There is no particular reason, however wayward his studies, to question that Goldsmith was, in the lighter order of that day, a qualified physician. When he landed in England from the Continent in all probability he had secreted in some loose pocket a foreign medical diploma. Besides this certificate, granting him the right to practise, but not the power to succeed, as a doctor, he carried other papers--parts of poems, essays, notes for plays, and perhaps even then the opening of a novel. He set great store on these precious papers. He may have lost his diploma. He became an usher in Dr. Milner's school at Peckham. He hated this work. In _The Vicar of Wakefield_, in a few striking sentences, he shows the humiliations of the position. Wherever we find him, he is always the same in the matter of worldly prudence, and in his fondness for making those about him bright. He spent his salary in giving treats to his pupils. The kindly schoolmaster's wife said that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. Dear Noll was full of fun and fine humour for the boys about him, doing all he could for their delight, and loving some like a brother. When years had passed and he had attained his fame, he met one of his old scholars, knew him in an instant, and although the lad had become a married man, was anxious, as in the old days, to treat him at an apple-stall. Then suddenly he said: "Sam, have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam? Have you got an engraving?" Sam had not yet procured the picture. "Sam," said Goldsmith, "if your picture had been published, I should not have waited an hour without having it." Despite his pranks with his pupils, this time was no happy period. The unpleasantness of the office and the severities of the scorned and profitless labours weighed sorely on him. Every collection of schoolboys has its share of ineffaceable snobs. These were a trial to the teacher. Amid his practical jokes with William the footboy, and one merry-maker and another, there is still an underlying earnestness in all and a reverence for the pure sentiment of the heart. At this time, when asked whom he held the best commentator on the Scriptures, Goldsmith replied very simply, "Common Sense." The principal of the school, Dr. Milner, was one of the most sincere of Goldsmith's friends. At the house of this good man, Griffiths, the publisher, meeting Goldsmith, detected his abilities at once, and found him the first opening for his literary labours. He gave him mere hack-work on the _Monthly Review_. This was the Whig journal of the day, and opposed later by its Tory rival, the _Critical Review_, edited by Smollet, also physician, novelist, and historian. Leaving Peckham, Goldsmith now lived for a while over the shop of his employer in Paternoster Row, gaining shelter of a sort and board and lodging.