He commenced his travels about February, 1755. “A good voice,” adopting his own account of an earlier adventurer, “and a trifling skill in music, were the only finances he had to support an undertaking so extensive.” Thus he journeyed, and at night sang at the doors of peasants’ houses, to get himself a lodging. Once or twice, he “attempted to play to people of fashion,” but they despised his performance, and never rewarded him even with a trifle. We are told by Bishop Percy, that he reached Padua, and visited all the northern parts of Italy, returning, on foot, through France, and landing at Dover, about the beginning of the war, in 1756. We may believe his own assurance, that he fought his way homewards, examining mankind with near eyes, and seeing both sides of the picture. He appeared in London, without means or interest. England, he complained, was a country, where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep a man unemployed. With much difficulty he obtained the situation of usher at a school. Johnson did not remember the occupation with a fiercer disgust; and the redolent French teacher, papering his curls at night, was a frequent spectre of his memory. A migration from the school-room to the chemist’s shop slightly improved his condition. Better days were coming. By the aid of an Edinburgh acquaintance, Dr. Sleigh, and other friends, he was “set up” as a practitioner at Bankside, Southwark, where, in his pleasant confession, he got plenty of patients, but no fees. A physician, Dr. Farr, who had known him in Scotland, thus describes his appearance:--“He called upon me one morning, before I was up, and, on entering the room, I recognized my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty, full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick’s farce of ‘Lethe.’ On this occasion he read portions of a ‘Tragedy,’ and talked of a journey to decipher the inscriptions on the Written Mountains.” In later days, when writing an “Essay on the advantages to be derived from sending a judicious traveller into Asia,” Goldsmith professed to feel the difficulty of choosing a proper person for such an enterprise, and indicated the qualifications demanded:--“He should be a man of a philosophical turn, one apt to deduce consequences of general utility from particular occurrences--neither swollen with pride, nor hardened by prejudice--neither wedded to one particular system, nor instructed only in one particular science--neither wholly a botanist, nor wholly an antiquarian; his mind should be tinctured with miscellaneous knowledge, and his manners humanized by an intercourse with men. He should be, in some measure, an enthusiast to the design; fond of travelling, from a rapid imagination and an innate love of change; furnished with a body capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified at danger.”