for instance, teach one of the young ladies at home to pronounce the "Whoar wull I gong," with a becoming widening of mouth, and I'll lay my life they'll wound every hearer. We have no such character here as a coquet, but, alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago, I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's, (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover) when the Duchess of H. (that fair who sacrificed her beauty to ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot; her battered husband, or more properly the guardian of her charms, sat beside her. Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults in her faultless form.

-"For my part," says the first, "I think, what I always thought, that the Duchess has too much of the red in her complexion."-" Madam, I am of your opinion," says the second; " I think her face has a palish cast, too much on the delicate order.". "And let me tell you," adds the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up so as scarcely to admit a pea, “ that the Duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth." At this every lady drew her mouth, as if going to pronounce the letter P. But how ill,

up

my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women, with whom I have scarcely any correspondence? There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here; and 'tis as certain they have handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and a poor man is society only. for himself; and such society the world lets me enjoy

joy in great abundance. Fortune has given you circumstances, and nature a person to look charming in the eyes of the fair. Nor do I envy my dear Bob such blessings while I may sit down and laugh at the world, and at myself the most ridiculous object in it. But you see I am grown downright splenetic, and perhaps the fit may continue till I hear from you. And yet I know you can't send much news from Ireland, but such as it is, send it all. Every thing you write will be agreeable to

Your's, &c.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

When Goldsmith had attended the lectures, and gone through the usual courses at Edinburgh, he, with the consent of his beneficent uncle, was about to remove to Leyden, in order to complete his medical studies, when his departure is said to have been accelerated by a debt he had too generously but imprudently contracted, by being surety for a fellowstudent. For this he was arrested, but soon released by the liberal assistance of two friends, Mr. Laughlane Maclane and Dr. Sleigh, who were then in college.* In his voyage to Holland he met with a

*This would not have deserved mention here, but that in the former memoirs of Dr. Goldsmith it is retailed at length, and said to have happened at Sunderland. But what occurred to him at Newcastle (as described below) is apparently the occasion of the mistake.

very singular adventure, and had a very narrow escape from shipwreck, as appears from the following letter, in which he introduces his remarks on that country.

TO THE

REV. THOMAS CONTARINE.

DEAR SIR,

Leyden, (the date wanting.)

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. Some time after the receipt of your last, I embarked for Bourdeaux, on board a Scotch ship, called the St. Andrews, 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 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We all went a-shore to refresh us, after the fatigue 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:

open: enters a serjeant 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 interposed 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.

"You 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 surprized 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

* This proposal seems absurd, but it may account for the report mentioned by some of his biographers, of his having been, on his putting to shore, arrested for a debt contracted at Edinburgh, &c.

the

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 exactly 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 wellclothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or 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.

بية

"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