they
stood at a hotel-window in Lille, is so incredibly foolish that it
needs scarcely be repeated here; unless to repeat the warning that, if
ever anybody was so dense as not to see the humour of that piece of
acting, one had better look with grave suspicion on every one of the
stories told about Goldsmith's vanities and absurdities.

Even with such pleasant companions, the trip to Paris was not
everything he had hoped. "I find," he wrote to Reynolds from Paris,
"that travelling at twenty and at forty are very different things. I
set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on
the Continent so good as when I formerly left it. One of our chief
amusements here is scolding at everything we meet with, and praising
every thing and every person we left at home. You may judge therefore
whether your name is not frequently bandied at table among us. To tell
you the truth, I never thought I could regret your absence so much, as
our various mortifications on the road have often taught me to do. I
could tell you of disasters and adventures without number, of our
lying in barns, and of my being half poisoned with a dish of green
peas, of our quarrelling with postilions and being cheated by our
landladies, but I reserve all this for a happy hour which I expect to
share with you upon my return." The fact is that although Goldsmith
had seen a good deal of foreign travel, the manner of his making the
grand tour in his youth was not such as to fit him for acting as
courier to a party of ladies. However, if they increased his troubles,
they also shared them; and in this same letter he bears explicit
testimony to the value of their companionship. "I will soon be among
you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was before.
And yet I must say, that if anything could make France pleasant, the
very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I
could say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter
before I send it away." Mrs. Horneck, Little Comedy, the Jessamy
Bride, and the Professor of Ancient History at the Royal Academy, all
returned to London; the last to resume his round of convivialities at
taverns, excursions into regions of more fashionable amusement along
with Reynolds, and task-work aimed at the pockets of the booksellers.

It was a happy-go-lucky sort of life. We find him now showing off his
fine clothes and his sword and wig at Ranelagh Gardens, and again shut
up