00000112.htm

CHAP. V.j TEAVELS.

least some small portion of these travels he acted as com-
panion to a young man of large fortune (nephew to a ^m-
pawnbroker, and articled-clerk to an attorney) ;* and there
are passages in the philosophic vagabond's adventures,
which, if they did not themselves suggest the assertion
(as they certainly supply the language) of those first
biographers, would tend to bear it out. " I was to be the
" young gentleman's governor, with a proviso that lie should
" always be permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a
" fortune of two hundred thousand pounds, left him by an
" uncle in the West Indies; and all his questions on the
"road were, how much money could be saved. Such
" curiosities as could be seen for nothing, he was ready
" enough to look at; but if the sight of them was to be
" paid for, he usually asserted that he had been told they
" were not worth seeing; and he never paid a bill that he
" would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling '
" was."

Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so
thrifty a young gentleman, but he certainly seems to liave
been present, whether as a student or a mere visitor, at the
fashionable chemical lectures of the day (" I have seen, as
" bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of
"Bouelle as gracing the court at Versailles "); t to have
seen and admired the celebrated actress Mademoiselle

* Annual Register, xvii. 30. Percy Memoir, 35, 36. I may here remark that,
some thirty years after Goldsmith's death, the Annual Register printed what
purported to be "a letter of the late Doctor Goldsmith, when about twenty-five
'' years old, to a young gentleman, whom he had for a short time instructed in
" different branches of L-aruing," which is so manifestly not genuine that I should not
have thought it even worth this mention, if Mr. Mitford had not strangely given
it some authority by inserting it at the close of his sketch of Goldsmith's life,
prefixed to the Aldine edition of the Poems,

'Y Polite Learning, ohap. vii.



	CHAP. V.j TEAVELS. least some small portion of these travels he acted as com- panion to a young man of large fortune (nephew to a ^m- pawnbroker, and articled-clerk to an attorney) ;* and there are passages in the philosophic vagabond's adventures, which, if they did not themselves suggest the assertion (as they certainly supply the language) of those first biographers, would tend to bear it out. " I was to be the " young gentleman's governor, with a proviso that lie should " always be permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a " fortune of two hundred thousand pounds, left him by an " uncle in the West Indies; and all his questions on the "road were, how much money could be saved. Such " curiosities as could be seen for nothing, he was ready " enough to look at; but if the sight of them was to be " paid for, he usually asserted that he had been told they " were not worth seeing; and he never paid a bill that he " would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling ' " was." Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so thrifty a young gentleman, but he certainly seems to liave been present, whether as a student or a mere visitor, at the fashionable chemical lectures of the day (" I have seen, as " bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of "Bouelle as gracing the court at Versailles "); t to have seen and admired the celebrated actress Mademoiselle

	* Annual Register, xvii. 30. Percy Memoir, 35, 36. I may here remark that, some thirty years after Goldsmith's death, the Annual Register printed what purported to be "a letter of the late Doctor Goldsmith, when about twenty-five '' years old, to a young gentleman, whom he had for a short time instructed in " different branches of L-aruing," which is so manifestly not genuine that I should not have thought it even worth this mention, if Mr. Mitford had not strangely given it some authority by inserting it at the close of his sketch of Goldsmith's life, prefixed to the Aldine edition of the Poems, 'Y Polite Learning, ohap. vii.