After remaining with them a short time, his father found him, and brought him back to his studies.
On leaving college, he travelled on the Continent.

At Rome he wrote his first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English Jesuit and verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb quotes in one of his Essays.

It is supposed that he made his first acquaintance with Milton in Italy.
At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject of another satire.

The Abbot pretended to skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosticate the fortunes of people from the character of their handwriting.

At what period he returned from his travels we are not aware.