tate of Polite
Learning" Leyden had to suffer. Goldsmith laid about him with no gentle
hand. "Holland, at first view, appears to have some pretensions to
polite learning. It may be regarded as the great emporium, not less
of literature than of every other commodity. Here, though destitute of
what may be properly called a language of their own, all the languages
are understood, cultivated and spoken. All useful inventions in arts,
and new discoveries in science, are published here almost as soon
as at the places which first produced them. Its individuals have the
same faults, however, with the Germans, of making more use of their
memory than their judgment. The chief employment of their literati is
to criticise, or answer, the new performances which appear elsewhere.

"A dearth of wit in France or England naturally produces a scarcity
in Holland. What Ovid says of Echo may be applied here,

----'nec reticere loquenti,
Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit'----

they wait till something new comes out from others; examine its merits
and reject it, or make it reverberate through the rest of Europe.

"After all, I know not whether they should be allowed any national
character for polite learning. All their taste is derived to them
from neighbouring nations, and that in a language not their own. They
somewhat resemble their brokers, who trade for immense sums without
having any capital."

Goldsmith did not finish there. His observations on the Continent
served him, with a frugality that he did not otherwise practise,
at least thrice. He used them in the "Inquiry into Polite Learning,"
he used them in the story of the Philosophic Vagabond in the _Vicar
of Wakefield_, and still again in "The Traveller". This is the summary
of Holland in that poem:--

To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cul