be no longer within
reach of detection. In a letter to his uncle he relates that, before
going to Holland, he had embarked in a vessel for Bordeaux, that the
ship was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that he was there
seized on suspicion of being engaged with the rebels, and thrown into
prison; that the vessel, meanwhile proceeding on her voyage, was wrecked
at the mouth of the Garonne, where all the crew perished; and that, at
the end of a fortnight, being liberated, he set sail in a vessel bound
for Holland, and in nine days arrived safely at Rotterdam. After a
residence of about a twelve-month at Leyden, he was involved in
difficulties, occasioned by his love of gambling, a ridiculous
inclination that adhered to him for the remainder of his life. He now
set out with the resolution of visiting the principal parts of the
Continent on foot; and, according to his own report of himself, made his
way by a variety of stratagems, sometimes recruiting his finances by the
acquisition of small sums proposed in the foreign universities to public
disputants; at others, securing himself a hospitable reception by the
exercise of a moderate share of skill in playing the flute--his
"tuneless pipe," as he calls it, in that passage of The Traveller, where
he alludes to this method of supplying his wants.

Thus, if we are to believe him, he passed through the Netherlands,
France, and Germany, into the Swiss Cantons; and in that country, so
well suited to awaken the feelings of a poet, he composed a part of The
Traveller, and sent it to his elder brother, a clergyman in Ireland.
Continuing his journey into Italy, he visited Venice, Verona, Florence,
and Padua; and having spent six months at the University in the last
mentioned city, returned through France to England in 1756. From his
Inquiry into the Present State of Learning, we collect, that when at
Paris he attended the Chemical Lectures of Rouelle.

In the meantime his uncle had died; and he found himself, on his arrival
in London, so destitute even of a friend to whom he could refer for a
recommendation, that he with difficulty obtained first the place of an
usher to a school, and afterwards that of assistant in the laboratory of
a chemist. At last, meeting with Doctor Sleigh, formerly his fellow-student
at Edinburgh, he was enabled, by the kindness of this worthy physician,
who appears in so amiable a light as the patron of Barry, in the Memoirs
of that painter, to ava