CHAP. IV.] PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE.
tions for travel, and, confirming his intentions as to Leyden
in the following winter, says that he shall pass the intervening Mi}-26>
months in Paris, the same feeling is not less apparent: " Let
" me here acknowledge," he says, " the humility of the station
"in which you found me; let me tell how I was despised by
"most, and hateful to myself. Poverty, hopeless poverty,
" was my lot,. and Melancholy was beginning to make me
" her own. "When you . . . . " This good man did not live
to know the entire good he had done, or that his own name
would probably live with the memory of it as long as the
English language lasted. " Thou best of men! " exclaims
his nephew in the third of these letters, to which I shall
presently make larger reference, " may Heaven guard and
" preserve you, and those you love !" It is the care of
Heaven that actions worthy of itself should in the doing
find reward, nor have to wait for it even on the thanks and
prayers of such a heart as Goldsmith's. Another twenty
pounds are acknowledged on the eve of departure from
Edinburgh, as the last he will ever draw for. It was the
last, of which we have record. But Goldsmith had drawn
his last breath before he forgot his uncle Contarine,
The old vicissitudes attended him at this new move in his
game of life. Land rats and water rats were at his heels
as he quitted Scotland ; bailiffs hunted him for security
given to a fellow-student,* and shipwreck he only escaped
by a fortnight's imprisonment on a false political charge.
Bound for Leyden, and his purpose to interpose Paris for some
reason or other laid aside, with characteristic carelessness
or oddity he had secured his passage in a ship bound for
* " For this he "wus arrested, but soon released by the liberal assistance of the
" friends, Mr, LaucHin Macleane and Dr. Sleigh, who were then in college,"
Memoir, 26.