at befell the wayfarer as he trudged from
country to country, a diary of the odd humours and fancies that must
have occurred to him in his solitary pilgrimages, would be of quite
inestimable value; but even the letters that Goldsmith wrote home from
time to time are lost; while _The Traveller_ consists chiefly of a
series of philosophical reflections on the government of various
states, more likely to have engaged the attention of a Fleet-Street
author, living in an atmosphere of books, than to have occupied the
mind of a tramp anxious about his supper and his night's lodging.
Boswell says he "disputed" his way through Europe. It is much more
probable that he begged his way through Europe. The romantic version,
which has been made the subject of many a charming picture, is that he
was entertained by the peasantry whom he had delighted with his
playing on the flute. It is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose
imagination had been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg
had as a young man really passed through France, Germany, and Holland
in this Orpheus-like manner, may have put a flute in his pocket when
he left Leyden; but it is far from safe to assume, as is generally
done, that Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures described
in Chapter XX. of the _Vicar of Wakefield_. It is the more to be
regretted that we have no authentic record of these devious
wanderings, that by this time Goldsmith had acquired, as is shown in
other letters, a polished, easy, and graceful style, with a very
considerable faculty of humorous observation. Those ingenious letters
to his uncle (they usually included a little hint about money) were,
in fact, a trifle too literary both in substance and in form; we could
even now, looking at them with a pardonable curiosity, have spared a
little of their formal antithesis for some more precise information
about the writer and his surroundings.

The strangest thing about this strange journey all over Europe was
the failure of Goldsmith to pick up even a common and ordinary
acquaintance with the familiar facts of natural history. The ignorance
on this point of the author of the _Animated Nature_ was a constant
subject of jest among Goldsmith's friends. They declared he could not
tell the difference between any two sorts of barndoor fowl until he
saw them cooked and on the table. But it may be said prematurely here
that, even when he is wrong as to his facts or his sweeping
generalisati