In 1750 he had an opportunity to visit Hungary with Major General Vishnevsky and he gladly took advantage of it. Then for a while he was a singer in the Orthodox Church of Pest. He travelled extensively around the neighborhood of Pest, to Vienna, Bratislava and the neighboring regions and he seems also to have wandered on foot through Poland, Prussia, Germany and north Italy. During this time he seems to have interested himself in the classical authors of Greece and Rome and in the writings of the Church Fathers. He also learned Greek, Latin, German and Hebrew. Yet we can be very sure that he was more interested in the world and the people whom he met than he was in serious and intensive study from books. He finally returned home and then for about ten years lived almost the life of a recluse, endeavoring to understand his own character and feelings. Next he had an opportunity to teach poetry in the seminary at Pereyaslav but he obstinately refused to change his convictions and he declared that for the Ukrainian (Church Slavonic) language, the accentual system was better suited than was the syllabic system employed by the French and Poles. As a result he lost the post. He served for a while as a private tutor and lost that in consequence of too severe a scolding of the boy whom he was teaching. Then came a long series of offers. In 1759 he was asked to teach poetry at the College of Kharkiv and was compelled to leave because the bishop wanted him to enter a monastery. In 1764 he visited Kiev and in 1766 he was asked to teach ethics at the college of Kharkiv again but he was soon forced out because of the strangeness of his ideas. From then until his death in 1794, he lived the life of a wandering scholar, welcomed wherever he might be, whether on the big estates of the nobles or in the poor huts of the peasants. He cared nothing for material success and little more for shelter. His death was characteristic of his life. He was visiting on an estate and at dinner was never more cheerful. A little later he disappeared and the host found him in the garden digging a hole. He remarked jokingly that it was where he wished to be buried. No one paid any attention or thought it strange when he disappeared after supper. It was not until the next night when he had not appeared that the host went to his room and found him dead, November 9, 1794.