natural history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to
study physic. He left that celebrated university, the third
university at which he had resided, in his twenty-seventh year,
without a degree, with the merest smattering of medical
knowledge, and with no property but his clothes and his flute.
His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot
through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which
everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured
for him a supper and a bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His
musical performances, indeed, were not to the taste of the
Italians; but he contrived to live on the alms which he obtained
at the gates of the convents. It should, however, be observed
that the stories which he told about this part of his life ought
to be received with great caution; for strict veracity was never
one of his virtues; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate in
narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he
talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so
regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was present at
a most interesting conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle,
and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now it is
certain that Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues of Paris
during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the Continent.

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, without
a friend, and without a calling. He had, indeed, if his own
unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained from the University
of Padua a doctor's degree; but this dignity proved utterly
useless to him. In England his flute was not in request: there
were no convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series
of desperate expedients. He turned strolling player; but his