain in Edinburgh as to the character or extent of Goldsmith's studies there, but it may be supposed that his eighteen months' residence was, on the whole, not unprofitable. A curious document that has been discovered is a torn leaf of a tailor's ledger radiant with "rich sky-blue satin, fine sky-blue shalloon, a superfine silver-laced small hat, rich black Genoa velvet, and superfine high claret-coloured cloth," ordered by Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, student.
II.--Through Europe with a Flute
From Edinburgh he sailed for Leyden, but called on the way at Newcastle and saw enough of England to be able to say that "of all objects on this earth an English farmer's daughter is the most charming." Little is known of his pursuits at Leyden, where his principal means of support were as a teacher. After staying there nearly a year, he quitted it (1755) at the age of twenty-seven, for a travel tour through Europe, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt on his back, and a flute in his hand.
Goldsmith started on his travels in February, 1755, and stepped ashore at Dover February 1, 1756. For his route it is necessary to consult his writings. His letters of the time have perished. In later life, Foote tells us, "he frequently used to talk, with great pleasantry, of his distresses on the Continent, such as living on the hospitalities of the friars, sleeping in barns, and picking up a kind of mendicant livelihood by the German flute." His early memoir-writers assert with confidence that in some small portion of his travels he acted as companion to a young man of large fortune. It is certain that the rude, strange wandering life to which his nature for a time impelled him was an education picked up from personal experience and by actual collision with many varieties of men, and that it gave him on several social questions much the advantage over the more learned of his contemporaries. As he passed through Flanders, Louvain attracted him, and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of medical bachelor. This is likely enough. Certain it is he made some stay at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, and informed himself of its modes of study. Some little time he also passed at Brussels. Undoubtedly he visited Antwerp, and he rested a brief space in Paris. He must have taken the lecture-rooms of Germany on his way to Switzerland. Passing into that country he saw Schaffhausen frozen. Geneva was his resting-place in Switzerland, but he visited Basle and Berne. Descending into Piedmont, he saw Milan, Verona, Mantua, and Florence, and at Padua is supposed to have stayed some six months, and, it has been asserted, received his degree. "Sir," said Johnson to Boswell, "he disputed his passage through Europe."
III.--Physic, Teaching, and Authorship
Landing at Dover without a farthing in his pocket, the traveller took ten days to reach London, where an uncertain story says he gained subsistence for a few months as an usher, under a feigned name. At last a chemist of the name of Jacob, at the corner of Monument Yard, engaged him. While employed among the drugs he met an old Edinburgh fellow-student, Owen Sleigh, who, "with a heart as warm as ever, shared his home and friendship." Goldsmith now began to practise as a physician in a humble way, and through one of his patients was introduced to Richardson and appointed for a short time reader and corrector to his press in Salisbury Court. Next we find him at Peckham Academy, acting as assistant to Dr. Milner, whose son had been at Edinburgh.
Milner was a contributor to the "Monthly Review," published by Griffiths, the bookseller, and at Milner's table Griffiths and Goldsmith met, with the result that Goldsmith entered into an agreement to devote himself to the "Monthly Review" for a year. In fulfilment of that agreement Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths provided him with bed and board in Paternoster Row, and, at the age of nine-and-twenty, he began his work as an author by profession.
The twelve months' agreement was not carried out. At the end of five months Goldsmith left the "Monthly Review." During that period he had reviewed Professor Mallet's translations of Scandinavian poetry and mythology; Home's tragedy of "Douglas," Burke's "Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," Smollett's "Complete History of England," and Gray's "Odes." Though he was no longer "a not unuseful assistant" to Griffiths, he kept up an irregular business association with that literary slave-driver. He also became a contributor to Newbery's "Literary Magazine." At last, in despair, he turned again from the miseries of Grub Street to Dr. Milner's school-room at Peckham, and, after another brief period of teaching, Dr. Milner secured for him the promise of an appointment as medical officer to one of the East India Company's factories on the coast of Coromandel. Partly to utilise his travel experiences in a more formal manner than had yet been possible, and partly to provide funds for his equipment for foreign service, he now wrote his "Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe," and, leaving Dr. Milner's, became a contributor to Hamilton's "Critical Review," a rival to Griffiths's "Monthly." In these days he lived in a garret in Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, with a single chair in the room, and a window seat for himself if a visitor occupied the chair. For some unknown reason the Coromandel appointment was withdrawn, and failure in an examination as a hospital-mate left no hope except in literature.