“Seven men and me were one day on shore, and the following evening, as we were all verry merry, the room door bursts open; enters a Sergeant and Twelve Grenadiers with their bayonets screwd, and puts us all under the King’s arrest. It seems my Company were Scotch men in the French service. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence: however, I remained in prison with the rest a Fortnight and with difficulty got off even then. Dr. Sr. keep this all a secret, or at least say it was for debt: for it were once known at the university I should hardly get a degree.” As to his future movements, Goldsmith says in this letter from Leyden: “Physic is by no means taught so well as in Edinburgh.... I am not certain how long my stay here will be: however I expect to have the happiness of seeing you at Kidmore, if I can, next March.” Oliver describes in much humorous detail the scenery of the country and characteristics of the Dutch people. He says: “The downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in Nature. Upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cockd narrow-leav’d hat, lacd with black ribon: no coat but seven waistcoats and nine pairs of breeches so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well cloathed vegetable is now fit to see company or make love: but what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite: why she wears a large friez cap with a deal of flanders lace and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats. Is it not surprizing how things shoud ever come close enough to make it a match?” Bishop Percy prints the whole of this letter, except that he delicately bowdlerised one or two phrases in it, and from the Percy version it has reappeared in every one of the succeeding biographies. EARLY LETTERS FROM LONDON.