ithout 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 face and figure were ill suited to the boards
even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with
phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made
its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the
miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought
it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack;
but he soon found the new yoke more galling than the old one, and was
glad to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appointment in
the service of the East India Company; but the appointment was speedily
revoked. Why it was revoked we are not told. The subject was one on
which he never liked to talk. It is probable that he was incompetent to
perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself at Surgeon's
Hall for