Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/189

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GOLDSMITH. 185 two days at sea, when a storm drove them into Newcastle upon Tyne, where the passengers landed to refresh after the fatigue of their voyage. They were sitting very mer rily together, when a file of grenadiers entered with fixed bayonets, and put them under arrest. Goldsmith's fellow passengers, it appeared, had been into Scotland to enlist soldiers for Louis XV. It was in vain that he protested his innocence; he was conveyed with the others to prison, where he was detained a fortnight, and even then with difficulty obtained his liberation. Meanwhile the vessel had sailed; a fortunate, though provoking circumstance for our poet: she was wrecked at the mouth of the Ga ronne, and every soul on board perished. By a vessel then on the point of sailing, he arrived at Rotterdam in nine days, whence he proceeded to Leyden. Here he resided about a year, studying anatomy under the celebrated Albinus, and chemistry under Gambius; but a propensity for gaming, which he had unfortunately contracted, plunged him into continual difficulties. So little, indeed, was he aware of the value of money, that even the sum which he borrowed to enable him to leave Holland, was expended on some costly Dutch flower roots, intended as a present to his uncle; and he is be lieved to have set out upon his travels with only one clean shirt, and no money in his pocket. He had, however, “a knack at hoping;” and, in a situation in which any other individual would have laid his account with starving, he undertook the tour of Europe. It is generally understood, that in the “History of a Philosophic Vagabond,” (Vicar of Wakefield, chapter 20,) he has related many of his own adventures. He played tolerably well on the German flute, which from an amuse ment became at times the means of his subsistence. “Whenever I approached a peasant's house, towards night-fall,” says he, “I played one of my most merry tunes, and that generally procured me not only a lodging but subsistence for the next day; but, in truth,” his con stant expression, “I must own, whenever I attempted to