Too proud, however, to give
up his journey, and too shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend's
liberality, he determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and
good luck for the means of getting forward; and it is said that he actually
set off on a tour of the Continent, in February, 1775, with but one spare
shirt, a flute, and a single guinea.
"Blessed," says one of his biographers, "with a good constitution, an
adventurous spirit, and with that thoughtless, or, perhaps, happy
disposition which takes no care for to-morrow, he continued his travels for
a long time in spite of innumerable privations." In his amusing narrative
of the adventures of a "Philosophic Vagabond" in the Vicar of Wakefield, we
find shadowed out the expedients he pursued. "I had some knowledge of
music, with a tolerable voice; I now turned what was once my amusement into
a present means of subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of
Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very
merry, for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants.
Whenever I approached a peasant's house toward nightfall, I played one of
my merriest tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence
for the next day; but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to
entertain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance
odious, and never made me any return for my endeavors to please them.
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