51 
walk through Europe. He visited Flanders, France, Germany, 
Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself chiefly by his 
flute and occasionally by engaging in public debates at 
convents and universities in exchange for lodging and enter- 
tainment. In 1756 he landed at Dover, mentally and 
spiritually enriched, but in material destitution. During 
his wanderings he had sent to his brother Henry, in Ireland, 
the first sketch of his poem, “ The Traveller,” and by his 
own account received the degree of M.B. at some continental 
university unspecified. 
He next successively adopted the roles of strolling player, 
apothecary’s assistant, poor physician, press reader to Samuel 
Richardson in London, and usher at a private school in 
Peckham. Lastly and unwillingly he drifted into literature, 
binding himself for a year to supply the bookseller Griffiths 
with copy of all descriptions for his “ Monthly Magazine.” 
The correction his work received from his master’s wife 
became intolerable at the end of five months, and we next 
find him as a successful applicant for the post of surgeon 
to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel. This 
appointment came to nothing ; and an application he made 
at Surgeons’ Hall for the office of hospital mate proved 
unsuccessful. 
In 1759 in a wretched room in Green Arbour Court, Bishop 
Percy discovered Goldsmith writing “ An Inquiry into the 
Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.” It is characteristic 
of Goldsmith that his comprehensive title, with its suggestion 
of twenty volumes, is followed only by a pamphlet of some 
thirty pages containing his impressions of contemporary 
literature. He assumes the decline of European letters 
(literature being apparently in a perennial decline) and attri- 
butes it to the tendency of scholars to forsake creative art 
for criticism. 
The publication of his “ Inquiry ” gave Goldsmith a market 
value, and a demand arose and spread for his work as a maga- 
zine writer. Towards the end of 1759 he was engaged to 
write a series of periodical essays which he called “ The Bee.” 
The magazine closed with its eighth number, but the failure 
caused Goldsmith no depression ; he had no hesitation in 
ascribing it not to the quality of the matter itself, but to 
lack of discernment in the people who failed to appreciate 
and purchase. Shortly afterwards Goldsmith began his 
series of letters which, in 1762, were published in book form 
as “ The Citizen of the World,” and in which, in the character 
of a Chinaman bitten with love of Western travel, he satirises 
