It was not until he reached Holland that those adorable Irish brains of his realised that he who teaches English to a Dutchman must first know Dutch.
Goldsmith, who spent his life in doing characteristic things--few men have done more--when once he had determined to go to Holland, took a passage in a vessel bound for Bordeaux.

At Newcastle-on-Tyne, however, on going ashore to be merry, he was arrested as a Jacobite and thrown into prison for a fortnight.

The result was that the ship sailed without him.

It was just as well for him and for us, for it sank at the mouth of the Garonne.

In 1755, however, he was in Leyden, although by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city we do not know.
He lost little time in giving his Uncle Contarine an account of his impressions of Holland and its people.