THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 '' event Mnteiu" 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, II. A. 
 
 LIFE OF SMOLLETT.
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID HANNAY 
 
 LONDON 
 WALTER SCOTT 
 
 :_} WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1SS7 
 
 {All rii^hts reserved.)
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i The family of Bonhill ; Smollett's parentage ; his schooling at 
 i Dumbarton ; with Dr. Gordon at Glasgow ; writes a 
 
 , tragedy ; starts for London ; how far was Roderick Ran- ^ 
 
 idom, Smollett ? ; anecdotes ; his early fondness for 
 sarcasm . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 First year in London ; the fortunes of his tragedy ; patronage 
 of Lyttelton ; grievances agains': the managers ; the merits 
 of the "Regicide" ; surgeon's mate in Sir Chaloner Ogle's 
 squadron ; how put into the navy ; character of the sea- 
 life of the time; expedition to Carlhagena, 1741; its 
 failure; Smollett's account of the expedition in the " Ccjrn- 
 pendium of \'oyagcs," quoted . •. . . . .21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Smollett in Jamaica; Miss Anne Lascelles ; Smollett's mar- 
 riage; in London again 1744 ; in Downing Street; attempts 
 to obtain practice ; in the '45 year ; Dr. Carlyle of 
 Inveresk quoted ; the news of Culloden ; Smollett's 
 opinions on the suppression of the Jacobite rising ; the
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "Tears of Scotland"; anecdote; " Advice " and "Re- 
 proof" satires, 1746 ; another try at the stage ; " Alceste " 
 and misdeeds of Rich ; Smollett's position in 1748 and pro- 
 gress up to that year ; the stage and literature ; beginning 
 of busy years 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The three first novels — " Roderick Randjin," "Percgiine 
 Pickle," and " Count Fathom" ; their similarity; sources of 
 inspiration; LeSage, and the Spaniards ; method of Smol- 
 lett ; his interpretation of life and literary aim ; his use of his 
 own experience ; how illustrated by " Roderick Random ; " 
 the love scenes ; the "brutality" of Smollett; how far^ 
 can he justly be accused of it ? ; his personalities ; visit to 
 France; Jacobite exiles ; Mark Akenside ; "Peregrine 
 Pickle," how differs from "Roderick Random"; "Fer- 
 dinand Count Fathcm " r^ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The sailor in literature ; Smolktt's unique position as desciiber 
 of sea-life ; his view of the navy of the time, how far sup- 
 ported by evidence ; Shelvocke's voyage and Anscn's 
 experience; II. M.S. 77^//Wtv-— Captain Oakum, Captain 
 Whiffle, and Mr. Midshipman Crampley ; Lieutenant 
 Thomas Bowling ; his character, excellence of the picture; 
 his speech compared with Captain Best's ; Captain Walton's 
 famous despatch; the garrison in "Peregrine Pickle"; 
 Rabelaisean figure of Trunnion ; the change in his cha- 
 racter ; Hatchway and Pipes ...... 92 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Beginning of new period in Smollett's life, 1752 to 1763 ; his 
 degree of M.D. ; renewed attempts to secure practice in 
 Bath or London ; their failure ; establishes himself in 
 Chelsea circa 1752; his multifarious occupations; his ^
 
 CO A TENTS. 9 
 
 PAGB 
 
 relations to the literary life of his time: why so liule is 
 known of him; his picture of himself and his dependent 
 hacks in " Humphrey Clinker " ; Dr. Carlyle's account of 
 him in 175S; list of his occupations between 1752 and 1763 ; 
 quarrel with Peter Gordon ; trial and compromise in 
 court ; Mr. Hume Campbell ; visit to Scotland ; anec- 
 dote ; quarrel with Admiral Knowles ; appeal to Wilkes ; 
 conduct of the Admiral ; Smollett's imprisonment ; the 
 History ; its character ; the Translations ; Don Qui.xote ; 
 uncertain share of Smollett in other translations ; The 
 Critical Revinv, and The British Magazine ; " The Re- 
 prisal " ; reconciliation with Garrick ; " Sir Launcelot 
 Greaves"; "log-rolling" , . . . . .111 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 The Bri.'on, 1762-63 ; Smollett's one experience of political 
 journalism; figurative history of The Briton from "Ad- 
 ventures of an Atom " ; death of his daughter ; visit to 
 France and Italy ; return home ; Bath and Scotland ; the 
 Travels; " The Adventure of an Atom"; increasing ill- 
 health ; application for a consulate ; leaves England for 
 last time ; reaches Leghorn by way of Lucca and Pisa ; 
 " Humphrey Clinker " ; Smollett's death ; " Ode to Inde- 
 pendence" ; Mrs. Smollett survives him in great poverty; 
 uncertainty as to date of her death ; Smollett's position in 
 literature ......... 145 
 
 INDEX l5i
 
 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT was born in 1721, 
 the younger son of a younger son of a Scotch 
 laird, in that part of Dumbartonshire, known as the 
 Lennox. The exact date of his birth is unknown ; but 
 he was baptized on the 19th of March, and was doubtless 
 born in that month. His family were gentlefolk. He 
 was a gentleman of coat-armour, and in France would 
 have been counted noble. The SmoUetts of Bonhill 
 belonged, however, to use the French phrase, rather to 
 the 7iobksse de robe than to the noblesse d'epee. The 
 novelist's grandflither, Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, 
 was for part of his life a judge in the Commissary Court, 
 and, though the family gave, like other Scotch houses, 
 many of its younger sons to the noble profession of arms, 
 most of its members were lawyers or men of business. 
 The antiquity of the family was not great, but their 
 position as gentry was so clearly recognized, that Sir 
 James Smollett "intermarried" with a daughter of 
 McAulay of Ardencaple, who was no less a dignitary than 
 heritable bailie of the Lennox. He — that is Sir James —
 
 12 LIFE OF 
 
 was an active and successful man, not only as a lawyer and 
 laird, but as a politician, for he was sent by the burghers 
 of Dumbarton to several of the old Scots' Parliaments, 
 from 1685 onwards. Finally, he was named one of the 
 commissioners for carrying through the Act of Union with 
 England in 1707. This event put an end to his political 
 career, and he spent the last years of his life in mana- 
 ging, and, as it would seem, adding to his patrimonial 
 estate of Bonhill. Sir James was a Whig and a Pres- 
 byterian. There is nothing to show that he in any way 
 sympathized with the wilder and fiercer sections of his 
 party and his Church in the bad days before the 
 revolution, but he may be guessed to have been a some- 
 what dour and hard-fisted Scot of the worldly religious 
 type. 
 
 Sir James so far enjoyed the blessings promised to the 
 just man that he had a family of children, four of them 
 sons, who he might hope would carry on his name and 
 h's works. The blessing was not however unmixed. 
 The eldest son. Tobias, after serving in Lord Strath more's 
 regiment, died young, leaving only a daughter. The 
 second, James, and the third, George, who were lawyers, 
 do not seem to have been successful men. James fell 
 into trouble and died before his father. The old laird 
 must have had some ground of complaint against the 
 third son, George, for when he settled his estate, he left 
 it, firstly, to his grandson James, the son of James, and 
 then to his grandson James, the son of George, although 
 this one of his sons was alive at that time. There is no 
 mention in the will of his fourth son Archibald, or of 
 Archibald's children, unquestionably because he had
 
 SMOLLETT. 13 
 
 given the old laird, what, from his point of view at least, 
 was very reasonable cause of offence. 
 
 Archibald Smollett is said to have been of weak health ; 
 he was unable to follow any profession, which must of 
 itself have been a sad grievance to Sir James. Scotchmen 
 of his type, or of the type to which he may be guessed to 
 have belonged, have very little toleration for weakness. 
 They are a little apt to think it at least first cousin to 
 worthlessness. Not content with being incapable of in- 
 creasing the family fortune, Archibald Smollett burdened 
 the estate widi a portionless wife and three children. 
 There is no evidence that old Sir James was particularly 
 harsh to his son for this offence, but he must have been 
 a very exceptional lawyer and laird if he did not feel 
 offended. From the sentimental point of view Archibald 
 was no doubt fully justified, but the laird would not im- 
 probably point out to him that the estate was not a matter 
 of sentiment. He did not behave with the inhumanity 
 shown by Roderick Random's grandfather. He did not 
 turn his son out of doors, though he may have used strong 
 language. He supplied his improvident son with a suffi- 
 ciency calculated on a rather austere scale. Archibald 
 was allowed to occupy a house at Dalquhurn on the faipily 
 estate, with a modest pension, and with leave to make 
 what he could out of a small farm, there to try if he 
 could obtain those means of subsistence for his wife and 
 family which it would have been more prudent in him to 
 have acquired at an earlier period. 
 
 This Archibald Smollett and his wife, Barbara Cunning- 
 ham, (be it remembered that the wife did not legally 
 lose her own name in Scotland, which is a country with
 
 14 LIFE OF 
 
 a legal system based on the Roman), were the parents 
 of Tobias Smollett, the novelist, who was the youngest 
 of their three children. 
 
 The father died soon after the boy's birth in 1721, 
 leaving his widow and three children to subsist on the 
 charity of the family. If this v/as not generous, it was 
 at least sufficient. Old Sir James and the two Jameses 
 who successively inherited Bonhill provided for the 
 subsistence of Barbara Cunningham in a decent way. 
 It would appear that she was allowed to continue to 
 live at Dalquhurn after her husband's death. Mr. 
 Chambers has found from tlie family records that, in 
 1735, a sum of 400 merks, that is, :/^2 2 4s. 5d., was 
 yearly assigned for the support of Archibald Smollett's 
 children " until they are twelve years old." This does 
 not sound much, but it was a larger sum in Scotland 
 during the first half of the eighteenth century than it 
 would be now. It was, in fact, precisely half the jointure 
 secured to the widow of old Sir James, and was probably 
 thought to be an ample provision for three children, 
 who ought never to have plagued the family by their 
 existence. Archibald's widow would doubtless be left 
 to make what she could out of the fields round Dal- 
 quhurn. The children were possibly brought up on 
 a little oatmeal, but their youth would not therefore 
 be harder than that of many hundreds of Scotch 
 children of equally good birth in those times. With 
 a house, a small sum of ready money, a field to keep 
 a cow and the command of oatmeal, a thrifty Scotch- 
 woman would have no difficulty in bringing up her 
 children in health, and even in giving them as much
 
 SMOLLETT. 15 
 
 training as would fit them to make a fight for themselves 
 in the world. Neither did the Bonhill family withdraw 
 their help when the children were twelve years old. 
 The eldest son, James (the frequency of this name in 
 the Smollett kin is very confusing), received a com- 
 mission in the army, no doubt by the family influence. 
 He rose to the command of a company, and is said 
 to have gained the character of a good officer, when he 
 was drowned at sea in the shipwreck of a transport, 
 off the coast of America. The second child, a daughter 
 named Jane, was so far recognized by the SmoUetts 
 that she was able to make a fairly good marriage. 
 She became the wife of one Mr. Tclfer, a successful 
 man of business. 
 
 Tobias was provided for in a more peaceful profession 
 than his elder brother. After preliminary schooling at 
 Dumbarton, under ]\Ir. John Love, of whom it is said 
 that he vras noted for his knowledge of Latin, Tobias 
 was apprenticed to a 1\\x. John Gordon, described as 
 a medical practitioner, which meant at that time both 
 apothecary and doctor, in Glasgow. Here he remained 
 until 1739. It would be quite in keeping v*'ith past 
 and present Scotch custom, if Smollett varied his work 
 for Mr. John Gordon by attending the courses at the 
 University of Glasgow. At least it is a sufficiently safe 
 guess that he did so, for he possessed a knowledge of 
 Latin and even of Greek, which is hardly consistent 
 with the supposition that he was kept strictly to Mr. 
 John Gordon's shop. Certainly he found time to write 
 a tragedy in five acts — no great task, it is true, for the 
 ambition of youth — before he was eighteen. Li 1739,
 
 W LIFE OF 
 
 he started for London on his adventures, fortified with 
 some general information, a certain knowledge of medi- 
 cine, a light purse, a bundle of letters of recommenda- 
 tion from his family, and the manuscript of his tragedy 
 in his pocket. 
 
 These are the dry facts of Smollett's youth. How 
 far they ought to be read and interpreted with the help 
 of his romances is very doubtful. There is much in the 
 early part of " Roderick Random " which has som.ewhat 
 the look of autobiography. If Smollett's first story is to 
 be treated as an authority for his life, then it must be 
 accepted as a fact that his youth was singularly unhappy. 
 Cut " Roderick Random " can only be accepted as auto- 
 biography with many reservations. The hero is, it is 
 true, the offspring of an injudicious love match, he is 
 an orphan, brought up by the grudging charity of kins- 
 folk, he is an apothecary's apprentice, and finally, he, 
 too, departs along " the finest prospect a Scotchman 
 ever sees," the great North Road which leads to 
 London. Smollett had the same experience, but with 
 a difference. The brutality, of which there is too much 
 in " Roderick Random," begins with the boy's life ; his 
 grandfather, his uncles and aunts, his schoolfellows are 
 all banded to persecute him; his only protections beyond 
 the precarious help of Lieutenant Bowling are his own 
 fierce courage and his ingenuity in repaying evil with 
 evil. Smollett's youth was happier than that. He was 
 not without other protectors, and the help given him was 
 at least sufficient. Still " Roderick Random " may be 
 taken as an authority, in this sense, that if it gives no true 
 picture of what actually happened to Smollett, it is a
 
 SMOLLETT. 17 
 
 very fair statement of what he was incHned to think 
 had- befallen him. When Dr. Swift was reproached 
 with ingratitude to the uncle who had given him his 
 education, he replied, "he gave me the education of 
 a dog." Smollett had, all through his life, a sufficiently 
 high estimate of what was due to himself to make it 
 highly probable that at least during his early years he 
 was inclined to take the same grudging view of his 
 kinsmen's benefactions. He certainly, if his novels are 
 to be trusted as expressing his opinions, thought that 
 his father had had hard measure. In several of his 
 stories, beginning with "Roderick Random," he intro- 
 duces a son or daughter, who has made an unworldly 
 marriage against the will of a coldly prudent parent. 
 In every case it is with manifest sympathy for the young 
 people, a very hearty detestation for the stern parent. 
 According to the morality of his novels, the ardent lover 
 has a natural right to draw freely on the paternal purse. 
 On sentimental principles this is perfectly sound, and 
 the novelist is entitled to say that his hero's desire to 
 possess his mistress is more to be regarded than the 
 wish of the hero's father to guard the contents of his 
 purse. It is probable, however, that Smollett would 
 not have made so repeated a use of this commonplace 
 of romance if he had not had the memory of his father's 
 marriage, to give it a certain personal interest to himself. 
 When he first began to draw a picture of whatever men 
 do, he naturally used up his own experience, and his 
 early life by the banks of the Leven or in Glasgow 
 would be used together with his service in the navy. It 
 is part of the critic's task to try and settle how far 
 
 2
 
 18 LIFE OF 
 
 Smollett's interpretation of life is to be accepted as the 
 work of the cool observer, how far it is consciously and 
 deliberately exaggerated for artistic purposes, and how 
 far it was coloured by his own temperament. This work 
 will be more appropriately attempted when we come to 
 "Roderick Random." 
 
 The few stories— indeed the two stories — of Smollett's 
 youth which are reported on tolerable evidence are 
 neither very instructive nor very edifying. It is said in 
 a general way that he was fond of satire. This rather 
 stately phrase may be taken to mean that he had a 
 boyish habit of saying things which he knew would be 
 disagreeable to other people, and some skill in pointing 
 his ill-nature at the obvious defects of those he chose to 
 attack. Smollett, in common with many of the eighteenth- 
 century writers even less qualified for the place of censor 
 of morals, began early to lash the vices of the age. It was 
 a common practice during a great part of the eighteenth 
 century ; and it is probable enough that the first sinners 
 whom Smollett thought fit to reprove were his cousins, 
 his masters and pastors, and all such persons as thought 
 they were set in authority over him by birth or age. No 
 specimen of this juvenile domestic satire is preserved. 
 The two stories actually recorded are unhappily a little 
 dull. Sir Walter Scott had heard that his master, Mr. 
 John Gordon, expressed a preference for " my ain bubbly- 
 nosed callant with the stane in his pouch," over the 
 more orderly apprentices of his friends. As Sir Walter 
 interprets this unpleasant description, it means that 
 Smollett was a somewhat dirty boy of spirit and re- 
 source. An ill-natured commentator might say that the
 
 SMOLLETT. 19 
 
 description continued to be true of him till the end, but 
 Smollett must have had kindliness enough to secure 
 the good opinion of his master. The other story is pre- 
 served by Dr. John JNIoore, commonly described as the 
 ingenious author of "Zeluco." It is as follows : — • 
 
 " On a winter evening, when the streets were covered 
 with snow, Smollett happened to be engaged in a snow- 
 ball fight with a few boys of his own age. Among his 
 associates was the apprentice of that surgeon who is sup- 
 posed to have been delineated under the name of Crab 
 in ' Roderick Random.' He entered his shop while his 
 apprentice was in the heat of the engagement. On the 
 return of the latter the master remonstrated severely with 
 him for his negligence in quitting the shop. The youth 
 excused himself by saying that while he v/as employed in 
 making up a prescription a fellow had hit him vrith a 
 snow-ball, and that he had been in pursuit of the de- 
 linquent. 
 
 " ' A mighty probable story, truly,' said the master, in 
 an ironical tone. ' I wonder how long I sliould stand 
 here before it would enter into any mortal's head to 
 throw a snowball at me?' While he was holding his 
 head erect, with a most scornful air, he received a very 
 severe blow in the face by a snowball. 
 
 " Smollett, who stood concealed behind the pillar at 
 the shop-door, had heard the dialogue, and perceiving 
 that his companion was puzzled for an answer, he extri- 
 cated him by a repartee equally smart and apropos^ 
 
 The story might be and probably has been tcld of
 
 20 LIFE OP SMOLLETT. 
 
 many idle apprentices, but, such as it is, it may be 
 accepted as the most characteristic thing known of 
 Smollett's youth. It fits in fairly well with the tradition 
 reported by Campbell, " that Smollett was a restive ap- 
 prentice and a mischievous stripling." Doubtless he was 
 ill enough at home in the small money-hunting business 
 world of Glasgow. He wanted something better, or at 
 least larger and different, and it is nowise incredible that 
 he revenged himself for the inconveniences of his posi- 
 tion by that "continued string of epigrammatic sarcasm" 
 against neighbouring bores which, according to Mr. 
 Colquhoun of Camstraddan, adorned his conversation, 
 and for which, in that gentleman's opinion, " no talents 
 could compensate." The victims would unquestionably 
 agree with Mr. Colquhoun, but, unfortunately, we have 
 no means of knowing whether these sarcasms were 
 endowed with that amount of talent which, in the opinioa 
 of Prince Posterity, compensates for any decree of lU- 
 naturc by supplying hi.n with amusement.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN 1739 Smollett was free from any family ties which 
 could have kept liim in Scotland. His brother was 
 in the army, his sister was married, and his mother 
 appears to have been left in possession of the house of 
 Dalquhurn for her life, with some money allowance from 
 her husband's family. Smollett could in any case do 
 little towards her support by staying in Glasgow. In the 
 natural course of things for a young Scotchman, he went 
 to seek his fortune in England. He was not ill provided 
 with the means of getting on. His family had still a 
 parliamentary connection. They no longer supplied 
 members to the House, but they were influential con- 
 stituents. A letter from the head of the family to his 
 member was a good recommendation, and Tobias was 
 supplied with the necessary introduction to a gentleman 
 who would be able to help him, and no doubt willing to 
 do so when the applicant was both member of a family 
 which could be useful at a general election, and a brother 
 Scot. Probably the poor relation of the laird of Bonhill 
 considered the member of Parliament as a second string 
 to his bow. The first was the great tragedy he carried in 
 his pocket. This work of literature was destined to
 
 22 LIFE OF 
 
 cause him much ill-temper, and much of the suffering 
 which ill-temper entails. In his " Travels through France 
 and Italy" Smollett devotes two long pages to a Latin 
 diagnosis of his state of health, addressed to a certain 
 
 Professor F , at Montpellier, to whom he applied in 
 
 vain for medical help. In the course of this very 
 astounding account of his sufferings, he observes in Latin, 
 " Systema nervosum viaxime irritabile" and the descrip- 
 tion was applicable long before his later years of chronic 
 ill-health. In 1739 he was already very irritable, and he 
 put himself to a very severe test when he launched on 
 the career of unsuccessful dramatist. 
 
 The dishonesty of patrons, the unwisdom of friendly 
 critics, the mendacity of managers, were all revealed to 
 Smollett by this unhappy play, and he told them all to 
 the public in the prefaces to the tragedy, and in a long 
 episode of " Roderick Random." The proud author of 
 "The Regicide" — this is the name of the great tragedy 
 — obtained an introduction to Lyttelton, a known patron 
 of literature, probably by the help of Mallet his secre- 
 tar}', the " beggarly Scotchman" to whom Bolingbroke left 
 the blunderbuss he had loaded and primed against the 
 Christian religion. We have Smollett's own evidence 
 that he conceived great hopes of the good things he was 
 to receive through Lyttel ton's patronage. But, alas ! no 
 patron of letters can induce the hard-hearted manager to 
 take plays which will not act. The patron seems to have 
 put in a good word for Smollett with Garrick and other 
 great men in the theatrical world. It was to no effect. 
 The play never struggled onto the stage. The utmost 
 success Smollett ever attained in connection with this
 
 SMOLLETT. 23 
 
 piece was one of those vague promises from the manager 
 which are only a good-natured way of teUing the new 
 playwright that his piece is unacceptable. The preface 
 which Smollett put to the play when it was printed is 
 lamentable reading. The vanity of a young author 
 never produced anything more comic than this production. 
 " Little fellows, who are sometimes called great men," 
 "mere Goths," with "their pride and petulance," and 
 other terms of abuse are lavished on the patrons, friends, 
 or actors who had even the most indirect connection with 
 this unlucky piece. Towards Lyttelton Smollett seems 
 to have cherished a particular hostility. He ridiculed 
 his grief at his wife's death ; and it was not until he found 
 himself weighing the merits of his contemporaries in the 
 grave character of historian that he pardoned the patron 
 who failed to give " The Regicide " a chance — indeed, 
 it was hardly more than a chance — of being damned. 
 Towards Garrick, Smollett's feelings were equally hostile, 
 until he was mollified by certain pecuniary transactions, 
 and an instance of the great actor's partly genuine and 
 partly calculated generosity. 
 
 The " Regicide " has received scanty attention from 
 the biographers of Smollett. A crude and boyish pro- 
 duction is the epitaph put over it, and then it is let alone. 
 Unquestionably it deserves both these adjectives, and 
 yet it is not uninteresting to know what the boyish work 
 of a man who was to do work for all time, was like. Much 
 need not be said of it, for it was a beginning which had 
 no after consequences in Smollett's literary life, but yet it 
 was characteristic of its author in a way. This unsuccess- 
 ful attempt to enter on the greatest of all the fields of
 
 24 LIFE OF 
 
 literature, the poetic drama, was very imitative, and it 
 was not in the least national. That a boy of eighteen 
 should have shown no great originality is almost a matter 
 of course, but Smollett's hearty and unhesitating imita- 
 tion was in keeping with the uniform practice of his life. 
 When he had accumulated experience enough to justify 
 the confidence in which he was not naturally deficient, 
 he could put his own mark on other men's novels, but he 
 never created one for himself, or developed an old one into 
 a new. He began, when at last he had found his path, 
 with Le Sage, and he ended, when he was most original, 
 with something which was assuredly Smollett, but was also 
 Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne. The want of nationality 
 in his 'prentice work was a feature it had in common with 
 the writing of all eighteenth-century Scotchmen except the 
 songwriters; but it is rather more conspicuous in his case, 
 because the particular regicide he strove to bring on the 
 stage was the murder of the Scotch James I. at Perth. 
 With a subject from Scotch history to work on, it is 
 natural to expect that a young Scotchman would have 
 put in something smacking of his race and country. 
 The story is a terribly dramatic one. Rich as Scottish 
 history is in tragedy and murder, it contains nothing more 
 dreadful than the slaughter of the poet king. The 
 journey to the north in defiance of the wise woman's 
 warning, the free, unguarded life of James among the 
 burghers of Perth, the cold-blooded treason of the 
 servants who removed the bars on the convent doors, 
 the midnight attack of the assassins, the wild scene in the 
 Queen's chamber, the heroic self-sacrifice of Katherine 
 Douglas, the desperate struggle of the unarmed king^-
 
 SMOLLETT. 25 
 
 make a story fit for the Sagas. We can imagine what a 
 would-be dramatist, writing after Victor Hugo's battle of 
 " Hernani," would have made of it all. But Smollett 
 lived long before that great v.'ctory, and in the eighteenth 
 century, which was so sensible in both senses of the word. 
 He would doubtless have described the historic story as too 
 Gothic for his civilized time. The murder is transacted 
 behind the scenes, James I. becomes U7i rai qtielconque, 
 any kind you please ; Katherine Douglas is as if she had 
 never lived, or thrust her arm through the staples of the 
 queen's chamber; her place is taken by the shadowy 
 Eleonora; Angus, Dunbar, Grime, Athol, Cattan — names 
 full of picturesque meaning — become mere shadows who 
 cross the stage spouting blank verse. Everything is on 
 a great scale — big armies, big passions, and big words 
 abound. All the killing is not done behind the scenes. 
 " It is not good," says the wicked Cattan to the noble 
 Angus — 
 
 " It is not good 
 
 To venture forth unarmed. Courageous thane 
 
 Receive this dagger. 
 [Atlempts to stab Angus, who wrests the dagger from Mm and 
 Icills him.'\ 
 
 Ang. Ila, perfidious slave ! 
 
 What means this base attempt ? Thou shalt not 'scape. 
 Cat. Curse on my feeble arm that fail'd to strike 
 
 The poniard to thy heart ! How like a dog 
 
 I tamely fall despis'd ! 
 Aug. Fell ruffian ! say 
 
 Who set thee on ? This treachery I fear 
 
 Is but the prelude to some dreadful scene ! 
 Cat. Just are thy terrors. By th' infernal giilf 
 
 That opens to receive me ! I would plunge
 
 26 LIFE OF 
 
 Into tlie abyss with joy coiilJ the success 
 Of Athol feast my sense ! 
 
 \_A noise of slashing s7vords and shrieks.'] 
 Ha ! now the sword 
 Of slaughter smokes ! Th' exulting thane surveys 
 Th' imperial scene ; while grimly smiling Grime 
 
 With purple honour deck'd 
 
 ^'l"S- Tremendous powers ! 
 
 Cat. O'er the f.dl'n tyrant strides [dies).'' 
 
 Hereupon enters Dunbar, a virtuous youth, vrounded, 
 •.vho addresses tlie eloquent Angus as follows : — 
 
 ' ' I sought thee, noble thane, while yet my limbs 
 Obey their lord. I sought thee to unfold 
 My zealous soul, ere yet she takes her flight. 
 Strelch'd on the ground, these eyes beheld the king 
 Transfix'd a lifeless corse ! and saw this arm 
 Too late to save — too feeble to avenge him. 
 Ang. Weep, Caledonia, weep ! — thy peace is slain — 
 Thy father and thy king ! O ! this event 
 Like a vast mountain loads my stagg'ring soul 
 And crushes all her pow'rs. But say, my friend, 
 If yet thy strength permits, how this befell." 
 
 Dunbar does so at some length, until enter Eleonora, 
 " supported and wounded." Then they two sing their 
 S'>van song in blank verse and exchange vows and senti- 
 ments all of the greatest propriety. ^Vhen their differ- 
 ences, which were serious in the first act, are cleared up, 
 Eleonora exclaims : — 
 
 " Celestial powers, 
 Trotect my father, shov,-"r upon his Oh ! [dies).'" 
 
 Then Dunbar, severely correct to the last, kisses, " this
 
 SMOLLETT. 27 
 
 pale deserted temple of my joy," with the observation, 
 that " chastity " will not refuse this privilege, and takes 
 leave of life with a not unbecoming imitation of his 
 mistress : — 
 
 " O Eleonora ! as my flowing blood 
 
 Is mix'd with thine— so may our mingling souls 
 To bliss supernal wing our happy Oh ! {Jics)" 
 
 It will be seen that, judged as poetic dramatic dialogue, 
 this is not of a high order. Historic truth is also not 
 its note. What would have been the feelincjs of an Earl 
 of Angus on being addressed as thane ? Why Bell the 
 Cat cut down Spens of Kilspendie on a smaller provoca- 
 tion ! Still " The Regicide," though the work of a boyish 
 imitator, shows some vehemence of slash in its imitation. 
 It was further what playvvriting has not always been, an 
 honest attempt to be literature. There is too much oh ! 
 and hah! too many "infernal abysses" and "grisly 
 kings ; " the personages and passions are all of the stock 
 kind, and, in short, it is very poor v/ork, and no play at 
 all, but it Vv'^as manifestly inspired by real admiration of 
 something which had life in its time. What value it has 
 is purely biographical, but in that respect it is not un- 
 important. It shows at least that Smollett was early 
 resolved to be a writer, and to do the best work in 
 literature if trying would help him. 
 
 Before " The Regicide " had sunk decisively, from the 
 dignity of a play which mii^ht appear on the stage, to the 
 depressed position of a play "for the closet," Smollett 
 had passed through an experience which more than any
 
 28 LIFE OF 
 
 other had an influence on his Hfe. He had served in 
 the famous attack on Carthagena, and had gained his 
 intimate knowledge of the EngHsh sailor. As it became 
 clear to the aspiring dramatic poet that he was not to 
 benefit immediately by the profits of the third night, the 
 profits whereof fell to the playwright by the custom of 
 the time, he must needs have fallen back on his medical 
 knowledge. In 1740 an excellent opportunity presented 
 itself. A great fleet was fitting out at Spithead for the 
 West Indies, and there was pressing need of subordinate 
 officers and men. The long peace which followed the 
 conclusion of Queen Anne's wars had come to an end in 
 1 739. After years of effort, the opposition had at last 
 forced AValpole's hand, and compelled him, much against 
 his will, to agree to hostilities with Spain. England was 
 about to try to force the Spaniards to cease annoying her 
 in America. She was just entering on the remarkable 
 struggle commonly called the war of Jenkins' Ear. 
 Smollett obtained a place as surgeon's mate in one of the 
 great line-of-battle ships, and sailed in October, under Sir 
 Chaloner Ogle, as a humble member of the expedition 
 which was to have ruined the Spanish power in America, 
 but did as a matter of fact only achieve huge failure 
 before Carthagena. Here again it is necessary to dis- 
 tinguish between Roderick Random and his creator. 
 The hero of that " delightful " book, as Thackeray calls 
 it, made his w-ay into the navy if not in an irregular 
 manner, at least entirely on his own merits. Smollett 
 was not without friends and recommendation ; Mr. 
 Chambers guesses that he was helped by Sir Andrew 
 Mitchell, who was some time after this Secretary to the
 
 SMOLLETT. 29 
 
 Marquess of Tweeddale, the Minister for Scotland from 
 1742 to 1745, and who was more famous later on a3 
 Minister at the Court, or rather the Camp, of Frederick 
 the Great during the Seven Years' War. Mitchell was a 
 kinsman of the Smolletts, and would of course, after the 
 manner of all good Scotchmen, help one of the family. 
 There was no actual relationship between the novelist 
 and the future ambassador. Sir Andrew INIitchell and 
 James Smollett, Tobias' cousin, were sisters' sons, and 
 what the politician did would of course be done to help 
 his kinsman to provide for a poor relation. One would 
 be glad to know that the genial Aberdonian had a 
 share in putting the historian of the Carthagena expedi- 
 tion in the way of serving his country, but there is no 
 evidence that he did. It is a mere discoursing of pro- 
 babihties, as Cromwell would have said, to suppose that 
 he exerted himself in the matter. All we can say is that 
 wherever a Scotchman has influence he is likely to use it 
 in favour of a countryman, and particularly one who has 
 a family claim on him. Not only is the exact means of 
 Smollett's entry into the navy unknown, but there is no 
 certainty as to which of the sixteen ships in Ogle's fleet 
 he served on. Anderson reports that his name was 
 carved on the timbers of the Cumbcfland, an eighty-gun 
 ship, and it has been supposed that he formed part of 
 her crew. He does not, however, appear on her pay- 
 book, and he himself in the account he wrote of the 
 expedition simply says that he was on board one of " ihe 
 largest ships in the fleet." 
 
 It was on the whole Smollett's good fortune that he 
 saw the navy at the very lowest point it has reached since
 
 30 LIFE OF 
 
 tiiere was a navy in England. We could wish that such 
 an eye-witness had been present to give an account of 
 som \ great victorv, won by Rodney or Hood, and to 
 drav\ the service at a time v,-heii its spirit was high and 
 its discipline was strict, without being so barbarous as it 
 was in the dead middle of the eighteenth century. But 
 though happier times would have supplied him with 
 materials for a nobler picture, they v/ould hardly have 
 given him such extraordinary types of the old sea world 
 as v.'cre actually thrown in his way. In 1740 the navy 
 Vt'as still as little organized as it had been in the seven- 
 teenth century. It was probably even more savage. 
 The early half of the eighteenth century was a particu- 
 larly brutal time. Along ^^iLh the Hanoverian rat there 
 had come into England something of the callous bar- 
 barism produced in Germany by the Thirty Years' War, 
 and the sea life had been hardened along with the rest. 
 The assertion is hardly capable of complete proof, but 
 there is at least much evidence to show that there v.-as more 
 flogging, and more callous cruelty in every way, at sea as 
 well as on shore, than there had been a century earlier. 
 The old isolation of the sailor's life had also been if any- 
 thing increased, at least in the navy. Commissions 
 were longer and ships stayed much more abroad. As a 
 matter of course all that was peculiar or erratic in any 
 man's character was exaggerated by the separation from 
 life on shore. The whole body were, as they then 
 always had been, and have to some extent continued to 
 be, a nation by themselves. A {q.\v years later the great 
 moral change which passed over England in the latter 
 half of the eighteenth century, had begun to affect that
 
 SMOLLETT, 81 
 
 part of it which hved on the sea. But in 1740 the old 
 world was still there unchanged and unsoftened. 
 
 At that time, too, the relaxation of discipline in the 
 higher ranks, the lowering of the standard of conduct 
 and manners in the public service, the rancour of party 
 spirit which had coincided with, if they were not the con- 
 sequences of, Walpole's administration, had all affected the 
 navy. There was a kind of outbreak of men's passions, 
 and a reckless subordination of duty to personal spite or 
 personal interest, which I think it would be hard to parallel 
 at any other time. Our priceless parliamentary institu- 
 tions had their own by no means insignificant influence 
 in producing or aggravating these evils. Admirals were 
 Members of Parliament or at least members of a party ; 
 they were Ministerialists or Patriots first, and naval 
 ofificers afterwards. With the captains it was much the 
 same. Both looked to intrigue or interest, and not to 
 good service, to secure them promotion. The English 
 navy has never wanted for brave and honourable ofificers, 
 and even the political seamen were not necessarily des- 
 titute of parts or courage. Vernon would fight the 
 Spaniards as heartily as he abused Walpole. But fighting 
 the Spaniards was not his sole, nor always his first, object. 
 He had his parliamentary battle to conduct at sea as 
 well as on shore. As it was with him, so it was witli 
 other men, and hence came the endless wrangles and 
 many of the derelictions of duty which disgraced the 
 navy during the war of Jenkins' Ear. In any case men 
 who had such an example set them were very likely to 
 be slack in the discharge of their duty. It required a 
 great explosion of national wrath and the sacrifice of an
 
 32 LIFE OF 
 
 offender who was not worse than many others to restore 
 the tone of the service. 
 
 These admirals and these captains might be bad 
 officers, but in one sense of the word they were thorough 
 seamen. They had the rudeness and want of self- 
 restraint developed in them by their solitary life and 
 the exercise of almost unchecked authority. They were 
 not only brutal, but proud of their brutality. They 
 might help the landsman in his political intrigues, but 
 they despised him. In particular they despised and hated 
 the soldier. On active service they gave a full swing to 
 their hatreds and prejudices, and even exaggerated them 
 oat of mere ostentation. The men who obeyed their 
 orders were a race apart like themselves, though less 
 affected by the influences which had to a large extent cor- 
 rupted the officers of that generation. They were always 
 ready to follow bravely where they were bravely led, sub- 
 mitting without a murmur, and even as a matter of course, 
 to a ferocity of treatment unparalleled in these times 
 even in a Russian prison, and with a language, with 
 loves, hates, prejudices, and superstitions all their own. 
 Then too the navy was not fully at that time a service 
 in the modern sense. It did not stand apart from the 
 wilder or even the more criminal elements of the sea life. 
 Officers and men passed from the navy to the merchant 
 service (and in those days merchant seaman and armed 
 smuggler were very commonly convertible terms, at least 
 on the coast of Spanish America) and back again. There 
 were even cases in which men who had gone far beyond 
 armed smuggling were found serving King George, and 
 that not always before the mast. All was fish that came
 
 SMOLLETT. 33 
 
 to the press-gang's net. Smugglers, pirates, poachers, 
 burglars, highwaymen, and insolvent debtors were allowed 
 to volunteer on board the fleet, there to serve by the 
 side of real seamen, and under the orders of officers 
 sometimes of doubtful antecedents and too often inclined 
 to rule by terror. In this very expedition to Carthagena, 
 Admiral Vernon had no scruple about giving a lieutenant's 
 commission to a seaman possessed of an accurate know- 
 ledge of the Spanish Alain which he had acquired in a 
 way sufficiently indicated by his name and designation 
 — Lowther the Pirate. 
 
 No doubt there were men of honour, at once gentle- 
 men and seamen, in his Majesty's service. Anson, Sir 
 Chaloner Ogle, and such officers as the Lord Aubrey 
 Beauclerc, who died on the deck of his ship, the Prince 
 Frederick, at Carthagena, were there, with inferior men. 
 Under them were subordinate officers, not inferior to 
 themselves in quality. There were seamen before the 
 mast no less brave, loyal, and skilful than the crews of 
 Drake or of Nelson. Happily, England has never yet 
 wanted for such men, and in that bad year of the middle 
 of the eighteenth century there were enough of them to 
 fight England through to final victory. After some 
 twenty years of warfare, and with the help of vehement 
 public support, they were able to conquer the bad element, 
 and to begin the formation of that magnificent fleet of the 
 Great War, which saved England, and through her saved 
 Europe. But in 1740 the bad element was at its very 
 worst, and was, moreover, in power. With the single ex- 
 ception of Anson's great voyage, the navy did nothing 
 worthy of its predecessor of the seventeenth century, or its 
 
 3
 
 34 LIFE OF 
 
 successor of the great war, during the war of Jenkins' Ear. 
 It was very barbarous, full of a rude courage, and a real 
 seamanship ; but it was undisciplined, badly led, and de- 
 ficient in zeal. All that was worst and wildest in it broke 
 loose under such leadership as was inflicted on it. This 
 was the navy which Smollett saw and which he drew. 
 
 It would be out of place to give the history of the 
 attack on Carthagena in a life of Tobias Smollett. He 
 has himself told the story twice over, or rather thrice ; — ■ 
 in his history he has told it briefly in its place ; he wrote 
 a special account of it for the series of voyages he edited 
 as part of the vast miscellaneous hack-work of his later 
 literary life ; and it has its very conspicuous share in 
 making the interest of " Roderick Random." It was a 
 scene which must have impressed him profoundly. The 
 abundant courage displayed in carrying one after another 
 of the Spanish defences, as far as the San Lazaro, the 
 ready devotion of soldiers and sailors alike, were calcu- 
 lated to win the hearty sympathy of a man who had his 
 full share of the old Scotch pugnacity. Individual 
 episodes, such as the gallantry of Lord Aubrey Beau- 
 clerc, would move him deeply. But there was another 
 side which manifestly made a more lasting impression 
 upon him. The misconduct, the insolent, heartless 
 cruelty of Vernon, the stupid professional pedantry and 
 ignorance of General Wentworth, the lamentable delays, 
 the wrangling, the dishonest make-believes of too many 
 officers of both services, fed fat his inborn scorn for 
 human stupidity and dishonesty. He was by nature a 
 hater of fools, arid after seeing those fatal persons at 
 work at Carthagena, he was not likely to be softer in his
 
 SMOLLETT, 35 
 
 judgment than before. Smollett was not a sentimental 
 man, but he did not love cruelty, particularly when it was 
 the consequence of other men's folly and roguery. There 
 is an honest ring of indignation in his awful picture of 
 the misery which the quarrels and incompetence of the 
 leaders brought on the brave men entrusted to their 
 care. 
 
 In " Roderick Random " the scene is described with 
 a certain deliberate exaggeration, a heightening of the 
 colour for artistic effect. The " Account of the Expedi- 
 tion against Carthagena " gives his sober and mature 
 view of the transaction. Two passages may be quoted 
 here to put Smollett's experience before the reader in 
 Smollett's words. The first shows the leaders at work : 
 
 " It is a melancholy truth, which, however, ought to be 
 told, that a low, ridiculous, and pernicious jealousy sub- 
 sisted between the land and sea officers during this whole 
 expedition, and that the chiefs of these were so weak or 
 wicked as to take all opportunities of thwarting and 
 manifesting their contempt for each other, at a time 
 when the lives of so many brave fellow-subjects were at 
 stake, and when the interest and honour of their country 
 required the utmost zeal and unanimity. Instead of con- 
 ferring personally, and co-operating with vigour and 
 cordiality, they began to hold separate councils, drew up 
 acrimonious remonstrances, and sent irritating messages 
 to each other ; and while each of them piqued himself 
 upon doing barely as much as would screen him from 
 the censure of a court-martial, neither seemed displeased 
 jit the neglect of his colleague, but, on the contrary, both
 
 3S LIFE OF 
 
 were in appearance glad of the miscarriage of the expe- 
 dition, in hope of seeing one another stigmatized with 
 infamy and disgrace. In a word, the Admiral was a man 
 of weak understanding, strong prejudices, boundless 
 arrogance, and overboiling passions; and the General, 
 though he had some parts, was wholly defective in point 
 of experience, confidence, and resolution." 
 
 So much for the leadership. As Smollett saw it, it was 
 worse than the co-operation recorded by Marryat, when 
 the General damned the Admiral for not knocking down 
 walls thirty feet thick, and the Admiral was equally 
 emphatic with the General for not scaliiig walls thirty 
 feet high. The consequences are told a few paragraphs 
 further on: — 
 
 "It was, therefore, found necessary to effect a retreat, 
 which was secured by means of those five hundred men 
 who brought up the rear ; but not before the loss of the 
 English amounted to two hundred killed, and twice that 
 number wounded, of which last the majority did not 
 recover. Sixteen of these were taken prisoners by the 
 Spaniardj, who treated them with great humanity, and 
 loudly extolled the valour of the assailants ; and a cessa- 
 tion of arms was immediately agreed upon for a few 
 hours, during which time the dead were buried. INIean- 
 while a breastwork was raised at the advanced guard, to 
 put the men under cover, and the intrenchment enlarged 
 for the reception of two mortars, which in two days 
 began to fire upon San Lazaro with good effect. 
 
 " As for the sick and wounded, they v/ere next day
 
 SMOLLETT. 37 
 
 sent on board the transports and vessels called hospital 
 ships, where they languished in want of every necessary 
 comfort and accommodation. They were destitute of 
 surgeons, nurses, cooks, and proper provision ; they were 
 pent up between decks in small vessels, where they had 
 not room to sit upright ; they wallowed in filth, myriads 
 of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of their 
 sores, which had no other dressing than that of being 
 washed by themselves with their own allowance of 
 brandy ; and nothing was heard but groans, lamentations, 
 and the language of despair, invoking death to deliver 
 them from their miseries. What served to encourage 
 this despondence was the prospect of those poor wretches 
 who had strength and opportunity to look around them, 
 for there they beheld the naked bodies of their fellow- 
 soldiers and comrades floating up and down the harbour, 
 affording prey to the carrion crows and sharks, which 
 tore them in pieces without interruption, and contributing 
 by their stench to the mortality that prevailed. 
 
 "This picture cannot fail to be shocking to the humane 
 reader, especially when he is informed that while these 
 miserable objects cried in vain for assistance, and actually 
 perished for want of proper attendance, every ship of 
 war in the fleet could have spared a couple of surgeons 
 for their relief, and many young gentlemen of that pro- 
 fession solicited their captains in vain for leave to go and 
 administer help to the sick and wounded. The neces- 
 sities of the poor people were well known, the remedy 
 was easy and apparent; but the discord between the chiefs 
 was inflamed to such a degree of diabolical rancour that 
 the one chose rather to see his men perish than to ask
 
 38 LIFE OF 
 
 help of the other, who disdained to offer his assistance 
 unasked, though it might have saved the Hves of his 
 fellow-subjects." 
 
 It is a dreadful picture, but there is no reason to 
 suppose that it is overdrawn. Smollett may have delibe- 
 rately exaggerated in his novels, but here his quiet style 
 and independent evidence go to show that he was telling 
 the strict disgraceful truth. By bringing it home to his 
 countrymen Smollett did the State no small service. 
 " Roderick Random," and this account, enabled thou- 
 sands of Englishmen to realize the consequences of such 
 conduct as Vernon's and Wentworth's. He did, in fact, 
 with even better justification, and, I trust it may be said 
 without offence, in a better literary form, what the corre- 
 spondents of newspapers did during the Crimean war. 
 He helped to make his generation understand what a 
 hatefully cruel thing military inefficiency is, and how 
 surely the wretched personal squabbles of leaders mean 
 death and useless suffering to the men who are so un- 
 happy as to be placed at their mercy. It is, I hope, not 
 very ferocious to think with some complacency that 
 Smollett unwittingly, but not the less beneficially, helped 
 to prepare the people of England to insist on the execution 
 of Admiral Byng, and to give all leaders in war an un- 
 forgetable warning that their personal feelings were not 
 to come in the way of the discharge of their duty. Even 
 if he did not influence the mind of his generation in this 
 way, he did a considerable feat when he gave the best 
 literary picture of a military expedition left by any eye- 
 witness in the eighteenth century. Carlyle, with his
 
 SMOLLETT. 39 
 
 usual love of good literature and good intellectual eye- 
 sight, and in his own emphatic way, has declared that 
 almost the only noticeable feature in the whole expedi- 
 tion was the presence of Tobias Smollett. This much 
 at least is certain, that without Tobias Smollett the Car- 
 thagena expedition would be a much less conspicuous 
 event than it is. It would have been an ordinary defeat. 
 Thanks to him it became a warning, and so helped to 
 prevent the recurrence of anything quite so disgraceful 
 in after times. Admirals and Generals quarrelled and 
 bungled, but at least they took some pains to avoid being 
 as Vernon and Wentworth.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FROM Carthagena Vernon's unfortunate fleet returned 
 to Jamaica, utterly crippled by the malarious fever 
 which had attacked it during the siege. It fell into a 
 miserable impotent welter, and there remained. Smollett, 
 whose mission, says Carlyle, was " to take Portraiture of 
 English Seamanhood with due grimness, due fidelity, 
 and convey the same to remote generations, before it 
 vanished," had got all he needed from his service in the 
 fleet. Even if he was not disgusted with the mere hard- 
 ships of the life, there can have been nothing in the 
 prospects before him as a surgeon's mate to tempt him 
 to remain at sea. It was some years before he definitely 
 gave up all attempts to make a living as a doctor, but, 
 even in the West Indies, he could find more pleasant and 
 more profitable places to try in than the cockpit of a 
 man-of-war. Very soon, apparently, after the return of 
 the defeated expedition, he retired from service and settled 
 for a time in Jamaica. 
 
 His stay in this sugar island was short, and left 
 curiously little trace in his work. The society of planters 
 and adventurers does not seem to have impressed him at 
 all, otherwise he would surely have found room for some 
 West Indian personage by the side of Pipes and Hatch-
 
 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 41 
 
 way. He left the field untouched and free for the author 
 of " Tom Cringle's Log " and the " Cruise of the Midge." 
 In his life the stay in the West Indies had a very impor- 
 tant part, not to say the most important and beneficent. 
 He found a wife in Jamaica. The biographer, however 
 good his will may be, cannot say much of Mrs. Smollett. 
 That her maiden name was Anne Lascelles (Smollett him- 
 self calls her " INIiss Nancy Lassells "), that she possessed 
 some property in Kingston, partly in houses and partly in 
 slaves, which melted aw'ay in lawsuits, and that she sur- 
 vived her husband for several years, is all that is known 
 about her. The information as to her character is even 
 more scanty. It is said that she was the original of Narcissa 
 in " Roderick Random," but as nobody has ever yet suc- 
 ceeded in associating any kind of human reality with the 
 name of that spotless heroine, this statement does not 
 lead us much further. If Mrs. Smollett sat for the por- 
 trait of the lady who crowned Roderick's flame, she must 
 be supposed to have been tall, to have had a beautiful 
 figure and a fine head of black hair. These things can 
 be asserted of Narcissa, and that is nearly all. It is even 
 doubtful whether the marriage took place in Jamaica or 
 later on in London. Mr. and ]\Irs. Smollett do not seem 
 to have begun living together in England until 1747, but 
 it is probable that Smollett was in possession of his wife 
 and her fortune before he left Jamaica in 1 744. Between 
 his arrival in London about that time and the appearance 
 of " Roderick Random " in 1 748, Smollett, as far as his 
 own exertions are concerned, came as near as possible to 
 being without visible means of subsistence. He may, of 
 course, have got possession of a slice of prize-money in
 
 42 LIFE OF 
 
 the West Indies. Pleasant little sums of money were 
 picked up by naval gentlemen in irregular ways. He may 
 have earned something in Jamaica, but there is no evi- 
 dence that he got anything beyond his scanty pay as 
 surgeon's mate. In London he certainly cannot have 
 made enough to live on. Medical practice he never 
 obtained, and his literary gain must have been insignifi- 
 cant before the publication of his first novel. Yet he was 
 not without means. By the summer of 1744 he had 
 rented a house in Downing Street, Westminster. He 
 writes in May to his friend Barclay in Glasgow, informing 
 him that, " I have moved into the house where the late 
 John Douglas, surgeon, died, and you may henceforth 
 direct for Mr. Smollett, Surgeon in Downing Street, 
 Westminster." Houses in Downing Street, Westminster, 
 are not to be obtained without payment of rent, and 
 Smollett must have found the money somewhere. Neither 
 was he without funds for other and less serious purposes. 
 In this very letter, which begins with a lament over a 
 friend of the name of Ritchie, he ends briskly by saying 
 that Willie Wood is drinking a glass of wine with him, 
 presumably at Smollett's own expense. A passage In this 
 letter may be quoted as a proof that he was already 
 married. "As for the particulars you expect from me you 
 must wait till I be better informed myself; for, to tell you 
 an extraordinary truth, I do not know as yet whether you 
 had better congratulate or condole with me. I wish I 
 was near you that I might pour forth my heart before you 
 and make you judge of its dictates and the several steps 
 I have lately taken, in which case I am confident you and 
 all honest men would acquit my principles, however my
 
 SMOLLETT. 43 
 
 prudentials might be condemned." This certainly sounds 
 like a reference to a not very wise marriage, though to be 
 sure it is not easy to see why " the prudentials " of a 
 penniless Scotch gentleman should be condemned for 
 marrying a West Indian heiress. On the whole, it seems 
 more probable that Smollett was married before coming 
 to London, and that he lived chiefly on his wife's money 
 until he began to earn a livelihood by his pen. As was 
 the case with other literary men of that century, Smollett's 
 financial resources are occasionally obscure, and he had 
 his periods of debt and difficulty, but he never seems to 
 have been absolutely without means. There was always 
 the wherewithal for "a glass of v»inc," and even for 
 travels of a rather costly kind. 
 
 The best, and not the least pleasant, of the scanty per- 
 sonal notices of Smollett is dated in the following year, 
 and during the exciting times of the '45. Dr. Alexander 
 Carlyle, deservedly called Jupiter Carlyle, whose charming 
 autobiography has been edited by Mr. Hill Burton, has 
 described the beginning of his acquaintance, for it can 
 hardly be said to have been friendship, with Smollett. 
 The future minister of Inveresk, after witnessing the battle 
 of Preston Pans, had come to London by way of Holland, 
 and there, in that pleasant military and literary society 
 with which he was exceptionally popular for a Presby- 
 terian minister, he met the future author of " Roderick 
 Random." Carlyle; John Blair, who afterwards took 
 orders in the Church of England, and became tutor to 
 the Duke of York and Prebendary of Westminster; 
 Smith, who had been tutor to the Laird of McLeod when 
 that youthful chieftain had the good fortune to Ijc out of
 
 44 LIFE: OP 
 
 the way on the landing of Prince Charlie at Loch Na 
 Nuagh, and Smollett used to meet together like good 
 Scotchmen at a coffee-house in Cockspur Street, and 
 passed pleasant evenings together. "We four," says Car- 
 lyle, " with one or two more, frequently resorted to a small 
 tavern in the corner of Cockspur Street at the Golden Ball, 
 where we had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the 
 finances of none of the company were in very good order. 
 But we had rich enough conversation on literary subjects, 
 which was enlivened by Smollett's agreeable stories, 
 which he told with peculiar grace." 
 
 Carlyle had to undergo the common fate of gentlemen 
 who know an unsuccessful dramatic author. He was 
 shown the manuscript of "James I. of Scotland," and no 
 doubt had to hear all the sins of the managers, but he 
 extricated himself from this pass with the judgment which 
 he frequently showed in later days, when he was a distin- 
 guished member of the Moderate party in the General 
 Assembly. As he remained on friendly terms with 
 Smollett, he doubtless contrived to escape without ex- 
 pressing an opinion on the merits of " The Regicide." 
 In his autobiography he seems to agree with the estimate 
 of the managers, and he was too honest a man to have 
 said what he did not think. His Scotch caution would 
 instruct him to stand on guard against the other man's 
 Scotch ardour, by not saying all he did think. A more 
 detailed mention of Smollett follows Dr. Carlyle's brief 
 dismissal of the play and its fortunes. 
 
 "I was in the coffee-house with Smollett when the news 
 of the Battle of CuUoden arrived, and when London all 
 over was in a perfect uproar of joy. . . . About nine
 
 SMOLLETT. 45 
 
 o'clock I wished to go home to Lyon's in New Bond 
 Street, as I had promised to sup with him that night, it 
 being the anniversary of his marriage night, or the birth- 
 day of one of his children. I asked Smollett if he was 
 ready to go, as he lived in May Fair j he said he was and 
 would conduct me. The mob was so riotous, and the 
 squibs so numerous and incessant that we were glad to 
 go into a narrow entry to put our wigs into our pockets and 
 to take ouf swords from our belts and to walk with them 
 in our hands, as everybody then wore swords ; and after 
 cautioning me against speaking a word lest the mob 
 should discover my country and become insolent, 'for 
 John Bull,' says he, ' is as haughty and valiant to-night 
 as he was abject and cowardly on the black Wednesday 
 when the Highlanders were at Derby.' After we got to 
 the head of the Haymarket, through incessant fire, the 
 doctor led me by narrow lanes, where we met nobody 
 but a few boys at a pitiful bonfire, who very civilly asked 
 us for sixpence, which I gave them. I saw not Smollett 
 again for some time after, when he showed Smith and me 
 the manuscript of his 'Tears of Scotland,' which was 
 published not long after, and had such a run of approba- 
 tion. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but 
 he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported 
 cruelties which were said to be exercised after the Battle 
 ofCulloden." 
 
 Dr. Carlyle wrote his memoirs in extreme old age in 
 the very first year of this century, some sixty years 
 after his first meeting with Smollett, and thirty years after 
 the novelist's death. It is possible that in speaking of 
 gmollett as a Tory he was making a little mistake in per-
 
 46 LIFE OF 
 
 spective, and crediting him with political opinions, 
 matured, according to a better authority, during his 
 historical investigations into the rascality of the Revo- 
 lution Whigs. The " Tears of Scotland" are proof enough 
 that Dr. Carlyle was not wrong in his description of 
 Smollett's feelings on hearing of the Battle of Culloden, 
 and the cruelties of " Butcher " Cumberland's army. The 
 author of "Roderick Random,"who apologizedfor bringing 
 his hero from the northern parts of this United .Kingdom, 
 and was careful to give excuses for making him a Scotch- 
 man, was not likely to parade his nationality. He acted in 
 literature on the excellent advice he gave Dr. Carlyle, and 
 took care not to provoke the insolence of the mob by an 
 untimely display of the Scotch accent. But between this 
 judicious reticence and the active simulation recom- 
 mended under analogous circumstances by Mr. Pickwick, 
 there is a difference. Smollett was not the man to shout 
 with the largest mob, and he was an ardent Scotchman 
 though he was too really proud a man to indulge in the 
 weakness of insisting on his nationality, to which Dr. 
 Johnson was apt to think no Scotchman was superior. 
 As a Lowlander who came from the Highland Border at 
 a time when the raids of the Celtic tribes were not wholly 
 things of the past, he certainly had no great love for the 
 Highlanders. If Culloden had been fought between 
 Scotchmen he might even have welcomed the victory. 
 It was not : it was the victory of Englishmen and 
 Germans over a part of Scotland, and was therefore 
 odious. Smollett boldly lamented it as a disaster. The 
 " Tears of Scotland " is a lament as if for another Battle 
 of Flodden. The writer draws no distinction between
 
 SMOLLETT. . 47 
 
 Highland and Lowland, Jacobite and Hanoverian, Per- 
 haps, or even without perhaps, it revolted a man who re- 
 membered that the exiled royal line were his countrymen, lo 
 see Scotch blood spilt, the huts of Scotch peasants go up 
 in flames, Scotchmen of all ranks die on English scaffolds 
 to preserve a king who came from Germany. There is 
 some want of logic in the attitude of mind of a gentle- 
 man who was not a Jacobite, and who yet was made in- 
 dignant when the Jacobites suffered the consequences of 
 their own acts. Still the feeling was eminently national 
 and natural. Blood is thicker than water, and the 
 national feeling of any Scotchman was very much 
 stronger than his devotion to the House of Hanover, 
 even though he were as good a Whig as Forbes of Cullo- 
 den himself. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of anybody, 
 Englishman or Scotchman, feeling what can properly be 
 called devotion to the Hanoverian family, in the middle 
 of the reign of George II. Then too the details of the 
 suppression of the rebellion were sufficiently revolting. 
 The noisy terror of London during the march of the 
 Highlanders to Derby, followed by a reaction of even 
 more noisy cruelty was sure to have excited the disgust 
 of Smollett. He might well think that even if the thing 
 had to be done, it should have been done with more 
 humanity and regard for the dignity of the State. Many 
 years afterwards he asks in his travels whether some 
 remnants of old barbarity are not still to be found in 
 a certain island, and the question must have been 
 partly inspired by a recollection of the burnings and 
 shootings in the Highlands, of the shambles at Carlisle, 
 and the scaffold in London.
 
 48 LIFE OF 
 
 The well-known story told by Mr. Graham of Gart- 
 more, on the authority of some eye-witness unnamed, is 
 supported as far as it is possible by the general tone of 
 the poem. According to this literary legend, Smollett 
 read the first six stanzas of his poem to a party of friends, 
 in a tavern, perhaps that same coffee-house in Cockspur 
 Street mentioned by Dr. Carlyle. They found it a little 
 too vehement, and would have persuaded Smollett that 
 he was likely to give offence in high quarters. This 
 prudence had the effect it was calculated to have on a 
 Scotchman of the pugnacious order. The indignant 
 poet sat down and wrote a seventh stanza asserting his 
 fixed intention to go on incurring the wrath of sinners in 
 high quarters : — 
 
 " While the warm blood bedews my veins, 
 And unimpaired remembrance reigns, 
 Resentment of my country's fate 
 Witliin my fihal breast shall beat. 
 And, spite of her insulting foe, 
 JMy sympathizing verse shall flov/, 
 I\I>!urn, hapless Caledonia ! mourn, 
 Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn I " 
 
 Smollett's muse habitually inspired him best when 
 Scotland was the subject, and in this case his indignation 
 at the wrongs of his native land not only made his 
 verses, but made them with an unquestionable vehemence 
 of sincerity. If the warning of his friends was ever 
 given it was needless. The revengeful wrath of English- 
 men, even in their hardest mood, has rarely been of long 
 endurance, and has never long survived victory. If they
 
 SMOLLETT. 49 
 
 have not always rightly interpreted the hard saying, be ye 
 angry and sin not, at least they have not let the sun go 
 down on their wrath. The run of approbation which 
 Dr. Carlyle says rew^arded the " Tears of Scotland " was 
 the first sign of the speedy reaction which brought all 
 England round to agreement with Smollett. Before 
 many years were over the '' Butcher " Cumberland was 
 bitterly taunted for his cruelties by the very mob which 
 had lit the bonfires for Culloden. To be sure he never 
 gave them cause to light bonfires again. 
 
 The " Tears of Scotland " were accompanied by the 
 two poems which may be bracketed together as the 
 sorrows of Tobias Smollett. "Advice; a Satire," and 
 "Reproof; a Satire"; both appeared in 1746. It was 
 doubtless a disappointment to their author that they did 
 not meet with any remarkable run of approbation, but at 
 this distance of time the wonder is not that few men 
 marked them, but that they ever came to be written. 
 Satire, which Diogenes Teufelsdrockh described as 
 the language of the devil, is not yet dead, on a dyke-side 
 or elsewhere. While the devil and the things of the 
 devil continue in existence, it is safe; but "the satire," the 
 deliberate production of a gendeman who sets himself 
 down to rail in verse at the vices of the age, in cold 
 blood, and of malice aforethought, is a very extinct 
 literary form. But in 1746 it was not only alive, but even 
 had a future. Its classical pedigree was of the best, and 
 the English branch of the tree bore one at least of the 
 greatest names in literature. Pope had made it almost 
 commendable in a young man of spirit to lash the vices 
 of the age in heroic couplets. Dryden who was in all 
 
 4
 
 50 LIFE OF 
 
 respects less of an eighteenth-century model than his 
 successor, had used satire, and with dreadful effect, but it 
 was against definite parties, and in a recognizable cause. 
 Smollett imitated the general attack of Pope, if we ought 
 not rather to say the general attack of Swift and the form 
 of Pope. 
 
 Substantially these tvv'o satires of Smollett do not differ 
 from much which is and will continue to be published. 
 There is some general scolding at the vices of the age, 
 and a great deal of abuse of individuals. Numbers of 
 persons discreetly indicated by capital letters and dashes, 
 are accused of various vices. Scandalous stories, which 
 were of course at that time the secret of Punch, are 
 repeated, or at least referred to. All this has its counter- 
 part in our time, and it was as respectable then as it is 
 now, and no more. The satire as a common literary 
 form has one advantage over the newspaper paragraph. 
 It is at least bound to be more literary. Heroic couplets, 
 written in imitation of Pope, must, as long as they scan, be 
 superior to slovenly prose notes. Their author must put 
 a certain amount of ingenuity and of the use of the file 
 into their production. Anybody can repeat the last ill- 
 natured story about A's quarrels with his wife, or B's 
 dealings with somebody else's, in newspaper English ; but, 
 if he wants to do this in verse, he must devote some 
 amount of ingenuity to the task. Smollett was at least 
 as ingenious as some fifty or sixty or more gendemen 
 who wrote heroic verse in the eighteenth century, and if 
 that is not exalted praise, it at least is not blame. It 
 amounts to saying that Smollett, as his own seafaring 
 friends would have put it, toed the line. He wanted to
 
 SMOLLETT. 51 
 
 make his mark in literature ; he took up a popular form 
 in his day, and tried his hand at it \ the result was two 
 small satires of some vivacity, the ^Y0rk of one who was 
 by nature a prose writer, but who could handle a metre 
 which had been put within the reach of every clever 
 imitator by Pope. At this distance of time, however, 
 clever imitation is not enough to give interest to these 
 satires. The labourer in that rich mine the scandalous 
 history of the reign of George II., will find useful lines 
 here and there. The follies of the town, the misfortunes 
 of this or the other notoriety of the day, and the disgrace- 
 ful success of one or another hanger-on and unscrupulous 
 instrument of the great, are all denounced in the proper 
 way. It is all done with a lofty air of moral indignation 
 which is now more than a little ludicrous, but was then 
 part of the game. Smollett put two quotations from 
 Juvenal before his satires, and was logically bound to 
 write m his tone, and attack the vices he had attacked. 
 If he had looked about him for an English motto, he 
 would have found a very fit one. He could have said 
 with Jaques — 
 
 " Give me leave 
 To speak my mind, and I will through and through 
 Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
 If they will patiently receive my medicine." 
 
 The offer is always open to the duke's criticism, and 
 the satirist must justify his work to posterity by his work- 
 manship, if he is to be excused for disgorging into the 
 general world all the "embossed sores and headed evils," 
 which he has been at the trouble of collecting.
 
 52 LIFE OF 
 
 By the nature of things the wrathful poet who will deal 
 in satire, finds nothing fouler in this infected world than 
 his own wrongs and disappointments. Smollett did not 
 make an exception. Between the publication of "Advice," 
 and the appearance of " Reproof," he had found time for 
 another quarrel with a manager. He had written the 
 libretto of an opera, to be called " Alceste," for Rich, the 
 manager of Covent Garden. The music was to have 
 been contributed by Handel, but author and manager 
 fell out, and the composer transferred his music to 
 Dryden's " Cecilia." Nothing came of this second un- 
 lucky attempt to storm the stage except four lines of 
 virulent abuse of poor Rich, who is denounced with far 
 more fervour than Cope, Hawley, or the offending 
 Hanoverian General at Dettingen. When a literary 
 gentleman fights out a private quarrel in this public way, 
 he ought, in the opinion of to-day, to have some hesita- 
 tion about taking up a lofty moral attitude ; but this is 
 only our view. The wit of the eighteenth century was 
 troubled with no such scruples. That a literary gentle- 
 man was entitled to a comfortable subsistence at the 
 public expense, and that he was to be treated with 
 deference by such inferior persons as managers or actors, 
 was his pleasant conviction. When these persisted in 
 doing their own business in their own way, he fell savagely 
 upon them, and did his best to give them a lesson. He 
 fought his fight, too, in those times, with an obviously 
 sincere belief that there was something highly commend- 
 able in this line of conduct. To our milder generation, 
 which expects a literary gentleman to make his bread and 
 butter with as little parade of his personality as may be,
 
 SMOLLETT. 53 
 
 this attitude is apt to look truculent. In the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, it was almost a matter of course, 
 and when Smollett came forward with two thin quartos 
 of verse, and rebuked the time which did not recognize 
 the poet in the proper way, he would be understood to 
 be making a fair use of the weapons supplied him by 
 nature. Long after his time, so naturally modest a man 
 as Crabbe, was firmly convinced that he was entitled to 
 support at the hands of the rulers of the State. He was 
 angry not only for himself, but for literature, when 
 Thurlow neglected his verses and failed to show that 
 promptitude in helping the poet which became a Lord 
 Chancellor. His very real gratitude to Burke was kept 
 w^ell on the sane side of idolatry by a quiet conviction 
 that the great orator had honoured himself by patronizing 
 him. 
 
 Tlie publication of "Reproof" marks the end of 
 Smollett's years of apprenticeship. What he had done 
 hitherto had not returned him more than the negative 
 service rendered to Balzac by his first ten efforts to write 
 a novel, which, as he said, had shown him what not to 
 do. Two attempts to write for the stage had been com- 
 plete failures. The satires had made some little stir, 
 enough to render it worth while to reprint them within a 
 brief period, but in them there could be no plenty. ^Vhcn 
 everybody has been denounced all round once, the public 
 cannot be expected to listen to repetitions. It was 
 necessary to turn to something else. By this time it 
 must have been obvious that the something else must 
 still be literature. Dr. Carlylc's statement that Smollett's 
 address in 1746 was in Mayfair, shows that the Downing
 
 54 LIFE OF 
 
 Street venture must have been given up. Without a 
 degree, and with no London connection, a legitimate 
 medical practice was not to be obtained ; and even if 
 there had been no honesty in the way, Smollett was a 
 great deal too proud, quarrelsome, and scornful, for the 
 trade of quack, which many eighteenth-century notabili- 
 ties found so lucrative. There was nothing for it but 
 literature, even if nature had not been pushing him in 
 that direction. 
 
 His first struggle in London, though it had brought him 
 small praise, and less pudding, cannot have been useless 
 to Smollett. It must have gained him acquaintances, and 
 som.e familiarity with the literary world and with the 
 booksellers. It must have proved to him, altogether 
 beyond peradventure, that he could not hope to enjoy 
 one of those places of dignity and emolument which fell 
 so frequently and pleasantly in the way of the Queen 
 Anne men. The memory of that golden age haunted 
 men of letters throughout the eighteenth century, nor was 
 it until the triumphant success of Sir Walter Scott had 
 shown hoAV amply literature could suffice for itself, and 
 the development of the press had supplied those who live 
 by the pen with an honourable means of gaining a steady 
 income, that they quite gave up thinking it the duty 
 of Government to encourage genius with pensions. No 
 good fortune of that kind ever fell in Smollett's way. 
 What direct connection he was to have with Government 
 was to be mere grief and pain to him, to lead to nothing 
 but much uncongenial work done for indifferent reward. 
 By 1746 his experience must have done much to clear 
 away any illusions he may have cherished, and to show
 
 SMOLLETT. 55 
 
 him that ^Yhatever he was to gain must be paid by the 
 readers of his work. 
 
 With this situation very clearly before him, Smollett 
 must have begun to look about for the next thing to do. 
 He was not a man of much modesty in his estimate of 
 himself — not what would be called a humble-minded 
 man. Quite the reverse. To the end of his life he was 
 plainly convinced that because he was conscious of 
 good faculty, therefore any literary work he did was 
 entitled to a respectful reception, and a reward to be 
 fixed by himself. Still the failure of the " Regicide," 
 and the even more decided disaster of the " Alceste," 
 must have convinced him that for the time at least the 
 stage was shut to him. The satires were an emphatic 
 proclamation to the world that Tobias Smollett was not 
 to be offended with impunity, but they were no sufficient 
 resource. Without definitively renouncing either poetry 
 or the stage, he had to turn to another among the 
 many mansions in the House of Letters. The novel 
 was the field which naturally and inevitably attracted 
 him, and in this respect he was going over the course 
 not only of many of his contemporaries, but of the 
 literature of his century. It would be, perhaps, in- 
 accurate, and certainly somewhat offensive to say 
 that there has been a divorce between English litera- 
 ture and the English stage since the Restoration 
 comedy died out with Farquhar. On one side at 
 least the release a vinculo has never been recog- 
 nized. Goldsmith and Sheridan even succeeded in 
 re-establishing the union for a moment. None the less 
 there has been a steady incompatibility of character
 
 56 LIFE OF 
 
 which has enforced the lesser separation — not always with 
 friendly feelings on either side. The living influences 
 of English literature have not been dramatic. A few 
 acting comedies, a long series of plays for the closet 
 which, whatever other merit they may possess, want the 
 one thing necessary — the power to keep the stage — are 
 all that remains of the otten-renewed efforts of men of 
 letters to revive the once natural and spontaneous con- 
 nection between letters and the boards. The tradition 
 is so great, and, to take a lower but influential con- 
 sideration, the reward of success is so ample, that the 
 effort made by successive generations of writers is perfectly 
 natural. The failure was none the less inevitable. It 
 may be laid down as a reasonably trustworthy rule that 
 men who find their natural field in narrative and 
 description cannot by any possibility work at their ease 
 for the theatre. The limitations, the mere physical 
 limitations, of the stage, are too strict to be endurable to 
 men accustomed to the wide elbow-room, and divine 
 command over time and space which are the privileges of 
 the story-teller. V/hen he turns to the theatre his work 
 always shows that he is thinking of something other than 
 the effect Hkely to be produced by the groups, the exits, 
 and the entrances of his characters. The actor might 
 correct the defect if he and the man of letters would 
 collaborate fairly ; but work in common is barely possible 
 for these two. The actor is perhaps a little apt to think 
 literature as superfluous as the sandwich man thought the 
 letter H ; and the man of letters is very prone to refuse 
 to be dictated to by a "twopenny tearmouth" as Sir 
 Walter called no less an artist than Kean. Mutual
 
 SMOLLETT, 57 
 
 contempt for one another's work is not favourable to 
 collaboration. No man was ever less fitted for it than 
 Smollett. He had miscalled Garrick and Rich as badly 
 as his greater countryman ever did Kean. His attitude 
 towards either of them would assuredly have been a 
 repetition, in his earlier days at any rate, of Vernon's 
 contemptuous treatment of Wentworth. He was to be 
 more fruitfully employed in his library doing solid 
 miscellaneous work for booksellers, in the intervals of 
 contributing his very considerable share to the original 
 prose literature of his century. 
 
 In the first month of 1748, Smollett's successful literary 
 life began with the publication of " Roderick Random." 
 It was to be sufficiently laborious. His stories alone 
 make a list of respectable length judged by the standard 
 of his time. Five stories is a small budget as compared 
 to Sir Walter Scott's, which again looks by no means big 
 in bulk beside the literary baggage of later men, but it 
 was more than Fielding or Richardson left in number of 
 volumes, though the author of "Clarissa" was and is 
 unrivalled in the size of his individual works among 
 English writers. Then Smollett's general work will 
 stand comparison in point of size with any other. 
 Translations, political satires, books of travel from his 
 own hand are there, and with them much work done 
 under his direction and given to the press under the 
 protection of his name. One large task, finished in 
 less than two years, there is, which might have been 
 the life work of a laborious student and writer. A com- 
 plete history of England in a long series of volumes 
 stands out somewhat strangely now in the literary labours
 
 58 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 
 
 of a novelist; but it is well enough in its place on 
 Smollett's shelf. He did it, as a piece of useful industry 
 which the captious might call hackwork, not because 
 nature called him to it, or his studies had prepared him, 
 but because he was a trustworthy literary workman ready 
 to do all reputable work for a proper consideration. It 
 is to the credit of the booksellers and the public of the 
 day that the consideration was by no means contemptible. 
 With all this he did a respectable life work of journalism, 
 helping very materially towards the present victorious 
 position of our Sovereign Lady the Press, and ending, 
 after ungrateful toil, disappointment and disease, with 
 the most original, and more wonderful still, the most 
 kindly of his works.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RODERICK RANDOiNI " was the first in time and 
 the first in interest of three works v>'hich Smollett 
 published in rapid succession. It appeared in 174S. 
 " Peregrine Pickle " followed in 1751, and "Ferdinand 
 Count Eathom " in 1753. These three stories may. most 
 appropriately be taken together. It is sometimes not 
 only convenient, but critical, to take an author's works 
 one after another. But between " Roderick Random " 
 and "Count Eathom" there was no change and no de- 
 velopment in Smollett. He was under the same inspiration ; 
 he worked with the same aim, and his method underwent 
 hardly any modification. It has been said that " Pere- 
 grine Pickle " and " Count Eathom " show traces of the 
 influence of Fielding, but the supposition could hardly 
 be proved to have a better foundation than the date of 
 " Tom Jones," which came between Smollett's first and 
 his second book. There is certainly a more distinct 
 attempt to construct a plot traceable in " Count Fathom " 
 than in "Roderick Random," and if anybody maintains 
 that the effort would not have been made without the 
 encouraging example of Fielding, it is impossible to 
 prove him in the wrong. "Tom Jones " certainly came
 
 60 LIFE OF 
 
 before the " Count," and may have supphed Smollett 
 with a model, but, if so, the imitation was not happy. 
 The superficial plot of " Count Fathom " is so me- 
 chanical, and the attempt to give coherence to his adven- 
 tures is so obviously uncongenial, that, if Smollett did 
 indeed attempt to rival the beautiful workmanlike finish of 
 "Tom Jones," he must have greatly miscalculated his own 
 powers. But, in truth, the differences between the first 
 and the last of these three "adventures " is not more than 
 may be reasonably accounted for by the author's growing 
 familiarity with the practice of story writing. Such 
 influence as this familiarity had may safely be neglected, 
 in an estimate of the merits of Smollett. It is not the 
 plot which one reads him for. To adapt Johnson's 
 frequently quoted criticism on Richardson, if you read 
 Smollett for the plot you would hang yourself. A 
 better case might be made out for the proposition, that 
 Smollett was much more influenced by Richardson him- 
 self; at least, I think that there are scenes in "Peregrine 
 Pickle " which would not have been written by the author 
 of "Roderick Random" if he had not read "Clarissa 
 Harlowe " in the interval. It is almost inevitable that a 
 writer of stories should have begun after a time to try 
 and connect the parts by some thread of plot, but there 
 are moral ideas and views of conduct which do not come 
 spontaneously to all minds. When Smollett wrote his 
 first tale he would hardly have described in the same 
 way the scene between Peregrine and Emilia, that gross 
 description of an attempted violation which so intensely 
 and justly disgusted Sir Walter Scott. But whatever 
 influence either Fielding or Richardson may have had
 
 SMOLLETT. 61 
 
 Upon him, these three books are still essentially Smollett'3, 
 and are avowedly copied from a model much older than 
 either "Pamela" or "Tom Jones." 
 
 Smollett has saved his critics from the trouble of 
 looking for his source of inspiration. He has named it 
 by its name in the preface to " Roderick Random." 
 "Of all kinds of satire," it begins, "there is none so 
 entertaining and universally improving as that which is 
 introduced, as it were, occasionally, in the course of an 
 interesting story, which brings every incident home to 
 life ; and by representing familiar scenes in an uncommon 
 and amusing point of view, invests them with all the 
 graces of novelty, while nature is appealed to in every 
 particular. . . . The same method (the method of Don 
 Quixote to wit) has been practised by other Spanish 
 and French authors, and by none more successfully than 
 by Monsieur Le Sage, who, in his ' Adventures of Gil 
 Bias,' has described the knavery and foibles of life with 
 infinite humour and sagacity. The following sheets I 
 have modelled on his plan, taking the liberty, however, 
 to differ from him in the execution, where I thought his 
 particular situations were uncommon, extravagant, or 
 peculiar to the country in which the scene is laid." 
 
 This is a sufficiently frank confession of faith. 
 Smollett, in fact, set himself to write what in Spanish 
 literature is called a picaresque novel, and, indeed, he 
 went nearer the Spaniards than perliaps he was aware. 
 Of the much which he copied from Le Sage, the spirit 
 of Gil Bias was no part. As Smollett puts it himself, 
 the knavery and foibles of life are the subject of the 
 Frenchman's work. "The disgraces of Gil Bias are,
 
 G2 LIFE OF 
 
 for the most part, such as rather excite mirth than com- 
 passion ; he himself laughs at them, and his transitions 
 from distress to happiness, or at least ease, are so sudden, 
 that neither the reader has time to pity him, nor him- 
 self to be acquainted with affliction. " Gil Bias is 
 thoroughly good-humoured. Hhomme vwyen sensuel, 
 drawn by Le Sage, is a good fellow who would be honest 
 if the world and the flesh would only let him. The 
 personage who usually goes with these two corrupting 
 influences does not plague Gil Bias, or at least if 
 there is a devil in his affairs, he is not one of the great 
 ones, but a good-natured fiend, a Devil on Two Sticks 
 who is mainly intent on making fun, and who only makes 
 mischief incidentally. Even the Robbers in the Cave 
 are jovial fellows, who threaten wickedness, but do 
 none of a serious kind, and they too enjoy their joke. 
 This enjoyment of human weakness and folly was no 
 characteristic of Smollett's. A French critic would 
 probably account for the difference between master and 
 pupil by the Protestant training, which, as our neighbours 
 know, makes everybody so desperately serious. Whether 
 the kirk had a direct influence on " Roderick Random '' 
 or no, is a large question, but Smollett was assuredly a 
 very different man from Le Sage. He hated what the 
 Frenchman laughed at, and would not pass over crimes 
 and vices to enjoy folly. He found that the conduct of 
 Gil Bias "not only deviates from probability, but 
 prevents that generous indignation which ought to ani- 
 mate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition 
 of the world." This rider to his estimate of Le Sage's 
 masterpiece points out with absolute accuracy exactly
 
 SMOLLETT. G3 
 
 why and where he differed from his master. A generous 
 indignation at the vicious disposition of the world was 
 not the gain which rewarded the student who discovered 
 the soul of the Licentiate Pedro Garcia, It was rather 
 an indisposition to be indignant at anything human, and 
 a willingness to look for the good there may be mixed 
 with the knavery and foibles of erring mankind. To 
 ask Smollett to take this kindly view would have been 
 as useless as to make the same demand on Swift. 
 Neither of them could ever cease to vex his soul 
 because of the unrighteous. Smollett avowedly meant 
 to be didactic, and that not by persuasion only. 
 He preferred to use the greater whip. " The impulses 
 
 of fear," as he puts it in the dedication to Doctor , 
 
 in " Count Fathom," " which is the most violent and 
 interesting of all the passions, remain longer than any 
 other upon the memory ; and for one that is allured to 
 virtue by the contemplation of that peace and happiness 
 which it bestows, a hundred are deterred from the practice 
 of vice by that infamy and punishment to which it is 
 liable from the laws and regulations of mankind. Let 
 me not therefore be condemned for having chosen my 
 principal character from the purlieus of treachery and 
 fraud, when I declare my purpose to be to set him up 
 as a beacon for the benefit of the unexperienced and 
 unwary, who, from the perusal of these memoirs, may 
 learn to avoid the manifold snares with which we are 
 continually surrounded in the paths of life. While those 
 who hesitate on the brink of inirjuity may be terrified 
 from plunging into that irremediable gulf by surveying 
 the deplorable fate of Ferdinand Count Fathom."
 
 64 LIFE OF 
 
 Here is an avowal of an intention to purge by terror, if 
 not by pity, writ sufficiently large, and it is repeated in 
 the succeeding two paragraphs of the dedication. 
 
 In setting this didactic aim before himself, Smollett 
 departed from the practice of Le Sage, and reverted, 
 perhaps unconsciously, but undeniably, to the example 
 of the Spaniards. The mention of Spanish authors in 
 the preface to "Roderick Random" shows that he at least 
 knew of the works of the writers of novelas de picaros. 
 Whether he had come across them in Spanish does not 
 appear. Probably not, for the fact that he translated 
 " Don Quixote" later on is no proof that he was master 
 of the language at the earlier date. But it was easy 
 for the English reader to be familiar with the novelas 
 de picaros without the smallest tincture of Castilian. 
 Mabbe had translated "Guzman de Alfaruche," in 
 Jacobean times, in a folio which will well repay reading, 
 text and marginal notes alike, and the Spanish rogue 
 had had a little English progeny of his own. Don 
 Diego Puede-ser [Puede-ser means " may be," and was 
 taken punningly as a noin de guerre by Mabbe] had had 
 followers. Roger L'Estrange translated " The Dreams " 
 of Quevedo, and the industrious but obscure Captain 
 Stevens, perhaps an old soldier of Peterborough's, had 
 followed after him again with other translations from the 
 Spanish. A modern critic of the more sagacious sort, 
 with a good nose for a plagiarism, might even find proof 
 of direct robbery, by Smollett, in the dedication of the 
 adventures of " Count Fathom." " I declare my purpose 
 is to set him up as a beacon," are words which can be 
 shown to be a robbery of Mateo Aleman, who called
 
 SMOLLETT. 65 
 
 his book, "The Beacon of Life," with quite as much 
 probability as has been shown for many alleged plagiarisms. 
 But without going into these delicacies we may acknow- 
 ledge readily that Smollett took the form of his three 
 stories from Le Sage, and that he had a certain kinship of 
 character with the Spaniards, who were Le Sage's models. 
 Into this old mould Smollett poured metal of his own. 
 His three stories have something which is distinctly his. 
 The portraiture of English seamanhood, is, for one thing, 
 very much his own, but it deserves to be taken by itself. 
 Before we can judge how far that portraiture was the 
 faithful transcript of an original, and how far it was an 
 artistic picture in which the model is simply used as a 
 means of helping the painter in the expression of his own 
 artistic inclination, it is necessary to look at the books as 
 a whole, to see what was Smollett's method, and to settle 
 the preliminary question, how far his figures represent the 
 sitter, and how far they represent the painter. 
 
 Of the three, " Roderick Random " is by far the most 
 important ; it is fresher and better reading than the other 
 two, and the method is the same. It is a material help 
 in the estimate of Smollett that so much of his first book 
 should be founded, not on life in general, but on his own 
 life. Here again Smollett has boldly supplied the evidence 
 for or against himself. " Every intelligent reader," so says 
 the already quoted preface, " will at first sight perceive I 
 have not deviated from nature in the facts, which are all 
 true in the main, although the circumstances are altered 
 and disguised, to avoid personal satire." This is a tacit 
 confession that, as Thackeray has said, Smollett began on 
 the opposite side from Fielding. He did not create a 
 
 5
 
 CG LIFE OF 
 
 character from a general observation of mankind. He 
 took an individual man and put him in a novel, sufficiently 
 altered and disguised to give the author a plausible excuse 
 for saying that the original had no call to put the cap on. 
 It is, with obvious difterences, the manner of the authors 
 of comedies of humours. They took a passion or a weak- 
 ness, and put it in a human body. Smollett took an in- 
 dividual and made him into something which suited his 
 immediate purpose. 
 
 The particular humours which a writer will select to 
 make a personage out of will of course depend on his 
 own character. Smollett, who wished to arouse a generous 
 indignation in his readers' mind against the sordid and 
 vicious disposition of the world, inevitably selected the 
 hardest and darkest sides of human nature. An author 
 cannot make you indignant with the sordid or vicious 
 without showing it. He would look for it and even 
 exaggerate it. What is called sometimes justly, but also a 
 liltle indiscriminatel}', the brutality of Smollett, is, more 
 often than not, due to the choice of his material for a 
 purpose which to his own mind was distinctly humane. 
 We could wish sometimes that he had laid to heart the 
 banished Duke's warning to Jaques, and there may fairly 
 be said to be something hard in the character of a man 
 who dwells on odious things, even though it be for the 
 purpose of showing them as hateful ; but there is obviously 
 a wide difference between being merely somewhat in- 
 different to the pain which the display of brutality may 
 excite in the reader's mind, and being indifferent to the 
 brutality. If a man cannot endure the picture of the 
 hardest sides of a hard time, he will certainly not enjoy
 
 SMOLLETT. 67 
 
 Smollett ; still these things were there, they were not all 
 life, but they were an important part of it. The State 
 trials give a picture of the condition of the prisons of those 
 days which far surpasses anything that Smollett has written, 
 and if he insisted too much on these and similar features 
 of the life of his time, he was, at the worst, only to be 
 blamed for want of perspective. 
 
 Remembering then what it was that Smollett sought 
 for and what was his aim, we may know what to expect 
 from "Roderick Random." His hero was to have been an 
 orphan of " modest merit," struggling with the difficulties 
 caused by " his own want of experience as v.-ell as from 
 the selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of 
 mankind." The theme lent itself to autobiography, and 
 was doubtless chosen for that very reason. Smollett 
 took the outline of his own life, and painted into it 
 all the "selfishness, envy, and bas2 indifference of man- 
 kind " he needed to produce the desired literary effect. 
 Roderick is an orphan, like himself, but in an infinitely 
 worse position. The grandfather, who " was remarkable 
 for his abilities in the law, which he exercised with great 
 success in the station of a judge, particularly against 
 beggars, for whom he had a singular aversion ; " the 
 cousin, " the young Actseon, who inherited his grand- 
 father's antipathy to everything in distress," and who was 
 wont to amuse himself by hunting Roderick with beagles ; 
 the female cousins, who persecute the boy till he becomes 
 too dangerous to touch, are the angry travesty of the 
 Smollett family. Tiie father's love match is the i^athetic 
 version of Archibald Smollett's rash marriage. The eld 
 judge's will answers to the disposition of his [)n)perly
 
 68 LIFE OF 
 
 made by old Sir James. In later times the author made 
 amends to his grandfather's house, but in 1748 he was in 
 another frame of mind ; he knew well what he was doing, 
 and unquestionably he knew also that they would under- 
 stand it at Bonhill. As the story begins so it goes on. 
 The raw Scotchman's arrival in London, Mr. Cringer the 
 member of Parliament, and his friend Mr. Staytape the 
 tailor, the examining medical board and the admiraltyyard, 
 were all parts of Smollett's experiences, told not as they 
 happened to him, but as they would best fit into the story. 
 The expedition to Carthagena, and the misfortunes of 
 his tragedy of James I. of Scotland, contributed their 
 share. In this last there is probably even less deliberate 
 rearrangement of the material than in the description of 
 the household at Bonhill, and in spite of the disclaimer 
 in his preface, Smollett assuredly meant Brayer and 
 Sheerwit to recognize their portraits. Indeed, the dis- 
 claimer must have served to draw attention to the per- 
 sonalities. The young painter in Smollett's apologue, 
 which immediately follows his preface, was painfully 
 surprised when his friends thought themselves pointed 
 at in his conversation-piece, but then he did not call 
 his acquaintances together and say :— 
 
 " You observe, my friends, that my picture of Bruin as 
 an old toothless, drunken soldier, has a certain resem- 
 blance to our friend the captain ; the owl perched upon 
 the handle of the coffee-pot with spectacles on his nose, 
 looking at that newspaper, may be taken by some for the 
 
 respectable Mr. B ; the ass, ornamented with a huge 
 
 tye wig, which, however, cannot conceal his long ears,
 
 SMOLLETT, 69 
 
 may be maliciously said to stand for poor C ; and 
 
 ill-natured persons may think that D is aimed at in the 
 
 picture of the monkey who appears with the implements 
 of painting, but I assure you that I have not the least 
 intention of ridiculing these good people." 
 
 This is precisely the line which Smollett took, and, 
 like other gentlemen who have drawn a literary portrait, 
 he was a great deal more anxious that the allusion should 
 be clearly perceived than to escape the charge of making 
 personal attacks. 
 
 The personalities of "Roderick Random" may have 
 helped it to some sucds de scandale, but this, as Smollett 
 probably recognized later on, was no part of its good 
 fortune. It was read then, and has been read ever since, 
 by people who neither knew nor cared whether Lacy, 
 or Rich, or Garrick, or Lyttelton were attacked in it or 
 not. It has been loved and read and re-read because it 
 is a vigorous and swinging tale of adventure. Roderick's 
 transitions, though they are not like Gil Bias' " from 
 distress to happiness, or at least ease," are equally sudden, 
 and the reader is a great deal too much interested in the 
 adventures to pity the hero, even if Roderick were an 
 appropriate object for that kind of regard. Then the 
 innumerable fantastic figures which fill the book live 
 with a vivacious rather unnatural life of their own. 
 Jackson, with his incurable Cohemianism ; " my friend 
 Banter," who welcomes his friend so g.iily in the 
 imaginary character of highwayman ; Potion and Crab; 
 Mr. Lavement, his wife and daughter ; all the curious 
 waggon-load of monstrosities who travel from Newcastle
 
 70 LIFE OF 
 
 with the hero and his faithful friend Strap, remain in 
 one's mind as something hke the young painter's four 
 figures in the conversation-piece. They are hardly 
 human beings, but they are wonderfully comic beasts in 
 human shape. Then the endless unresting comings and 
 goings, the encounters of these strange masks one with 
 another, keep up an unbroken stir which excites the 
 reader as the actual sight of a pantomime might do — the 
 pantomime one w^ould wish to see performed by the 
 wild, dancing figures of Callot, suddenly made flesh for 
 our amusement. It is the privilege of the master of 
 narrative over the master of figure that he can make 
 his ragged bullies with their truculent long svv'ords 
 sticking through their broken scabbards, and his skipping 
 mountebanks with their inhumane long noses, his tatter- 
 demalion beggars, and his wenches in mingled rags and 
 finery, actually live and speak. You must read the 
 action into Callot or Hogarth for yourself, but in 
 Smollett all that is supplied, and even the figure comes 
 of itself. There is never any doubt what any of the 
 cuiious figures on his stage are meant to stand for; their 
 character is written very clearly on them, and they name 
 one another as plainly as possible. 
 
 Unluckily, Smollett is not always quotable, and some 
 of the more vivacious of his scenes must be left un- 
 touched, but here is one which, allowing for a certain 
 eighteenth-century precision of language, may be taken 
 without offence. It is somewhat long, but that is easily 
 pardonable : — 
 
 " The time between this event and dinner I passed in
 
 SMOLLETT. 71 
 
 observing a game of cards between two farmers, an 
 
 exciseman, and a young fellow in a rusty gown and 
 
 cassock, who, as I afterwards understood, was curate of 
 
 a neighbouring parish. It was easy to perceive that the 
 
 match was not equal, and that the two farmers, who were 
 
 partners, had to do with a couple of sharpers, who 
 
 stript them of all their cash in a very short time. But 
 
 what surprised me very much was to hear this clergyman 
 
 reply to one of the countrymen, who seemed to suspect 
 
 of foul play, in these words : ' Damn me, friend, d'ye 
 
 question my honour ? ' I did not at all wonder to find 
 
 a cheat in canonicals, this being a character frequent in 
 
 my own country ; but I was scandalized at the indecency 
 
 of his behaviour, which appeared in the oaths that he 
 
 swore, and the bawdy songs which he sung. At last, to 
 
 make amends in some sort for the damage he had done 
 
 to the unwary boors, he pulled out a fiddle from the 
 
 lining of his gown, and promising to treat them at dinner, 
 
 began to play most melodiously, singing in concert all 
 
 the while. This good humour of the parson inspired the 
 
 companions with so much glee that the farmers soon 
 
 forgot their losses, and all present went to dancing in the 
 
 yard. While we were agreeably amused in this manner, 
 
 our musician, spying a horseman riding towards the inn, 
 
 stopped all of a sudden, crying out, ' Gad so ! gentlemen, 
 
 I beg your pardon ; there's our dog of a doctor coming 
 
 into the inn.' He immediately concealed his instrument, 
 
 and ran towards the gate, where he took hold of tlie 
 
 vicar's bridle, and helped him off, inquiring very cordially 
 
 into the state of his health. Tliis rosy son of the Church, 
 
 who might be about the age of fifty, having alighted and
 
 72 LIFE OF 
 
 trusted the curate with his horse, stalked with great 
 solemnity into the kitchen, where, sitting down by the 
 fire, he called for a bottle of ale and a pipe, scarce 
 deigning an answer to the submissive questions of those 
 who inquired about the welfare of his family. While he 
 indulged himself in this state amidst a profound silence, 
 the curate, approaching him with great reverence, asked 
 if he would not be pleased to honour us with his com- 
 pany at dinner? to which interrogation he answered in 
 the negative, saying, he had been to visit Squire Bumpkin, 
 who had drank himself into a high fever at the last 
 assizes; and that he had, on leaving his own house, told 
 Betty he should dine at home. Accordingly, when he 
 had made an end of his bottle and pipe, he rose and 
 moved, with prelatical dignity, to the door, where his 
 journeyman stood ready with his nag. He had no sooner 
 mounted than the facetious curate, coming into the 
 kitchen, held forth in this manner : ' There the old rascal 
 goes, and the devil go with him. You see how the 
 world wags, gentlemen. By Gad, this rogue of a vicar 
 does not deserve to live ; and yet he has two livings 
 worth ;^4oo per annum, while poor I am fain to do all 
 his drudgery, and ride twenty miles every Sunday to 
 preach, for what ? why, truly, for ;^20 a year. I scorn 
 to boast of my own qualifications; but — comparisons are 
 odious — I should be glad to know how this swag-bellied 
 doctor deserves to be more at ease than me. He can 
 loll in his elbow-chair at home, indulge himself in the 
 best of victuals and wine, and enjoy the conversation of 
 Betty his housekeeper. You understand me, gentlemen. 
 Benv is the doctor's poor kinswoman, and a pretty girl
 
 SMOLLETT. 73 
 
 she is ; but no matter for that — ay, and a dutiful girl to 
 her parents, vrhom she visits regularly every year, though, 
 I must own, I could never learn in what county they 
 live. My service t' ye, gentlemen.' By this time, dinner 
 being ready, I waked my companion, and we ate 
 altogether with great cheerfulness. When our meal was 
 ended and every man's share of the reckoning adjusted, 
 the curate went out on pretence of some necessary 
 occasion, and, mounting his horse, left the two farmers to 
 satisfy the host in the best manner they could. We were 
 no sooner informed of this piece of finesse, than the 
 exciseman, who had been silent hitherto, began to open, 
 with a malicious grin, ' Ay, ay, this is an old trick of 
 Shuffle. I could not help smiling when he talked of 
 treating. You must know this is a very curious fellow ; 
 he picked up some scraps of learning while he served 
 young Lord Trifle at the University. But what he most 
 excels in is pimping. No man knows his talent better 
 than I ; for I was valet-dc-chatiibre to Squire Tattle, an 
 Intimate companion of Shufile's lord. He got himself into 
 a scrape by pawning some of his lordship's clothes, on 
 which account he was turned away ; but as he was ac- 
 quainted with some particular circumstances of my lord's 
 conduct, he did not care to exasperate him too much, 
 and so made interest for his receiving orders, and after- 
 wards recommended him to the curacy which he now 
 enjoys. However, the fellow cannot be too much 
 admired for his dexteritv in making a comfortable liveli- 
 hood in spite of such a small allowance. You hear 
 he plays a good stick, and is really diverting company. 
 These qualifications make him agreeable wherever he
 
 74 LIFE OF 
 
 goes ; and as for playing at cards, there is not a man 
 ^\ithin three counties a match for him. The tiuth is, he 
 is a damnable cheat ; and can shift a card with such ad- 
 dress that it is impossible to discover him.' Here he was 
 interrupted by one of the farmers, who asked why he had 
 not justice enough to acquaint them with these particulars 
 before they engaged in play ? The exciseman replied 
 without any hesitation that it was none of his business to 
 intermeddle between man and man ; besides, he did not 
 know they vrere ignorant of Shuffle's character, which 
 was notorious to the whole country. This did not satisfy 
 the other, who taxed him with abetting and assisting the 
 curate's knavery, and insisted on having his share of the 
 winnings returned ; this demand the exciseman as 
 positively refused, affirming that, whatsoever sleights 
 ShufQe might practice on other occasions, he was very 
 certain that he had played on the square with them, and 
 would answer it before any bench in Christendom. So 
 saying, he got up, and, having paid his reckoning, 
 sneaked off The landlord, thrusting his neck into the 
 passage to see if he was gone, shook his head, saying, 
 ' Ah 1 Lord, help us ; if every sinner was to have his 
 
 deserts Well, we victuallers must not disoblige the 
 
 exciseman ; but I know what — if Parson Shuffle and he 
 were weighed together, a straw thrown into either scale 
 would make the balance kick the beam. But, masters, 
 this is under the rose/ continued Boniface, with a 
 whisper." 
 
 Here is a scene from a sordid and vicious world ; rogue 
 or dupe, or rogue and dupe, is a description of every
 
 SMOLLETT. 75 
 
 actor in it. Whether such a curate and such a vicar, 
 such farmers and such a landlord, could have been found 
 together in the England of the day, or at any time, is 
 a question hardly worth discussing. They live in the 
 England that Roderick Random saw. If Smollett had 
 ever been called upon to defend his picture, he miglit 
 have answered that if such things were not, they at least 
 might be, and the best way of making them impossible 
 was to excite the generous indignation of his readers 
 against them. Whatever may be the truth of the picture, 
 or the value of the writer's didactic purpose, the scene is 
 given in admirable, vivacious prose. The characters 
 pass the spot, to borrow a figure from Mr. Stevenson's 
 "Treasure Island," with brisk activity and neatness of 
 touch ; each of ihem labels the last speaker neatly, and 
 is labelled in his turn, and the author's blows fall like 
 the strokes of a strip-hammer. This passage is the more 
 interesting in Smollett's work because it is one which 
 had a distinct influence on a great master of the modern 
 novel. It can hardly be doubted that Thackeray, who 
 knew his " Roderick Random " well, and praised it often, 
 had the curate of this scene in his memory when he drew 
 Sampson— the very Bohemian parson in "The Virginians." 
 The hero who passes through this fantasmagoria is not 
 an attractive personage. The "modest merit" of Smollett's 
 orphan is much less obvious than the rascality of the 
 world he has to struggle against. " Modest " and " merit '' 
 arc two words which go very ill with such a personage as 
 Roderick Random. Lady Mary Montague noted that 
 her kinsman Fielding could never see that his heroes 
 were pitiful fellows, and Smollett obviously died without
 
 7G LWE OF 
 
 realizing how nearly Ihe hero, who was in some sort a 
 portrait of himself, came to being a ruffian. The diffe- 
 rence between Tom Jones and Roderick Random is 
 partly a question of nationality. Jones is an English- 
 man; he is a thick-skinned fellow enough, but he is 
 good-natured ; he will knock his enemy down with very 
 little scruple, but once the offender is down Jones for- 
 gives him. If he meets his worst foe in trouble, he will 
 help him with ungrudging generosity. Random is a 
 Scotchman, who, like Sir Walter Scott's drover, is not 
 satisfied until he has drawn blood with the sword in his 
 quarrels. If he helps an enemy, he throws his assistance 
 at him, as Tom Jones would not have thrown a bone to 
 a dog. To talk of him as indelicate, would be almost 
 absurd — delicacy has nothing to do with Roderick 
 Random. Neither need one look for consistency of 
 character in this hero : any man who started with the 
 nature and the training of Roderick Random would 
 infaUibly become a Barry Lyndon. But Roderick was 
 not called upon to develop in any probable way. He 
 is the central figure of a whirl of adventures, and it 
 is enough that he fills his place with spirit. If he had 
 been hanged, I, for my part, should have heard the 
 tidings unmoved. When he marries Narcissa, and 
 settles down to weakh, it is because the adventures are 
 at an end, and one is sorry for it. For Roderick himself 
 no human being can ever have been glad or sorry. The 
 faithful Strap is more attractive, and it is just possible 
 that four human beings may have competed for the 
 honour of having sat for his portrait from some other 
 motive than the desire to be put in a book. The
 
 SMOLLETT. 77 
 
 valet is at least an honest figure of fun. His dog-like 
 fidelity, his erratic courage, his patriotic confide nee in 
 Scotchmen, and in rogues who praise the Scotch, and his 
 very scraps of Latin, give him more real vitality than 
 his master. We feel that he at least deserved a better 
 end, though it is the end of his fellow barber, and 
 parcel Latinist, Partridge. 
 
 It is in keeping with Smollett's deliberate dwelling 
 on the more brutal phases of life, that the would-be 
 sentimental parts of his stories are so terribly forced, cold, 
 and prosaically positive. We are told that the physician 
 listened with complacency to the ravings of Renaldo, 
 Count de Melville, over the loss of the peerless Monimia, 
 ravished from him by the machinations of the wicked 
 Fathom. At this distance of time we do not listen to 
 him with complacenc}'^, nor indeed to any of the amorous 
 parts of Smollett's work. When posterity reads that 
 "the lovers were seated; he looked and lanquished; she 
 flushed and faltered ; all was doubt and delirium, fond- 
 ness and flutter," posterity laughs. There is no love- 
 scene in Smollett, though there are many which would 
 be love-scenes if elaborate description and persistent 
 filling up of adjectives could give them the spirit they 
 lack. Nothing in all his work resembles even afar off 
 that scene in ^Vinchester Cathedral, when Esmond and 
 his "beloved mistress" meet again, or the tragic appear- 
 ance of Beatrix on the staircase at Walcot, "a woman 
 whose eyes were fire, whose look was love, whose voice 
 was the sweetest low song, whose shape was perfect 
 symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as it 
 planted itself on the ground was firm and flexible, and
 
 78 LIFE OF 
 
 whose motion, whether rapid or slow, was ahvays perfect 
 grace — agile as a nymph, lofty as a queen — now melting, 
 now imperious, now sarcastic — there was no single move- 
 ment of hers but was beautiful." But such scenes are 
 rare. It would be easy to make a goodly list of masters 
 in romance, and even in poetry, who have never put 
 reality into their delineations of what Lord Bacon ^ 
 surely very strangely — called the weak passion of love. 
 Smollett is not alone in that deficiency. If he could 
 have left it alone his stories would have been free from 
 much pure boredom, or unconscious absurdity. He is 
 not worse than tiresome or ridiculous when he is driven 
 by the necessity of consulting the public taste, or misled 
 by ignorance of his own limitations, to deal with all that 
 side of life. Sir Walter Scott speaks of the lust of his 
 heroes, but the word is not so much too severe, as in- 
 appropriate. There is neither lust nor love in Smollett, 
 neither the noble nor the ignoble phases of the passion. 
 They are simply wanting, and instead of them there is, 
 as in so many of the Restoration comedies, a cold parade 
 of words — the laborious attempt of a clever writer to 
 supply mechanically the place of feeling. It looks very 
 gross now, but Smollett lived in an outspoken time, 
 which had no scruple about mentioning certains facts of 
 human nature. In these times other formulas have 
 taken the place of his. In 1748, and for long after- 
 wards, readers did not feel shocked when the novelist 
 fairly put his characters to bed. 
 
 A writer who is painfully literal in his love scenes will 
 hardly be delicate in other respects. To this prosaic 
 accuracy of language ought to be attributed much of
 
 SMOLLETT. 79 
 
 whit is called Smollett's brutality. He certainly de- 
 scribes and almost insists on the merely physical suffer- 
 ings and weakness of mankind. Disease and deformity, 
 rags and vermin, are introduced by him with undesirable 
 frequency — undesired, that is, by the taste of our time. 
 Further, he is very apt to speak of mere brutal violence, 
 done either in jest or in anger, with little or no appear- 
 ance of indignation on his own part. For one thing, 
 there are more blows given and received in Smollett ; 
 there is more flogging than could be paralleled in the 
 work of any other writer who can fairly be called a man 
 of letters. His heroes inflict pain not only in revenge, 
 but even in mere jocularity, and there is no sign that 
 Smollett sees anything very blameworthy in their con- 
 duct. Peregrine Pickle tortures poor Pallet with abso- 
 lute delight, and the author, though he does not represent 
 his hero as a model, never blames him for this part 
 of his behaviour. Several episodes both of "Roderick 
 Random" and "Peregrine Pickle" are full of mere human 
 cruelty, told with little or no comment and no effort to 
 draw a moral. A large school of modern novelists 
 have, superficially, shown the same indiff"erence. Tour- 
 gueneff, to cite one name, never stops his narrative to 
 say this is cruel, or that is vicious. Flaubert records 
 the history of the misery and degradation of a whole 
 family with an appearance of absolute detachment. But 
 Smollett does not work in the same method as these 
 men. He is ready enough to intervene in his own 
 person and draw the moral for his reader. When he 
 does not do so, it may be at least plausibly contended 
 |;hat he is not moved by the misery, or made indignant
 
 80 LIFE OF 
 
 by the barbarity which he describes. Even if he is not 
 asked to show any personal feeling, he may still be blamed 
 for dwelling unnecessarily on barbarous and horrible 
 scenes. It may seem that he did not care enough to be 
 unwilling to make use of any horror which he might 
 find useful. 
 
 This callousness of Smollett has been often enough 
 charged against him. M. Taine absolutely shrinks from 
 him, and dismisses him in a note as a kind of unworthy 
 appendix to Fielding; but this is a fit occasion for the 
 use of the distinguo. It is easy to abuse the excuse 
 which a writer's time makes for him, but it is an excuse and 
 an explanation none the less. Smollett's contemporaries, 
 even the most humane among them, did not find him 
 blamably ferocious ; they were not shocked by his 
 unconcerned descriptions. Mrs. Delane and Lady 
 Mary Montague, two very different women, read "Rode- 
 rick Random" without being shocked. These two ladies 
 were apparently of opinion that the things which he 
 described were a part of life, and of the legitimate 
 material of the novelist. It is of course one thing to 
 say of Smollett that he was no more cruel than his time, 
 and another to represent him as an exceptionally tender- 
 hearted and kindly man. That he was this last nobody 
 can well believe. No man deserving these epithets could 
 have told the story of Miss Williams, or have given the 
 picture of Captain Clewline and his wife in the debtors' 
 prison, without a much more distinct expression of pity 
 and horror than can be gathered from Smollett's narra- 
 tive. Yet it would, I think, be manifestly absurd to accuse 
 Smollett of indifference in these ancj many similar case§,
 
 SMOLLETT. 81 
 
 M. Taine, and he is not alone in his disability, cannot 
 understand how any man could describe the misfortunes 
 of Miss Williams in the unconcerned historic style of 
 Smollett. It is disgusting to him, and not to him only, 
 to see a woman sinking through inexpressible ignominy 
 into Bridewell, to be lashed into attempting suicide, and 
 flogged for the attempt. But, after all, it is necessary to 
 distinguish between what was Smollett, and what was his 
 time. It requires only a very superficial knowledge of 
 the life of the eighteenth century, as shown in literature 
 and in art, to be persuaded of the callous roughness 
 of those times. Hogarth has done a history of Miss 
 Williams of his own, which does not differ in any detail 
 from Smollett's, except in the termination, which is more 
 humane in the novel than in that well-known series of 
 prints. Dr. Johnson was assuredly a humane man, and 
 yet look at the comment which he made to Boswell 
 on the story of Madame Lapouchin, the story that 
 is to say which Lord Karnes took from Chappe 
 D'Auteroche. " The woman's life was spared, and no 
 punishment was too great for the favourite of an Em- 
 press, who had conspired to dethrone her mistress." 
 What the punishment was said to have been the reader 
 may be left to learn from Lord Karnes, or from Chappe 
 D'Auteroche, or if he prefers it, from Marryat's " Pacha of 
 Many Tales." If Smollett is to be blamed for barbarity, 
 it must be because he thought less of it than his con- 
 temporaries, or dwelt on it more. That he is wholly 
 invulnerable on this score I will not undertake to assert, 
 but it must not be forgotten that his avowed object was 
 to raise a generous indignation against the sordid and 
 
 6
 
 32 LIFE OF 
 
 vicious disposition of the world. It was due to a certain 
 intellectual hardness which he shared with Swift, that he 
 did not see that the mere repetition of horrible things 
 was in itself an offence. Fielding worked in the same 
 spirit, but it was with a kindliness of nature which made 
 him avoid mere repulsive detail. Much of Smollett's 
 barbarity is pure and simple horse-play, which is cer- 
 tainly not a very dignified form of amusement, but need 
 not be taken too seriously. Such a fool as Pallet would 
 be thought to deserve the treatment he received; nobody 
 was called upon to stop and ask himself whether the 
 painter was a possible human being, or only a mannikin 
 skipping about for his amusement. 
 
 Between the appearance of " Roderick Random " and 
 of " Peregrine Pickle," Smollett had paid a visit to France, 
 which left its traces on the second of these works. He 
 travelled with his friend Moore, afterwards the author of 
 "Zeluco," and Smollett's ovn editor and biographer. 
 All the incidents of this tour, which have been pre- 
 served, have been used up in a praiseworthy business- 
 like way in " Peregrine Pickle." The travellers fell in 
 with a party of exiled Scotch Jacobites, and also with an 
 English traveller who was to supply p. good deal of "copy" 
 for the new novel. In different ways both these meet- 
 ings touched Smollett's patriotism. The melancholy 
 spectacle presented by Mr. Hunter of Burnside and his 
 fellow Scottish gentlemen brooding over their exile, and 
 wandering on the shore at Boulogne to get a look at the 
 cliffs of England, moved him very honestly ; he felt and 
 wrote as he had done four years before, immediately 
 after the suppression of the rebellion — as a man who
 
 SMOLLETT. 83 
 
 was not a Jacobite, but who v.ms Tory enough and 
 Scotchman enough to feel for his unfortunate country- 
 men. His power of drawing a vivid scene was never 
 more kindly employed than in the description of the 
 supper given by Peregrine to the four or five gentlemen 
 who had been "exiled from their native homes in 
 consequence of their adherence to an unfortunate and 
 ruined cause," and who told him "that they were gone 
 to the seaside, according to their daily practice, in order 
 to indulge their longing eyes with a prospect of the 
 white cliffs of Albion, which they must never more 
 approach." The pathos of exile, the idle weary waiting, 
 hopeless regrets, and the forced gaiety of men who have 
 been driven from their country, are touched with all 
 Smollett's dexterity, and more than his usual delicacy. 
 It is noteworthy as a proof of how little the rancour of 
 Englishmen endures, that this pathetic reference to the 
 partisans of a lost cause was printed in London, without 
 exciting anger or even comment, within five years of the 
 suppression of the rebellion. Smollett might have 
 remembered how boldly he had been allowed to speak 
 for his countrymen while the memory of the black 
 Wednesday, when the Highlanders were at Derby, was 
 still fresh, before he wrote in his history that the English 
 are "naturally fierce, impatient, and clamorous." 
 
 His English acquaintances in Paris left a much less 
 genial trace on " Peregrine Pickle." Mark Akenside and 
 his unnamed friend the painter were the originals of the 
 physician and Pallet. \V' hat the author of the " Plea- 
 sures of Imagination" had done to offend Smollett is 
 pot very clear. If it is true that he made " disparaging
 
 84 LIFE OF 
 
 remarks on Scotland," that would be enough to account 
 for the unmeasured attack made on him. Perhaps, 
 however, Akenside's real offence was, that he was not a 
 little of a prig, and very much of a bore. He quoted 
 Greek, he was a great republican, he laid down the law, 
 and annoyed Smollett by continual talk about the 
 ancients ; at least this is what he did, if the physician is 
 even a gross caricature of the real Mark Akenside. On 
 the whole, one inclines to the belief that the physician 
 was not more than a distorted portrait of a pragmatical 
 gentleman who had the ill-luck to come in Smollett's way. 
 There is a great deal of internal probability about the 
 picture. What can be truer to a well-known type of 
 character — never so familiar as in these days of ours — ■ 
 than the physician's appearance as a friend of humanity ? 
 Two French officers bully an innkeeper at Arras, where- 
 upon this republican, after the manner of the ancients, 
 comments as follows : " He said that the greatest man 
 in Athens would have been condemned to perpetual 
 exile, and seen his estate confiscated for public use had 
 he dared, in such a licentious manner, to violate the 
 rights of a fellow citizen ; and as to the little affronts to 
 which a man may be subject from the petulance of the 
 multitude, he [the humane physician to wit] looked upon 
 them as glorious indications of liberty, which ought not 
 to be repressed, and would at any time rejoice to find 
 himself overthrown in a kennel by the insolence of a son 
 of freedom, even though the fall should cost him a limb; 
 adding, by way of illustration, that the greatest pleasure 
 he ever enjoyed was in seeing a dustman wilfully overturn 
 a gentleman's coach, in which two ladies were bruised even
 
 SMOLLETT. 85 
 
 to the danger of their lives." This is caricature, but of a 
 perfectly legitimate kind. There is a type of philanthro- 
 pist who feels in that way, who experiences a virtuous 
 pleasure when some one is bruised, even to the danger 
 of his life, because another has been insolently treated 
 by quite different persons in a distant place. It is 
 erring in his own way, but only human to answer with 
 Pallet : " If that be the case, I wish you may see every 
 bone in your body broke by the first carman you meet 
 in the streets of London." The painter is more of a 
 fantoche than the physician, but he is distinctly a cari- 
 cature of an ancestor of Thackeray's immortal Gandish. 
 His Cleopatra may hang in the same gallery as the 
 " Boadishia." 
 
 It is part of the history of " Peregrine Pickle" that the 
 first edition belongs to the class of books which are 
 chiefly known to the curious. Here no more need be 
 said about it than that Smollett apologized for it, and 
 removed much which even the by no means fastidious 
 taste of his time found offensive. For the rest, the " Pere- 
 grine Pickle " of literature is the edition which Smollett 
 revised, and finally gave to the world. 
 
 Smollett used up more than his experiences in " Pere- 
 grine Pickle." He not only shot into it all the bores 
 and fools who came in his way, which was legitimate, 
 but he gave one place, and, according to tradition and 
 probability, sold another, to persons who had nothing 
 whatever to do with the story. He tried, as it were, to 
 make journalism out of a novel. The long account of 
 
 the virtuous Mr. M was perhaps put in out of 
 
 friendship and admiration. The "melting Scot" had
 
 86 LIFE OF 
 
 been praised by Smollett in "Reproof," and perhaps as 
 a figure in the strange population of the Fleet he had 
 some right to stand among the other portraits of the 
 book. His story needs a great deal of annotating and 
 explaining. As it stands, it is much more a specimen of 
 eighteenth-century sensibility than a biography of Daniel 
 Mackercher, Esq. For the rest, what had that gentle- 
 man and the claimant to the Anglesea title to do with 
 "Peregrine Pickle"? From the literary point of view 
 nothing whatever, but Smollett cannot have troubled 
 himself at all about artistic consistency in this second 
 book of his. His wish to make it a success was mani- 
 festly strong, and the loose construction of a tale of 
 adventures allowed him to put in whatever might be 
 trusted to interest his public. As for the Lady of 
 Quality who divides the title-page with Peregrine Pickle, 
 her presence is susceptible of a very simple explanation. 
 There is no reason to doubt the story that Lady Vane 
 paid for her place, if only because no other excuse can 
 be given for her presence. The memoirs of a Lady of 
 Quality were openly advertised as a scandalous attraction 
 to the book. To most readers who were likely to be 
 drawn by such things, they must have been a sore 
 disappointment. Her ladyship is amusing as much for 
 what she does not say as for what she actually tells; but 
 her narrative is marked by a reticence of language which 
 might have been judiciously imitated by Smollett him- 
 self. Lady Mary Montague supposed that Smollett must, 
 in his character of "subaltern admirer" of Lady Vane, 
 have added some " strokes of humour." Lady Mary 
 was a judge of men, and women, and books. She
 
 SMOLLETT. 87 
 
 knew Lady Vane, and would be able to guess pretty 
 accurately what she could and could not have written. 
 It is for the rest probable enough that when Smollett 
 undertook to bring out her memoirs, he also engaged 
 to render them those services which Thackeray's Mr. 
 FitzBoodle expected from one of Eraser's young men. 
 But whatever work he may have rendered them as 
 editor, the memoirs are distinctly Lady Vane's. Hardly 
 any man could have written them, and assuredly Smol- 
 lett could not. It is perhaps some excuse for their 
 appearance in the book, that in Lady INIary's opinion 
 " Her history, rightly considered, would be more instruc- 
 tive to young women than any sermon I know." They 
 must have been very firmly convinced, in 1752, of the 
 natural tendency of young women to wander from the 
 straight path, if they saw any good in instructing them 
 in the fortunes of Lady Vane as a warning. Lady 
 Mary's comment is one proof among thousands of the 
 belief of her time that all facts of life are proper to be 
 talked of. 
 
 When its episodes are put aside, " Peregrine Pickle " 
 is a tale of adventure on the lines of "Roderick Random," 
 and written on the same method. It is more like "The 
 Roman Comique," and less like "Gil Bias." There is 
 more deliberate buffoonery, and rather less ferocity. 
 Smollett was not going through something so nearly 
 resembling his own life; he was less personally interested 
 in the hero, and less wrath with his foes. As for the hero 
 himself, his divine Emilia, his friend Crabtree, and the 
 rest, they sadly need the help of Lamb's famous apology 
 for the heroes and heroines of the Restoration comedy.
 
 88 LIFE OF 
 
 If they are to be judged as real people in a real world, 
 then there is indeed not much to be said for them. 
 Pickle is a ruffian, and Emilia is worthy of him, in 
 spite of all her airs of virtue. That Smollett meant to 
 be moral with his hero is clear, otherwise he would not 
 have rebuked him at the hands of Gauntlet, or caused 
 him to play such a poor figure in the scene Sir Walter 
 could not away with. He is at pains to stop and say this 
 was wrong in my hero ; for that other offence of his he 
 shall be duly punished and reformed by stripes ; but 
 when the castigation is over, and Peregrine is suddenly 
 presented as a reformed character, he is, in fact, much 
 the same Pickle that he was. In truth, change or per- 
 sistency matter but little with them all, if, like Lady 
 Vane's history, they are rightly considered. Look upon 
 them as in a Utopia, if not of gallantry, though that is not 
 wanting, yet of picaresque adventure, and they play 
 their part right briskly. To ask them to be as the 
 characters of Fielding is unreasonable ; one might as 
 well complain that Franca Trippa and Fritellino (to go 
 back to Callot) are not in the least like the courtiers of 
 Lewis XIII., and that the Balli de Sfessania gives no true 
 picture of the Court of Florence. It is their function to 
 supply a sanctuary and Alsatia wherein one may escape 
 from the pressure of reality. To be sure, you may not 
 like Alsatia. There are people who do not enjoy " The 
 Roman Comique." To them "Roderick Random," and 
 still more " Peregrine Pickle," can hardly be attractive. 
 There is too much rude buffoonery and mere horse-play ; 
 but if a man does not object to this primitive form of 
 humour, if he is not shocked or bored by the sight of
 
 SMOLLETT. 89 
 
 noisy human animals engaged in high jinks, then he can 
 enjoy them. For movement and what may be accurately 
 called "go," nothing can well be better than the hardly- 
 quotable story of the nymph of the road, whom Peregrine 
 Pickle proposed to turn into a young lady of fashion. 
 Her journey to the garrison with Pipes, the astounding 
 toilet which was prepared for her in the hall, and duly per- 
 formed by the ex-boatswain's mate with tubs of warm water 
 and swabs of various texture, applied after the manner of 
 "the ceremony of scrubbing, as it is practised on board 
 of the king's ships of war," under the superintending eye 
 of Hatchway, and her subsequent startling appearance in 
 polite society, are all scenes from a literary Alsatia. 
 Nothing of the kind ever happened in this prosaic world, 
 but in the Utopia of adventures why should it not 
 happen ? One feels that Smollett must have enjoyed 
 this episode most intensely himself; the style swings 
 along with such a fine, free movement, and the incidents 
 come tripping one after the other just as they bubbled 
 up in the author's brain. The man who cannot laugh at 
 it must be debarred from his amusement by something 
 other than the delicacy of his taste. Pickle's family 
 surroundings are more pleasant than Roderick's. Mrs. 
 Pickle is a fiend, but an incredible fiend, and can be 
 left on one side. Gamaliel Pickle the father, and 
 Mistress Grizzle Pickle, the first sketch of Tabitha 
 Bramble, are pure and wholesome fun ; the other minor 
 characters are inferior to Roderick Random's gallery, 
 always excepting the famous garrison. As a picaresque 
 novel it is a little too much spun out, too much broken 
 by episodes, to be as good as its predecessor.
 
 90 LIFE OF 
 
 "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," which appeared in 1753, 
 holds a very subordinate place in Smollett's works. 
 Few readers will differ from Lady Mary's opinion that 
 it showed a certain flagging in his " talent for inven- 
 tion." The beginning is indeed excellent. Defoe 
 himself might have signed the portrait of Fathom's 
 mother, the drunken, shameless, old camp follower. 
 Her misdeeds and her death in the pursuit of her 
 avocations— for she is shot while trying to murder a 
 wounded officer on the field of battle — make a really 
 memorable picture of the savage old military life of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She herself lives in 
 one's memory as a hideous, bloodthirsty, greedy old hag, 
 with a quite horrible inability to realise her own wicked- 
 ness ; but she stands alone in the book. There is inci- 
 dent enough in " Count Fathom," but the story is forced. 
 Smollett had obviously exhausted his experience and his 
 vein. He worked on the same model with an effort 
 which is painfully felt. The story gives a mere repeti- 
 tion of old scenes of roguery, written with scarcely a 
 trace of Smollett's verve, and with no touch of his 
 own colouring. It would be no great fault if Count 
 Fathom, Count Melville, and the peerless Monimia were 
 only unnatural, but they are colourless. They belong 
 to the genre ennuyeux irredeemably. The incidents 
 of seduction or robbery were the stock-in-trade of all 
 writers of rogues' tales, and there is not a little which 
 is mere echo from Smollett's earlier books. Doctor 
 Chambers is greatly shocked by the Count, and could 
 v/ibh that Smollett had never written his history. It 
 pains him to see such a bad man. The Doctor surely
 
 SMOLLETT. 91 
 
 shows his morality a little out of place. The Count is a 
 scoundrel, or, at least, tries to be one ; but he is so weak, 
 so easily baffled, so utterly unable to succeed except 
 where he is helped by the incredible folly of the virtuous 
 characters ; so much more in fact of a dupe than a villain, 
 that whatever feeling he does arouse is one of a rather 
 mild contempt. We hear much of his cleverness, but 
 never see it. Smollett's literary fault in connection 
 with him was not that he drew a greater sinner than any 
 man should put into a book, but that, having introduced 
 his hero as a villain of extraordinary ability, he entirely 
 fails to convince the reader that Count Fathom was 
 other than a very poor rogue indeed. The scene in the 
 Robbers' Hut m the forest is sometimes spoken of as 
 being original, and the model of many others of the 
 same kind, but the praise can hardly have been given 
 with the due recollection of much that is to be found in 
 the " Spanish and French Authors " whom Smollett took 
 as his masters. The didactic intention of the author is 
 continually obtruded, and the reader is asked incessantly 
 to observe what a villain Fathom is, and how wrong it is 
 to rob, lie, and be monstrously ungrateful. He that is 
 the reader is prepared to agree, but it is with a feeling 
 that he knew all this before, and does not think Ferdinand 
 Count Fathom quite interesting enough to repay him for 
 being told the commonplaces of morality over again. 
 Smollett's fierce indignation at sordid and vicious things 
 gives his narrative a certain gloomy vehemence ; but the 
 incidents arc so remote from anybody's possible experi- 
 ence that his denunciations are wasted in the air.
 
 CIIAPl'ER V. 
 
 THE convenient looseness of construction of these 
 " Adventures " makes it permissible to pick 
 Smollett's seamen and pictures of sea-life out of his 
 work and take them by themselves. Indeed they insist 
 on being taken apart, for they stand with a very bold 
 relief in front of their background. What is best remem- 
 bered in " Roderick Random " is the figure of Lieutenant 
 Thomas Bowling and the expedition to Carthagena. 
 Nothing in " Peregrine Pickle " can fairly compare with 
 the garrison and its strange inhabitants. That favourite 
 specimen of Smollett's humour, the supper after the 
 manner of the ancients, is a grotesque caricature of 
 pedantry, priggery, and fatuous imbecility, in the big 
 style; but all its merits are to be found in the picture 
 of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., and his following, and this 
 has a breezy freedom which is wanting in the travesty 
 of Akenside's real or imaginary follies, Smollett would 
 unquestionably have left his record on the Hterature of 
 his time if he had never gone to sea, but it would have 
 been a different one ; and if " English seamanhood " 
 owes something to him to this da}', for the portrait he 
 drew of it, he was greatly its debtor for the unique
 
 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 93 
 
 opportunity it gave him of doing what no man had done 
 before, and only one man has done since. 
 
 Great part as the sea has had in Enghsh hfe, and much 
 as the sailor has been loved, they play but a small part 
 in literature. The seaman was a recognized type when 
 Chaucer wrote. His shipman is marked and moulded 
 by his life as much as the " Frankelein " or the "Doctour 
 of Phisike." He is a seaman of the fourteenth century, 
 that is, a coaster. It was the " bote sommer " which had 
 " made his hewe al broun," and not the gales of the 
 ocean or the sun of the tropics. But though he had only 
 hugged the coast from " Gotland to the Cape de Finis- 
 terre," during the summer months, he was as much a 
 man of the sea as Lieutenant Thomas Bowling. He had 
 the marks of the sailor. He rode but ill, sticking on 
 " as he coulde ; " he liked his " draught of win," and was 
 not too scrupulous how he got it ; and, for he was a sea- 
 man of the fourteenth century, he was a little of a pirate 
 and gave no quarter. But after the shipman of the 
 " Pilgrims," the sailor almost went out of literature until 
 he came back with "Roderick Random." The boatswain 
 of the " Tempest " and his men are from the sea un- 
 doubtedly, but they only appear to disappear. It would 
 be easy enough no doubt to find a long list of characters 
 in plays or tales who are labelled "a ship captain," or "a 
 pirate " ; but it would be proportionately difficult to 
 single out one of whom it can be said that he has been 
 formed by his life into a type differing from any known 
 kind of landsman. The sea captain of the "Twelfth 
 Night" is much such a gentleman as any of the othrrs 
 rgund the Duke. Fulke Greville has given an ad:nirable
 
 94 LIFE OF 
 
 little sketch of a seaman, unwittingly, but not the less 
 vividly, in his account of Sir Philip Sidney's unsuccessful 
 attempt to join Drake in the great expedition against the 
 West Indies. The Admiral's distrust of a fine gentle- 
 man, his determination to be " captain of his own ship," 
 the touching air of frankness which covered his wily 
 manoeuvres to get rid of Sir Philip, and his fine tough 
 regard for the interests of Frank Drake, are all as life- 
 like as they can be. Touches like this are to be found 
 scattered in Elizabethan and later voyages, but they are 
 the material for a literary picture, and not a picture in 
 themselves. Congreve indeed has drawn a sailor. Ben 
 Legend, who, by the by, is both a tarpaulin and a 
 gentleman by birth, is manifestly no landsman. He 
 has all the proper marks of the sailor. His language is 
 full of maritime expressions of a kind. The sea, he is 
 careful to tell everybody, is with him the rule, and the 
 shore the exception. Ben thinks so little of longshore 
 affairs that he has even forgotten that brother Dick is 
 dead, and is entirely unmoved on being reminded of that 
 fact. " Mess, that's true — marry, I had forgot. Dick's 
 dead, as you say — Well and how ? " he says, and then 
 goes on to other matters. He roves from port to port, 
 with a wife in each presumably. " I love to roam about 
 from port to port, from land to land ; I could never 
 abide to lie port-bound as we call it," is his reason for 
 not marrying. There is a smack of the forecastle in his 
 rebuke to Miss Prue. Here at least there is a recog- 
 nition of a type, and an attempt to draw it. Congreve 
 was not content to call his man a sea captain, or lieu- 
 tenant, without giving him the character too, but after all
 
 SMOLLETT. 95 
 
 his Ben is a landsman's sailor, drawn by a man who 
 was not familiar enough with more than the outside 
 of the life to give vitality to the picture. A far less 
 famous man than Congreve has indeed left a work which 
 is an exception to the rule. C. Shadwell's " Fair Quaker 
 of Deal ; or, the Humours of the Fleet," is not only 
 meant to be, but is, a living picture of seafaring men. 
 Flip and Mizen are distinctly the forerunners of Oakum 
 and Whiffle. Lieutenant Cribage and Lieutenant Easy 
 are decidedly naval officers, to say nothing of being very 
 amusing fellows. The play is full of curious touches of 
 the old sea life; but still "The Fair Quaker" does not 
 appreciably diminish Smollett's claim to originality. It 
 stood much alone, and cannot be said to be famous, or 
 indeed nearly so well known as it deserves to be. 
 Wytcherley, who had been to sea, and under fire too, 
 called his INLanly and his Freeman, captain and lieutenant, 
 but he did not even pretend to make them sailors. 
 Defoe sends his heroes into salt water by preference, 
 but no amount of voyaging can make seafaring men out 
 of them. Captain Singleton is true to Defoe's general 
 type of adventurer, a very good thing of its kind, but not 
 a thing of the sea. 
 
 It looks somewhat wasteful in dramatists and story- 
 tellers to neglect the wealth of good picturesque material 
 which lay alongside of them, but, in truth, the mine was a 
 very difficult one to work. The sailors and the sea life 
 were so much apart from the experience of landsmen 
 that they could not be really known to men of letters. 
 To this day the separation is sufficiently marked. How 
 few sailors are to be found in novels as compared to the
 
 96 LIFE OF 
 
 great host of army officers, and how colourless they are 
 when they do appear ! Defoe could compile tales of 
 adventure from the numerous records of travel pubhshed 
 at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the 
 eighteenth centuries ; but not having lived among them, 
 he could not give his sailors the individuality, and truth 
 he has given to Moll Flanders, and to the youth of 
 Colonel Jack. Before the sailor could be properly 
 drawn, it was necessary that a writer should come who 
 combined the faculty of telling a story of enduring 
 literary value, with personal knowledge of the sea. 
 There have — with all due respect to everybody be it 
 said — been but two novelists of whom as much can be 
 asserted. The one was the naval officer who drew Mr. 
 
 Chucks, Captain M , and Mr. Midshipman Easy. 
 
 The other was the surgeon's mate who drew Lieutenant 
 Thomas Bowling, Jack Rattlin, Commodore Hawser 
 Trunnion, and his friend Jack Hatchway. 
 
 The sea life of " Roderick Random " makes so strange a 
 succession of scenes, that Smollett would appear to have 
 written them with an even greater tendency to exagge- 
 ration than any of the other parts of the adventures. 
 Probably, however, there is no part which is so nearly 
 literally true. There is some heightening of the colour 
 unquestionably. No captain can ever have cleared his 
 sick bay quite so brutally as Captain Oakham. No surgeon 
 was ever quite such a fool, coward, and ignorant lick-spittle 
 as Mackshane. No naval dandy can ever have been 
 quite so absurdly effeminate as Captain Whiffle. Even 
 if all the incidents which Smollett has introduced were 
 actually founded on fact, it is not likely that they can all
 
 SMOLLETT. 97 
 
 have happened in one ship within one short year. But 
 if Smollett had chosen he could have made a key to 
 "Roderick Random" every whit as convincing as tlie 
 key to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mrs. Beecher Stowe's 
 pieces justificatives have never been shaken. The utmost 
 that can be said against them is, that they were raked 
 together from all parts of the South, and from the records 
 of many years, and that they give a false picture as a 
 whole. Doubtless the same accusation could have been 
 made against Smollett if he had cared to publish the 
 evidence for " Roderick Random." But he could afford 
 as well as Mrs. Beecher Stowe to support the criticism 
 with equanimity. They both of them could allege that 
 it was not their duty to report what had happened, but 
 to draw a picture of what conceivably might happen. 
 Nobody, who knows what little there is to be known 
 about the internal life of the navy \\\ the last century, 
 can seriously doubt that a ship might well have been, 
 to use the violent sea phrase, such a hell alloat as the 
 Thunder. 
 
 Whether the deeds done in her were heightened by 
 Smollett or no, there can be no question about the vivid- 
 ness of the picture of H.M.S. Thunder, So. They 
 answer very fairly to Dr. Johnson's famous description of 
 a ship — a prison, in which you ran the additional risk of 
 being drowned. Her officers had to pig in cabins formed 
 by canvas partitions, barely large enough to give them 
 room to turn in. They slept in hammocks, and their 
 feeding is dreadful to hear of. The medical staff of 
 H.M.'s ships and vessels of war would make "reflections 
 suitable to the event " if their mess were such as Morgan 
 
 7
 
 98 LIFE OF 
 
 Thompson and Roderick Random had to be coiitent 
 with. 
 
 "We heard the boatswain pipe to dinner, and imme- 
 diately the boy belonging to our mess ran to the locker, 
 from whence he carried off a large wooden platter, and 
 in a few minutes returned with it full of boiled peas, 
 crying ' Scaldings ' all the way as he came. The cloth, 
 consisting of a piece of old sail, was instantly laid, 
 covered with three plates, which, by the colour, I could 
 witli difficulty discern to be metal, and as many spoons 
 of the same composition, two of which were curtailed in 
 t'le handles, and the other abridged in the lip. Mr. 
 Morgan himself enriched the mess with a lump of salt 
 butter, scooped from an old gallipot, and a handful of 
 onions, shorn, with some pounded pe[)per. I was not 
 very much tempted with the appearance of this dish, of 
 which, nevertheless, my messmates ate heartily, advising 
 me to follow their example, as it was banyan-day, and we 
 could have no meat till next noon." 
 
 Eanyan days were Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 
 on which no meat rations were served out. Salt junk 
 was attainable, and out of it Morgan made the horrible 
 compound called salmagundy, consisting of a slice of 
 salt beef, taken straight from the brine, and mixed "with 
 an equal quantity of onions, which seasonmg, with a 
 moderate proportion of pepper and salt, he brought it into 
 a consistence with oil and vinegar." No wonder Random 
 felt burnt up after a mouthful of this dreadful compo- 
 sition, and " endeavoured, with a deluge of small beer,
 
 SMOLLETT. • 99 
 
 to allay the heat it occasioned." Small beer was still 
 served out to the fleet. Rum came in later, though it 
 was already drunk by the ward-room officers as a luxury, 
 and in the form of bumbo, which " is a liquor composed 
 of rum, sugar, water, and nutmeg." After the manner 
 of old drinks and old dishes, bumbo contained at least 
 two superfluous ingredients (not the rum, of course, nor 
 even the water) ; but it was a more human composition 
 than hipsy, a liquor much affected by Captain George 
 Shelvocke, This officer, who sailed to the South Seas 
 some twenty years before Vernon's expedition, and who, 
 among other feats, told the story of the albatross which 
 was the germ of the " Ancient Mariner," was wont, if his 
 enemy, William Betagh, captain of Marines, is to be 
 believed, to solace himself with a mixture of wine, water, 
 and brandy, praised, " by the admirers of it," as " meat, 
 drink, and cloth." Shelvocke thought this mixture good 
 for his gout, and loved it so well that he confiscated the 
 silver goblets supplied to the ofiticers for their common 
 drinking by the owners of his privateer, the Speedwell^ 
 and called up " the armourer to melt and hammer five of 
 them into circles to adorn the outside of a fine pail, 
 made by the cooper, for the more glorious drinking " of 
 his favourite vanity. Even Betagh acknowledges, however, 
 that Shelvocke ladled his drink out fairly. Smollett does 
 not mention the captain of the Speedwell, but he must have 
 had him and other heroes of the same stamp in his mind. 
 The boy who summoned Random's mess to their platter of 
 peas with cries of " scaldings," also ran round the decks 
 every morning, " ringing a small handbell, and in rhymes 
 composed for the occasion, invited all those who had
 
 100 LIFE OF 
 
 sores to repair before the mast, where one of the doctor's 
 mates attended, with applications to dress them." Patients 
 were not hkely to be wanting when old and infirm men 
 were mercilessly swept on board ship by the pressgang, 
 and the Admiralty cared not how it composed the crews, 
 provided it could fill up the complement. Miserable 
 wretches, such as were driven on to the Thunder's deck 
 from the sick bay, to be tortured to death by Oakum 
 and Mackshane, might have been found at that very time 
 on board of Anson's ship, the Centurion, The history 
 of his famous voyage is indeed, as Carlyle called it, " a 
 real Poem of its kind, or Romance all Fact ; one of the 
 pleasantest little Books in the World's Library at this 
 date," but it is also a damning accusation of the men 
 who governed England at that time. If there is any- 
 thing in the history of the Spaniards in South America 
 more atrocious than the cruelty of the Ministry which 
 filled Anson's vessels with decrepit veterans, and sent 
 them round Cape Horn in winter, I do not know it, and 
 do not want to hear it. Cieza de Leon, who briefly 
 records how his party went into a certain valley in the 
 Andes, and took such a detestation to the people that 
 they hung them up to the trees by the hair, and then 
 marched away among dismal groans, with the firm belief 
 that the souls of their victims would go to everlasting 
 torment, may seem to have witnessed the most gratuitous 
 piece of human barbarity ever committed. It was none 
 the less tender mercy compared to the sending of men, 
 who had fought under Marlborough, to go round Cape 
 Horn in the winter of 1740. Only three of them lived 
 to enter the Pacific, and none returned to England.
 
 SMOLLETT. 101 
 
 The story is worth remembering as one reads of the 
 doings of Captain Oakum. 
 
 Men who ate sahiiagundy and drank bumbo were 
 likely to be heated enough, and in such surroundings as 
 theirs, whatever brutality there was in their nature would 
 flourish as in a congenial soil. The midshipman Crampley 
 and Captain Oakum remain as pictures, heightened, 
 coloured, and exaggerated, perhaps, but essentially true, 
 of the ruffianism of the sea. For Oakum one feels a 
 certain respect Brute as he is, he is a seaman and a 
 brave man. You may hate the tyrant, but you cannot 
 despise Oakum as he leans wounded against the mizen 
 mast of his ship during the fury of the bombardment, 
 sternly frowning at his doctor's disobedience to orders, 
 and refusing to have his wound dressed by any man 
 except the proper officer. It was pedantic of him, but 
 it was courageous. Smollett, it may be observed, does 
 not profess any love of the joys of battle. In the 
 account of the accidental fight with the French ships off 
 the coast of San Domingo, it is the horror of the scene 
 which he dwells on. Roderick is certainly in a dreadful 
 position, chained, helpless, on the deck, and covered with 
 the blood of the men who fall round him ; but if Smollett 
 had cared to see anything in battle but its horror, he 
 would not have put his hero into that position, or have 
 made him go mad for a time with fear and disgust. The 
 deck of the Thunder during the bombardment is to him 
 only "a most infernal scene of slaughter, fire, smoke, 
 and uproar." Roderick Eandom's experience is like a 
 first sketch of the picture of the Victory's quarter-deck 
 given by her chaplain, who rushed up from below, unable
 
 102 LIFE OF 
 
 to stand the cockpit any longer, and found a pall of smoke 
 and of dust shattered out of the Spaniard alongside 
 hanging so low that the figures of Nelson and Hardy 
 walking up and down could barely be seen through it. 
 Smollett could admire courage, and show it too, but his 
 battles are always described from the outside, as if by a 
 literary man who was out of place in them, and was 
 mainly impressed by the dreadful side of war, its noise, 
 pain, and bloodshed. There is nothing in his pages 
 answering to the capture of the Russian frigate in "Mr. 
 Midshipman Easy," when the English chaplain forgot he 
 was no longer a naval officer, and led the English 
 boarders. Marryat, who was in more respects than one 
 Smollett's successor, had this advantage over him, that 
 he was a trained fighting man, writing of fighting. 
 
 The figure of Lieutenant Thomas Bowling is good to 
 put alongside of Captain Oal<um. He stands there to 
 represent all the best of the sea life. Smollett never, 
 not even in " Humphrey Clinker," succeeded more com- 
 pletely in drawing a character, in creating a human being, 
 than he did with Random's uncle. Bowling is empha- 
 tically a seaman, one of those men, who, like Anson, 
 had been round the world, but had never been in it. 
 He is childishly ignorant uf the shore and its ways. His 
 language is full of salt spray, and he has something of 
 the prodigal generosity of the race of men who made 
 their money like horses, and spent it like asses. But 
 underneath Bowling's quaint outside there is a distinct 
 human character. According to his lights, he has a keen 
 regard for his interests, and a very decided liking for his 
 own way. It was foolish in him to rely on getting the
 
 SMOLLETT. 1 J 
 
 favour of the iVdmiralty Board by the peculiar inllucnrc 
 he felt so much confidence in, "For the beadle of tlu 
 Admiralty is my good friend, and he and one of the 
 under clerks are sworn brothers, and that under clerk 
 has a good deil to say with one of the upper clerks, who 
 is very well known to the under secretary, who upon his 
 recommendation, I hope will recommend my affiir to the 
 first secretary, and he again will speak to one of the 
 Lords on my behalf; so that you see I do not want friends 
 to assist me on occasion." Roderick was not so clever 
 as he thought when he smiled at the ladder by which 
 his uncle "proposed to climb to the attention of the 
 Board of xVdmiralty." Lieutenant Bowling could have 
 found very good reasons for relying on those useful 
 persons, beadles, and under or upper clerks. From 
 the moment that Lieutenant Bowling gets on to his 
 own element again, his absurdities, which are, after 
 all, only differences of manner, entirely vanish. The 
 natural sagacity and courage of the man come out at 
 once. When he finds a place as mate to a Guinea trader, 
 he proves himself at once not only a good commander 
 and a resolute fighting man, but a sharp man of business. 
 This is perfectly true to the sea manners of a time when 
 the skipper and the merchant's agent were commonly 
 one and the same person, and when a man was chosen 
 to cominand, quite as much because he would know 
 what to do with the cargo, as for his capacity to sail the 
 ship. Bowling is an honest man ; he would be incapable 
 of imitating the alleged dishonesty of Captain Shelvocke 
 the drinker of hipsy. This wily mariner took a Spaniard, 
 called ^hc ConcfJ>cion, " Don Stephen de ivccova.
 
 104 LIFE OF 
 
 commander," and reported that she was "laden with 
 flour, sugar, marmalade (by which he meant quince 
 cheeses no doubt), peaches, grapes, limes, etcetera^'' but, 
 according to his enemy, Betagh, " that etcetera, was, A 
 liundred and eight thousa?id six hundred and thirty-six 
 pieces of eight,'' of which the owners might have taken it 
 upon their conscience that at no period, and by no pos- 
 sible process, could one kreutzer be recovered. Lieu- 
 tenant Bowling looked after his owner's business more 
 honourably than Shelvocke is said to have done, but he 
 belonged to the race of fighting, money-getting seamen 
 of which Woodes Rogers, Dampier, Clipperton, and 
 others of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of 
 the eighteenth century, were ornaments. " I must do 
 my uncle the justice to say," says Roderick Random in 
 his condescending impudent manner, " that in the jvhole 
 of his disposition he behaved with the utmost intrepidity, 
 conduct, and deliberation." This was on the voyage to 
 Buenos Ayres, when a fight with a big stranger appeared 
 imminent. Of course Captain Bowling behaved with 
 the utmost intrepidity, conduct, and deliberation. He 
 also made a speech, and a very good speech too : — 
 
 " My lads, ; . . I have gone to sea thirty years, man 
 and boy, and never saw English sailors afraid before. 
 Mayhap you think I want to expose you for the 
 lucre of gain. Whosoever thinks so, thinks a damned 
 lie, for my whole cargo is ensured; so that in case 
 I should be taken, my loss would not be great. 
 The enemy is stronger than we to be sure. What 
 then ? have we not a chance for carrying away one
 
 SMOLLETT. 105 
 
 of her masts and so get clear of her ? If we find her 
 too hard for us, 'tis but striking at last. If any man is 
 hurt in the engagement, I promise on the word of an 
 honest seaman to make him a recompense according to 
 his loss. So now you that are lazy, lubberly, cowardly 
 dogs, get away and skulk in the hold and bread-room ; 
 and you that are jolly-boys, stand by me, and let us give 
 one broadside for the honour of Old England." 
 
 No wonder they were ready to fight after that, for it 
 was both good sense and courage. In a rougher and 
 more prosaic, but not less valiant way, it is as good as 
 the real speech made by Captain Best, of the East 
 India Company's Service, when he was threatened by an 
 apparently overwhelming Portuguese force at Surat, in 
 1612., Best was a man of the early seventeenth century, 
 probably something of the Puritan, and certainly more 
 apt to quote the Bible than they were about 1740. 
 He read Psalm xvi. to the crew of the Hoseandcr, begin- 
 ninsc at the eicrhth verse, Tlie rest of his address was 
 more after the manner of Lieutenant Bowling's. After 
 showing the obvious connection between these verses, 
 and the necessity there was for smashing the Portuguese, 
 " he further told them that if it should please God that 
 any of our men in fight were dismembered or lamed, he 
 faithfully promised upon his credit and reputation, in the 
 hearing of the company, that he would be a means unto 
 the Worshipful (Company) whom we serve, in their 
 behalf for reasonable maintenance to keep them as long 
 as it should please God they live." After spiritual ex- 
 hortation and solid business-like encouragement. Captain
 
 lOG LIFE OF 
 
 Best, having ended his speech, "took a cup of wine 
 and drank to the master and all the company, and 
 desired God to give us His Blessing, and so returned 
 aboard his own ship to sermon," With the help of 
 Sermons, dinner, cups of wine drunk to one another, 
 and the good example of Captain Best, the Hoseauder 
 and her consort gave a very good account of the Portu- 
 guese. 
 
 Captain Bowling belonged to the same race as that 
 Captain Walton, who commanded the Canterbury, in the 
 Mediterranean, under Byng — the elder Byng, the one 
 who beat the enemy and was not shot. This admirable 
 officer wrote the famous despatch which has been often 
 quoted, but is not so well known that it may not be fairly 
 quoted ngain. 
 
 " Sir, — We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish 
 
 ships and vessels which were upon the coast, the number 
 
 as per margin. 
 
 " I am, etc., 
 
 " G. Walton. 
 
 " Canterbury, off Syracusa, 
 
 '■'■August 1 6, 1 718." 
 
 In 171S, Thomas Bowling had just about done learn- 
 ing how to splice a rope and raise a perpendicular. If 
 Roderick Random had swung at the yardarm of the 
 Thunder, it would have been no great matter, but one is 
 glad to know tliat his uncle ended with wealth and in 
 command. The typical good seaman has his following 
 and companion figures. Jack Rattlin, who is Bowling 
 before the mast, and Brayl, Roderick's messmate on the
 
 SMOLLETT. 107 
 
 Z/sfl-r^ sloop, who "much resembled my uncle both in 
 figure and disposition," and was "a diligent and excel- 
 lent officer," are there to counter-balance Oakum's 
 kindred spirits, Crampley and INIackshane. 
 
 The group of seamen in " Peregrine Pickle " are less 
 of an actual picture of life. Smollett manifestly did 
 not so much draw on his experience for Trunnion, 
 Hatchway, and Pipes, as deliberately set to v/ork to 
 make comic figures out of the materials afforded him by 
 the real or even the imaginary eccentricities of the sea- 
 men. Nor that even here there is not a very real basis 
 of truth under the fantastic superstructure. Whoever 
 has enjoyed the society of retired naval, and even miU- 
 tary gentlemen, has surely heard something very like the 
 furious comments of the commodore on the promotion 
 of Admiral Bower. Lieutenant Hatchway, "with an 
 elevation of voice, that seemed to prognosticate some- 
 thing extraordinary," read the dreadful announcement 
 of the admiral's approaching elevation to the peerage. 
 " Trunnion was thunderstruck at this piece of intelligence. 
 The mug dropped from his hand and shivered into a 
 thousand pieces, his eye glistened like that of a rattle- 
 snake, and some minutes elapsed before he could pro- 
 nounce, ' Avast, overhaul that article again.' '^ When the 
 shameful report is confirmed, how nobly does Trunnion 
 denounce woe to a whole nation which can promote Will 
 Bower and lay Ha'vser Trunnion on the shelf : " If so b: 
 as this be the case, there is a rotten plank in our consti- 
 tution, which ought to be hove down and repaired." 
 Neither is the commodore's oblivion of the fact that he 
 has told the story of his action with the Flour de Louse,
 
 108 LIFE OF 
 
 a French man-of-war — " every watch for these ten 
 months past," by any means unnatural or forced. Still 
 Hawser Trunnion, take him altogether, is larger than life. 
 His striking resemblance to the wooden lion that used to 
 stand at his gate, and the vehemence of his language, are 
 both a little too highly coloured for sober art. As for 
 the language, it is on a Gargantuan scale : Trunnion no 
 sooner heard Mr. Hatchway mention the cause of 
 Grizzle Pickle's disorder, " than his morosity recurring, he 
 burst out into a violent fit of cursing, and forthwith 
 betook himself again to his hammock, where he lay 
 uttering, in a low growling tone of voice, a repetition of 
 oaths and imprecations for the space of four-and-twenty 
 hours without ceasing." Trunnion is, in fact, a huge mass 
 of violence, simplicity, and ignorance, played upon by 
 that practical joker Hatchway, and dragged through all 
 kinds of violent misadventures to make fun for the 
 reader. The ride to church is a companion scene to the 
 supper after the manner of the ancients, an outbreak of 
 horseplay and loud animal laughter. As the story goes 
 on Smollett seems to have undergone some such change 
 of feeling in regard to Trunnion as Cervantes felt 
 towards Don Quixote, and Dickens to Mr. Pickwick. 
 He began by meaning to make him merely absurd, he 
 ended by liking him. In the earlier chapters Trunnion's 
 fury is represented as the violence of a braggart. He 
 has hardly done boasting of the wounds he has received 
 in the service, before the malicious Hatchway gives a 
 loose to his satirical talent once more, saying, " I have 
 heard as how you came by your lame foot, by having 
 your upper decks over-stowed with liquor, whereby you
 
 SMOLLETT. 109 
 
 became crank, and rolled d'ye see, in such a manner, 
 that by a pitch of the ship, your starboard heel was 
 jammed in one of the scuppers ; and as for the matter 
 of your eye, that was knocked out by your own crew 
 when the Lightning was paid off. There's poor Pipes 
 who was beaten into all the colours of the rainbow for 
 taking your part and giving you time to sheer off; and I 
 don't find as how you have rewarded him according as 
 he deserves." The commodore could not deny the truth 
 of these stories. His great action with the Flour de Louse 
 remains somewhat obscure, but it is very certain that 
 he did not take the Frenchman. Later on in the story 
 there is no doubt about the commodore's courage, and 
 he becomes humanized. There is a real tenderness in 
 the picture of the old man's love for his scamp of a 
 nephew. His mere violence and fury are greatly toned 
 down, and at the end he really becomes very pathetic. 
 His wish to be buried in " the red jacket which I wore 
 when I boarded the Renumniy^'' is in perfect keeping 
 with the character of the rough old hero. One cannot 
 laugh even at the epitaph written for him by Hatch- 
 way. 
 
 *' Here lies, 
 
 Foimdered in a falliom and half, 
 
 The shell 
 
 of 
 
 Hawser Trunnion, Esq., 
 
 Formerly commander of a squadron 
 
 In his Majesty's service, 
 
 Who broached to, at five P.M., Oct. x. 
 
 In tiie year of his age 
 
 Three score and nineteen.
 
 110 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 
 
 He kept his guns always loaded, 
 
 And his tackle ready manned, 
 
 And never showed his poop to the enemy, 
 
 Except when he took her in tow : 
 
 But 
 Ilis shot being expended, 
 His match burnt out, 
 And his upper woiks decayed. 
 He was sunk 
 Ey Djath's superior weight of metal. 
 Nevertheless 
 He will be weighed again 
 At the Great Day, 
 Plis rigging refitted. 
 And hii timbers repaired ; 
 And, with one broadside, 
 Make his adversary 
 Strike in his turn. 
 
 The commodore, one is persuaded, deserved the praise 
 on his tombstone. His friend Hatchway and his retainer 
 Pipes shine by reflection from him. When Trunnion is 
 gone, the heutenant's function in hfe is nearly done ; he 
 remains there to keep the garrison for Pickle, but the 
 place loses almost all its interest when its ditch and 
 palisade and patereroes no longer protect the little 
 fragment of the old navy formed of the commodore and 
 the survivors of the crews with which he fought the 
 Triumph^ the Flour de Louse^ and the Rcnwiiiny.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE publication of "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," 
 marked the end of Smollett's first productive 
 period of novel writing, and the beginning of many years 
 of arduous v.-ork done for pay. He had not given up all 
 hope of finding a crutch in medicine. In 1750 he 
 obtained a degree of M.D. from the Marischal College 
 of Aberdeen. Dugald Dalgetty's Alma Mater could give 
 him a degree, but could not give him a practice; and 
 yet he tried so hard to establish a reputation as a medical 
 man by the publication of a scientific treatise on the 
 external use of water. The enterprize is enough in 
 itself to explain why Smollett never succeeded as a 
 doctor. The water he wrote about was the water of 
 Bath, and his object in the treatise was apparently to 
 prove that any other water would do every bit as well. 
 If, as may be supposed, he was trying to establish him- 
 self at Bath, this was hardly the way to go to work to 
 make himself popular. That he ever did try to obtain 
 a ])ractice at Bath is hardly more than mere matter of 
 guess-work. He was certainly very fond of the town ; 
 he introduces it into all three of his first novels, and 
 went back to it in his last. The medical life of the
 
 112 LIFE OF 
 
 place, and in particular its quackery, had an endless 
 attraction for him, but his descriptions are enough to 
 account for his failure as a doctor. A gentleman who 
 has called the whole medical profession quacks and 
 fools in print, and has supplied many thousands of 
 possible patients with the material wherewith to make 
 fun of their medical men, can hardly come forward and 
 present himself as a possible family doctor with a very 
 good grace. The faculty may forgive him, but the 
 patients are tolerably sure to think that such a funny 
 gendeman is not nearly serious enough for the place. 
 Nothing shows Smollett's consciousness of the rectitude 
 of his intentions better than the innocent belief that the 
 author of "Roderick Random" and " Peregrine Pickle" 
 could ever get established in practice. 
 
 With whatever degree of unwillingness, and whatever 
 occasional efforts to go into another path, Smollett had 
 now to settle down to incessant literary labour. Either 
 in 1752, or not long after it, he took the house described 
 in " Humphrey Clinker," which he seems to have con- 
 tinued to occupy to the end of his life in London. This 
 was Monmouth House, in Lawrence Street, which must 
 have had a national interest for him, for it had been 
 occupied, if not owned, by that Anne Scott who married 
 the wretched Monmouth, and who was the ancestress of 
 the present House of Buccleuch. Of Smollett's personal 
 habits very little is known, and the want of details 
 must always deprive a biography of much of its best 
 interest. The comparative obscurity of Smollett's life in 
 a generation so abundantly well-known as his, is partly, 
 no doubt, due to the fact that he did not belong to the
 
 SMOLLETT. 113 
 
 society that gathered round Dr. Johnson. He never 
 came sutificiently in Boswell's way to have the good 
 fortune of sitting for his portrait to that master draughts- 
 man. In 1763, when Boswell first met his iUustrious 
 friend in Davies' shop, Smollett was just about setting 
 out on his travels through France and Italy, and from 
 that time he was little in London. It would hardly 
 have been possible for any man to have lived in the 
 literary world of that day without coming across John- 
 son ; and Smollett had some dealings with the great 
 "Cham of Literature." It is one of the best-known 
 facts of his life that he applied to Wilkes to secure 
 the release of "the great lexicographer's" black ser- 
 vant, who had been pressed on board the Star frigate ; 
 but this is hardly proof that Smollett and Johnson 
 were even acquainted. The Scotchman may have been 
 asked to exert himself by some common friend who 
 knew that he was on good terms with Wilkes. In any 
 case, however, it is probable that Smollett would not 
 have been much known. His work seems to have 
 wrapped him up very closely. He is even said never to 
 have left his house while he was engaged on his history, 
 and his multifarious engagements as a translator or 
 journalist must have kept him very closely to his desk. 
 Dr. Johnson's social life was made easier for him Ijy his 
 pension. But the necessity of working for his bread and 
 butter would not of itself have kept Smollett apart in the 
 literary world. Hard as it was, other men did nearly as 
 much, and yet contrived to see a great deal of one 
 another. The truth would seem to be that Smollett was 
 not an easy man to know, or to liye with. Doctor John 
 
 8
 
 114 LIFE OF 
 
 Moore, his friend and countryman, has praised him in 
 general terms for being " of a disposition so humane and 
 generous that he was ever ready to serve the unfortunate, 
 and on some occasions to assist them beyond what his 
 circumstances could justify." This is a praiseworthy 
 disposition no doubt, but it is perfectly consistent with a 
 character which would keep a man apart from the more 
 independent of his contemporaries. It is possible to 
 combine a generous readiness to help the unfortunate 
 with a distmct preference for having the persons you 
 have obliged about you, and Smollett does seem, on his 
 own showing, to have enjoyed the dignity of possessing 
 a little senate of his own. Certainly he has himself to 
 blame if this is the general impression we get about him. 
 A man's descriptions of himself are proverbially untrust- 
 v/orthy as evidence of what he was, but they are a 
 tolerably safe guide to a knowledge of what he wanted 
 to be. Now Smollett has twice introduced himself to 
 the public with an astonishing frankness. First, in a 
 general way, in the preface to " Ferdinand, Count 
 Fathom," and then with more detail in " Humphrey 
 
 Clinker." The dedication to Dr. , gives Smollett's 
 
 view of Smollett with a charming air of sincerity. 
 "Know, then," he says to himself, after some preUminary 
 flourish, " I can despise your pride, while I honour your 
 integrity ; and applaud your taste, while I am shocked 
 at your ostentation. I have known you trifling, super- 
 ficial, and obstinate in dispute ; meanly jealous and 
 awkwardly reserved ; rash and haughty in your resent- 
 ments ; and coarse and lowly in your connections. I 
 have blushed at the weakness of your conversation, and
 
 SMOLLETT. 115 
 
 trembled at the errors of your conduct. Yet, as I own, 
 you possess certain good qualities, which overbalance 
 these defects, and distinguish you on this occasion as a 
 person for whom I have the most perfect attachment 
 and esteem ; you have no cause to complain of the 
 indelicacy with which your faults are reprehended, and 
 as they are chiefly the excesses of a sanguine disposition 
 and looseness of thought, impatient of caution or control, 
 you may, thus stimulated, watch over your intemperance 
 and infirmity with redoubled vigilance and considera- 
 tion, and for the future profit by the severity of my 
 reproof." 
 
 This may be fairly taken to mean that when Smollelt 
 descended into himself, he analyzed his own character 
 as that of a rather overbearing, masterful person, and, on 
 the whole, he was not ill-pleased with his own appear- 
 ance. From a hundred touches in his novels and in his 
 travels, it is clear that he was not a man to doubt whether 
 he did well to be angry. With such a disposition life 
 would be easier to him if he was surrounded by depen- 
 dents. He would even be inclined to overlook the 
 worthlessness of men whom he chose to befriend, as 
 long as they were in need of his help. It is cynical, no 
 doubt, to enjoy the spectacle of human meanness, but 
 cynicism has its attractions, and Smollett had early made 
 up his mind that the greater part of human nature was 
 composed of meanness, and had reconciled himself not 
 so much to tolerate it as to rage at it, despise it, and live 
 with it for want of better. The one set off he did require 
 to meanness was, that it should be subordinate to himself. 
 This, at least, is the account of himself which he set
 
 116 LIFE OF 
 
 Jerry Melford to draw up in later years, and it may be 
 quoted here, though a Httle before its time : — 
 
 "He [Smollett] lives in the skirts of the town, and 
 every Sunday his house is open to all unfortunate 
 brothers of the quill, whom he treats with beef, pudding, 
 and potatoes, port, punch, and Calvert's entire butt beer. 
 He has fixed on the first day of the week for the exer- 
 cise of his hospitality, because some of his guests could 
 not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not 
 explain. I was civilly received, in a plain, yet decent, 
 habitation, which opened backwards into a very pleasant 
 garden, kept in excellent order ; and indeed, I saw none 
 of the outward signs of authorship, either in the house 
 or in the landlord, who is one of those few writers of the 
 age that stand on their own foundation, without patron- 
 age and above dependence. If there was nothing 
 characteristic about the entertainer, the company made 
 ample amends for his want of singularity. 
 
 "At two in the afternoon, I found myself one of ten 
 messmates seated at table j and I question if the whole 
 world could produce such another assemblage of originals. 
 Among their peculiarities I do not mention those of 
 dress, which may be purely accidental. What struck mc 
 were oddities originally produced by affectation, and 
 afterwards confirmed by habit. One of them wore 
 spectacles at dinner, and another his hat flapped; 
 though, as Ivy told me, ths first was noted for having 
 a seaman's eye when a bailiff was in the wind, and the 
 other was never known to labour under any weakness or 
 defect of vision, except about five years ago, when he
 
 SMOLLETT. 117 
 
 was complimented with a couple of black eyes by a 
 player with whom he had quarrelled in his drink. A 
 third wore a laced stocking, and made use of crutches, 
 because once in his life he had been laid up with a 
 broken leg, though no man could leap over a stick with 
 more agility. A fourth had contracted such an antipathy 
 to the country, that he insisted on silting with his back 
 towards the window that looked into the garden ; and 
 when a dish of caulillower was set on the table, he 
 snuffed up volatile salts to keep him from fainting. Yet 
 this delicate person was the son of a cottager, born 
 under a hedge, and many years had run wild among asses 
 on a common. A fifth affected distraction. When spoken 
 to he always answered from the purpose : sometimes he 
 suddenly started up and rapped out a dreadful oath; 
 sometimes he burst out a laughing ; then he folded his 
 arms, and sighed ; and then he hissed like fifty ser- 
 pents. 
 
 "At first, I really thought he was mad, and, as he sat 
 near me, began to be under some apprehensions for my 
 own safety, when our landlord, peceiving me alarmed, 
 assured me, aloud, that I had nothing to fear. ' The 
 gentleman,' said he, ' is trying to act a part for which he 
 is by no means qualified ; if he had all the inclina- 
 tion in the world it is not in his power to be mad. 
 His spirits are too flat to be kindled into frenzy.' "Tis 
 no bad p-p-puff, how-ow-cver,' observed a person in a 
 tarnished laced coat, ' aff ffected m-madness w-will p-pass 
 for w-wit, w-with nine-ninc-teen out of t-twenty.' 'And 
 affected stuttering for humour,' replied our landlord, 
 'though, God knows, there is no affinity between them.'
 
 118 LIFE OF 
 
 It seems this wag, after having made some abortive 
 attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, 
 by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh 
 of the company, with the least expense of genius ; and 
 that imperfection which he had first counterfeited was 
 now become so habitual that he could not lay it aside. 
 
 " A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at 
 dinner, had, on his first introduction, taken such offence 
 
 at S , because he looked and talked, and ate and 
 
 drank like any other man, that he spoke contemptuously 
 of his understanding ever after, and never would repeat 
 his visit until he had exhibited the following proof of his 
 caprice. Wat ^V'yvil, the poet, having made some un- 
 successful advances towards an intimacy with S— — -, at 
 last gave him to understand, by a third person, that he 
 had written a poem in his praise, and a satire against his 
 person ; that if he would admit him to his house, the 
 first should be immediately sent to the press, but that if 
 he persisted in declining his friendship he would publish 
 
 the satire without delay. S ■ replied, that he looked 
 
 on Wyvil's panegyric as, in effect, a species of infamy, 
 and would resent it accordingly with a good cudgel ; but 
 if he published the satire, he might deserve his com- 
 passion, and had nothing to fear from his revenge. 
 Wyvil, having considered the alternative, resolved to 
 
 mortify S by printing the panegyric, for which he 
 
 received a sound drubbing; then he swore the peace 
 against the aggressor, who, in order to avoid a prosecu- 
 tion at law, admitted him to his good graces. It was 
 
 the singularity in S 's conduct on this occasion that 
 
 reconciled him to the yellow-gloved philosopher, who
 
 SMOLLETT, 119 
 
 owned he haj. some genius, and from that period cul- 
 tivated his acquaintance. 
 
 " Curious to know on what subjects the several talents 
 of my fellow-guests were employed, I applied to my 
 communicative friend, Dick Foy, who gave me to under- 
 stand that most of them were, or had been, under- 
 strappers or journeymen to more creditable authors, for 
 whom they translated, collated, and compiled, in the 
 business of bookmaking; and that all of them had, at 
 different times, laboured in the service of our landlord, 
 though they had now set up for themselves in various 
 departments of literature. Not only their talents, but 
 also their nations and dialects were so various, that 
 our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at 
 Babel." 
 
 The rest of this, "the most diverting of young j\Icl- 
 ford's letters to Sir Watkin Philips," as Lockhait has 
 
 called it, describes the Sunday guests at Doctor S 's 
 
 house, and a very curious party they make. There is the 
 philosopher, who had been expelled from the university 
 for atheism, and had lately been interrupted in his 
 ingenious and orthodox refutation of Lord Bolingbroke, 
 by a prosecution for blasphemy at an alehouse on the 
 Lord's Day ; there was the Scotchman, who gave lectures 
 on pronunciation of English ; my lord Potato, the Irish 
 politician ; the Piedmontese critic of English poetry, and 
 other " ragged tenants of Grub Street." At the head of 
 
 the table, Doctor S sat, to keep order and exert " a 
 
 sort of paternal authority over this irritable tribe." This 
 scene very naturally recurred to Lockhart's mind when
 
 120 LIFE OF 
 
 he repeated the accounts which John Ballantyne had 
 given him of the dinners with which Constable "regaled, 
 among others, his own circle of literary serfs," at his 
 house at Polton. The race between Jim Cropdale and 
 Mr. Birkin for a bowl of punch, to be drunk at Ashley's 
 in the evening, has its ec^uivalent in the race between 
 "poor AUister Campbell and another drudge of the same 
 class for a new pair of breeches." Lockhart gives the 
 story of the practical jokes at Polton, on John Ballan- 
 tyne's authority, and with the warning that they may be 
 overcharged. Perhaps they were, and perhaps, also, 
 Smollett overcoloured his picture also, but Ballantyne 
 was telling tales of a man for whom he had no real 
 liking, while Smollett describes himself. This makes a 
 difference in the value of the two sketches as evidence. 
 Whether the publisher ever made fun of the folly and 
 poverty of his guests may be doubtful, but there is no 
 doubt that the novelist chose to represent himself as 
 making " copy " out of the misery and meanness of men 
 whom he had invited to his house. The picture is not 
 altogether a pleasant one. It is evidence of the exist- 
 ence of a certain insolence in Smollett's character in the 
 middle years of his life, and it helps to explain why he 
 seems to have seen so litde of the great literary world 
 of his time, and to have been apparently so little liked 
 by it. 
 
 That Smollett's picture of himself is no imaginary 
 one, may be considered as proved by the same Doctor 
 Carlyle who has been already quoted. In 175S the 
 Doctor was in London, and had looked his friend up 
 again :
 
 SMOLLETT. 121 
 
 " Robertson (the historian) had never seen Smollett, 
 and was very desirous of his acquaintance. By this time 
 the Doctor had retired to Chelsea, and came seldom to 
 town. Home and I, however, found that he came once 
 a week to Forrest's Coffee House, and sometimes dined 
 there, so we managed an appointment with him on his 
 day, when he agreed to dine with us. He was now be- 
 come a great man, and being much of a humourist, was 
 not to be put out of his way. Home and Robertson and 
 Smith and I met him there when he had several of his 
 minions about him, to whom he prescribed tasks of 
 translation, compilation, or abridgment, which after he 
 had seen he recommended to the booksellers. We dined 
 together, and Smollett was very brilliant. Having to 
 stay all night, that we might spend the evening together, 
 he only begged leave to withdraw for an hour, that he 
 might give audience to his myrmidons ; we insisted that 
 if his business [permitted], it should be in the room where 
 we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the authors were intro- 
 duced to the number of five, I think, most of whom were 
 soon dismissed. He kept two, however, to supper, 
 whispering to us that he believed they would amuse us, 
 which they certainly did, for they were curious characters. 
 
 " We passed a very pleasant and joyful evening. When 
 we broke up, Robertson expressed great su:p;ise at the 
 polished and agreeable manners and the great urbanity 
 of his conversation. He had imagined, that a man's 
 manners must bear a likencsi to his books, and as 
 Smollett had described so well the characters of ruffians 
 and profligates, that he must of course resemble them. 
 This was not the first instance we had of the rawness in
 
 122 LIFE OF 
 
 respect of the world that still blunted our sagacious friend's 
 observations." 
 
 Here at least is confirmation of the supposition that 
 Smollett lived much by himself, and had his dealings 
 mainly with dependents. 
 
 The history of a man who shut himself up to labour, 
 and saw little society except that of hangers-on and 
 drudges, would be naturally the history of his works. 
 To be sure this is abundant enough for the next ten 
 years of Smollett's life. Between 1752, when he settled 
 at Chelsea, and 1763, when he went abroad on his travels, 
 Smollett was always engaged in carrying on several literary 
 undertakings abreast of one another, and as the years 
 went on the press of work became more severe. He 
 was at once an author engaged in filling a long shelf, and 
 an active journalist. A goodly list of quarrels may be 
 added to his other labours ; all three, the literature, the 
 journalism, and the quarrels, were connected with one 
 another, and they became crossed and mingled until it is 
 by no means easy to give an unconfused account of them. 
 Perhaps the most convenient starting-point for an account 
 of these years will be found in one of the quarrels, which 
 does not appear to have arisen out of his literary 
 v^'ork. Smollett had been connected in some way, appa- 
 rently a charitable one, with an unfortunate creature of 
 the name of Peter Gordon. Gordon was not only 
 unfortunate, but if Smollett's version of the story is to 
 be believed, dishonest and ungrateful. The novelist had 
 helped him with his purse. In order to get rid of the debt, 
 the debtor took refuge in 1 7 53 in the liberties of the King's
 
 SMOLLETT. 123 
 
 Bench Prison, and from that strength, as Cuddic Headrigg 
 would have called it, sent contumacious messages to h"s 
 benefactor. Smollett hereupon gave him a thrashing. 
 This course he was always very apt to take. In his travels 
 through France and Italy he tells many stories of his o\s\\ 
 ludicrous promptitude in threatening offenders with his 
 cane, generally with more or less unfortunate results to 
 himself. On the present occasion the assault entailed en 
 him very unpleasant trouble indeed. Gordon brought 
 an action against his assailant, and secured the services 
 of a Mr. Hume Campbell as counsel. This barrister 
 seems to have been, although he was a man of good 
 family connections, an Old Bailey practitioner of the loud- 
 mouthed bullying kind. He did his best to turn an 
 ordinary assault into something like an attempt to murder, 
 and he not only cross-examined Smollett's witnesses with 
 great severity, but said many violent things to the jury 
 about Smollett himself. Mr. Campbell failed to persuade 
 the jury that there had been an attempt to murder, but 
 about the assault there could be no doubt, and Smollett 
 was compelled to make a composition by which he was 
 bound to pay Gordon's legal expenses, and which 
 burdened him with a heavy bill at a time when his 
 affairj were by no means flourishing; and he was furiously 
 aggravated by the language of Mr. Hume Campbell. 
 While he was smarting under the double provocation, he 
 wrote a very long and very angry letter to the barrister. 
 He asked Mr. Hume Campbell, at great length, how he 
 dared to use such unbecoming language, or to praise his 
 own ignoble client in such a scandalous manner. He 
 asked him pointedly whether certain passages describing
 
 124 LIFE OF 
 
 the infamous conduct of lawyers in " Ferdinand, Count 
 Fathom," did not come home to his conscience. In 
 short, he gave Mr. Hume Campbell a severe wigging, 
 and challenged him to fight. No duel, however, or any 
 other consequence followed from this letter ; it is even 
 doubtful whether it ever reached tlie person to whom it 
 was addressed. It was printed in 1784, in The European 
 Magazine, from a rough draft which seems to have been 
 
 sent to Daniel Mackercher, the Mr. M of " Peregrine 
 
 Pickle." If Mackercher deserves all the praise lavished 
 on him by Smollett, as a zealous and judicious friend, he 
 must have advised that the letter should be put into the 
 waste-paper basket. To challenge an English barrister, 
 who was of a sufficiently low type to abuse the privileges 
 of the bar, for language used in court, miglit have brought 
 on Smollett legal proceedings even more disagreeable 
 than Mr. Peter Gordon's. From the fact that nothing 
 more is heard of the quarrel, it is probable that Smollett 
 took the course which wise men have been known to 
 recommend to authors who think themselves aggrieved 
 by criticism. He wrote an angry letter to relieve his 
 feelings, and avoided further wrangling by not sending 
 it. 
 
 While the Peter Gordon quarrel was in progress, 
 Smollett was at work on the translation of " Don 
 Quixote," which appeared in 1755. This was the first 
 of the works published during what may be called his 
 second period of activity — the period during which he 
 almost wholly ceased to produce original, imaginative work, 
 and devoted himself to literary labour of a business-like 
 kind. It was followed in 1757 by a " Compendium of
 
 SMOLLETT. 125 
 
 Voyages," edited by him, and to which he contributed 
 the already quoted account of Vernon's expedition to 
 Carthagona ; in the same year he did at last make his 
 way on to the stage, for the first and only time, with a 
 comedy called " The Reprisal; or, The Tars of Old Eng- 
 land," whereof more anon. In this same busy year 
 appeared the four quarto volumes of his " History ot 
 England " from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Peace 
 of Aix la Chapelle, to be followed in the next year by 
 a revised edition, published in monthly numbers, at the 
 price of one shilling each, and to be continued to the 
 year 1762, ten years later. In 1758-60 he was at work 
 rather as editor than contributor, on a " Modern Univer- 
 sal History." In the last of these three years he was 
 employed again, mainly as editor and annotator, along with 
 a certain Doctor Francklin and others, on a translation of 
 the complete works of Voltaire. Another business com- 
 pilation of the same kind as the " Universal History " was 
 " The Present State of all Nations," which also comes 
 into 1760. In the meantime he had been pretty steadily 
 engaged on The Critical Review from 1756 and onwards. 
 In 1 760, either in addition or as a substitute to the Cri/ical, 
 he became connected with The British Review for which 
 he wrote "Sir Launcelot Greaves," a story notable as one 
 of the first, if not the very first ever published in parts 
 in a periodical. 
 
 This very respectable spell of work was twice inter- 
 rupted. In 1755, very shortly after the appearance of 
 the "Don Quixote," Smollett revisited Scotland after an 
 absence of sixteen years. He came back to Glasgow, 
 Avhere he met Dr. Moore, and other old acquaintances,
 
 126 LIFE OF 
 
 to enjoy what Sir Arthur Helps, with more than his 
 customary liveliness, has described as the greatest good 
 of success, namely, the pleasure of convincing friends 
 and relations that one is not such a fool as one was once 
 supposed to be. His mother was still alive, and no longer 
 in need of the help of the family at Bonhill. Her 
 daughter's marriage had been a prosperous one; Mr, 
 Telfer, the husband, had thriven in the world as a 
 manufacturer, and had bought the small estate of Scot- 
 ston in Peebleshire. Mrs. Smollett was now living with 
 her daughter, and it was here that her son came to visit 
 her. 
 
 A story given to Dr. Moore by one of the family, 
 which on the whole proves that one branch of the 
 SmoUetts at least had a taste for somewhat untimely 
 practical jokes, tells how the novelist was presented to 
 his mother by Mrs. Telfer as a gentleman from the West 
 Indies who had known her son. Smollett entered into 
 the spirit of the jest till the comedy of the situation was 
 too much for him, and he smiled. Then his mother 
 recognized him at once. "She immediately sprung from 
 her chair, and throwing her arms around his neck, ex- 
 claimed, 'Ah, my son! my son! I have found you at 
 last.' She afterwards told him," Dr. Moore goes on, 
 " that if he had kept his austere look, and continued to 
 gloom, he might have escaped detection some time 
 longer ; ' but your old roguish smile,' added she, ' be- 
 trayed you at once.' " Smollett may, as the biographer 
 asserts, and as passages in " Humphrey Clinker " go to 
 prove, have been endowed "with some share of that affec- 
 tionate prejudice in favour of his relations and country-
 
 SMOLLETT. 127 
 
 men, of which the natives of Scotland are accused by 
 their philosophic neighbours," but he must certainly have 
 kept his sentimental emotions in good order to be able 
 to play this little farce. 
 
 The second interruption arose directly out of The 
 Critical Review, and it came upon Smollett in 1759. 
 The review had been started in '56, in opposition to the 
 Monthly. The capital seems to have been found by 
 Mr. Hamilton, the printer, one of the young Edinburgh 
 men who had reasons of a very sufficient kind for 
 escaping hurriedly from the "proodfu toon " immediately 
 after the hanging of Captain Porteous. Hamilton had 
 become a prosperous man, and he saw an opportunity of 
 doing a good stroke of business in opposition to Griffiths, 
 the owner of the Monthly. The enterprise was one 
 which has been often copied in the history of " the 
 trade," and indeed had its precedents even in 1756. 
 It was the story of The Spectator and The Examiner 
 over again, with variations, and was a sketch, as it were, 
 of The Edinburgh and Th: Quarterly battle, of the 
 rivalry of Constable and INIurray, and of Bacon's fight 
 with Bungay. The Critical Revieiv, like some successors 
 in fiction, and in reality, was announced to be written by 
 " gentlemen for gentlemen," — by a " Society of Gentle- 
 men," to quote the exact words of the title-page. The 
 review brought Smollett an ample share of disputes 
 with gentlemen w'ho thought themselves unfairly treated, 
 and in some cases considered it an aggravation of the 
 wrong that they were criticized by Scotchmen. Grainger 
 was made furious by a notice — a scoffing notice — of his 
 TibuUus, and Churchill fell furiously foul of the review
 
 128 LIFE OF 
 
 because it did not praise the Rosciad. These things, 
 however, may be said to belong to Smollett's literary 
 life. The worst trouble into which he was led by The 
 Critical Review was with an old acquaintance who was 
 not by profession a writing man, but who had thought 
 fit to rush into print in defence of himself. 
 
 Captain Knowles had commanded the Weymouth^ of 
 sixty guns, in Vernon's West Indian fleet. Whether he 
 sat among others for Captain Oakum does not appear, 
 but it is perhaps worth noting that he took part in the 
 barren action with the French ships on the coast of His- 
 paniola, described in " Roderick Random," and that his 
 name is not nientioned with praise in Smollett's account 
 of the expedition to Carthagena. He had continued in 
 the service, and in 1757 was a rear-admiral, (lying his 
 flag as second in command, under Sir Edward Hawke, 
 in the Channel. Though he had never absolutely failed, 
 his reputation was not good. Walpole describes him as 
 "a vain man of more parade than real bravery." In 1757, 
 he was engaged under Hawke to command the squadron 
 in the Basque Roads, in the attack on Rochefort. There 
 were good officers of both services engaged in the affair 
 — Conway, Cornwallis, and Wolfe among the soldiers, 
 and Howe, Knowles's second in command, among the 
 seamen. Unfortunately, Knowles, who was entrusted 
 with the actual direction of the operations by Hawke, 
 and Sir John Mordaunt the general, were not up to 
 their work, and the co-operation ended as co-operations 
 have not uncommonly done, in differences of opinion, 
 undecided action, and a council of war, which, as a 
 matter of course, resolved to do nothing. There was
 
 SMOLLETT. 129 
 
 an angry outcry in the country, and Admiral Knowles 
 came in for his share of blame. A Court of Inquiry 
 was held, and though he was not condemned for actual 
 misconduct, he was certainly accused by implication of 
 having behaved with little ability or enterprise. The 
 Admiral would not sit quiet under this tacit condemna- 
 tion. He published a pamphlet to defend himself, which 
 came to The Critical Revlezci, and was duly commented 
 on by Smollett himself. 
 
 The article which brought this woe on Smollett may 
 be quoted at length, not only as a specimen of the 
 journalistic style of the time, which, as the reader will 
 observe, does not differ for the worse from our own, but 
 as an example of what a rear-admiral and a British jury 
 thought intolerably severe criticism in 1758. It is also 
 not long, which is a merit : 
 
 " The design of this pamphlet is to vindicate Admiral 
 Knowles from an implicated charge contained in the 
 report of the Board of Inquiry concerning the last expe- 
 dition to the coast of France. It is there said, that the 
 design of attacking Fort Fouras was laid aside upon the 
 representations of Vice-Admiral Knowles that the ship in- 
 tended for that service was on ground at the distance of 
 four or five miles from the shore. Mr. Knowles has, in 
 our opinion, proved that this ship was actually on shore, 
 as were also the bomb-ketches and the Coventry frigate. 
 It likewise plainly appears that one of these bomb-ketches 
 was actually conducted by the pilot Thierry ; that the 
 master of the Barjleur sounded the river Charcnte from 
 bank to Lank ; and that the service was retarded but 
 
 9
 
 1^0 LIFE OF 
 
 three hours by Thierry's being sent to chase in the 
 Magnajii/iie. 
 
 "He has given us some reasons (though to us not satis- 
 factory) for the fort being built on the shore without gun- 
 shot of the Channel ; he labours hard to prove that the 
 Fort Fouras was inaccessible by sea, and with respect to 
 the report of Captain Colby's offering to carry in the 
 Frincess Amelia^ he says it is a mystery that may be 
 unriddled by a monosyllable, that may be guessed at 
 without explanation. But, after all these demonstrations, 
 we find that no person sounded nearer than three- 
 quarters of a mile of the fort ; and whether the Channel 
 was not within the distance is still a point far from being 
 ascertained. In the name of Heaven ! why was all this 
 space left untried ? If the persons employed on this 
 service were afraid of approaching nearer the fort in the 
 day, they might have, with great safety, executed the de- 
 sign in the night. They might have foreseen their 
 omission, in this particular, would leave the most material 
 point undecided, and consequently subject them to 
 doubts, suspicion, and censure. The most valuable part 
 of this pamphlet is the affixed carte {sic) of the road of 
 Basque with the different soundings of the coast marked 
 by figures." 
 
 Modern generals have had to put up with much worse 
 than this from correspondents actually in the camp ; but 
 m 1758, officers were not yet case hardened, and Admiral 
 Knowles brought an action for libel against The Revieiv. 
 It is plain that Smollett, and his publishers, were by 
 no means sure of the result of a trial. Perhaps they
 
 SMOLLETT. 131 
 
 thought the jury would be of opinion that they had 
 gone too far in practically reaffirming a charge which had 
 not been considered as proved by the Court of Inquiry. 
 It must not be forgotten that the press had not yet 
 established its claim to immunity in the criticism of 
 public men as fully as it did later on. Whatever his 
 motive may have been, Smollett made an attempt to 
 avoid an action by the use of private interest. He 
 appealed to Wilkes, who was himself destined to fight a 
 battle for the independence of the press at no distant 
 date. A few days after he had written asking for the 
 help of the future demagogue on behalf of Dr. Johnson's 
 servant, he made this appeal for himself. 
 
 "Chelsea, March 24, 1759. 
 "Dear Sir, — Ecce ite'niin Crisplnus ! Your gene- 
 rosity with respect to Johnson shall be the theme of our 
 applause and thanksgiving. I shall be very proud to 
 find myself comprehended in your league offensive and 
 defensive, nay, I consider myself already as a contracting 
 party, and have recourse to the assistance of my allies. 
 It is not, I believe, unknown to you tliat Admiral 
 Knowlcs has taken exception at a paragraph in The 
 Critical Review of last May, and commenced a prosecu- 
 tion against the printer. Now whatever termination t'r.e 
 trial may have, we shall infallibly be exposed to a con- 
 siderable expense ; and therefore I wish to sec the pro- 
 secution quashed. Some gentlemen, who are my friends, 
 have undertaken to find out, and talk with tliose who 
 are supposed to have iuduence with the said Admiral; 
 may I beg the same favour of you? The trial v.ill come
 
 132 LIFE OP 
 
 on in the beginning of May : and if the affair Cannot be 
 compromised, we intend to kick up a dust, and die 
 hard. In a word, if that fooUsh Admiral has any respect 
 to his own character, he will be quiet, rather than pro- 
 voke fuithcr the resentment of, 
 " Dear sir, 
 
 " Your very obhged humble servant, 
 
 "T. Smollett." 
 
 If Admiral Knowles heard of the menace at the end of 
 this letter, he may be pardoned for refusing to yield to 
 what looks at least very like an attempt to bully by threats 
 of other and worse personal attacks in the future. His 
 later conduct, if truly reported, is, however, sufficient 
 evidence that he cannot have acted on motives of a 
 magnanimous kind. According to Dr. Moore's account, 
 the Admiral's counsel declared in the Court of King's 
 Bench that his client had no wish to punish a wretched 
 printer, " but to discover who had written the offensive 
 article," and "that when he (viz., the Admiral) should 
 come to the knowledge of the author, if he proved to be 
 a gentleman, another kind of satisfaction would be de- 
 manded of him." A barrister was assuredly strangely 
 employed in delivering what was practically a challenge 
 in open court, and it may be that Dr. Moore is wrong as 
 to the details of the story. In some way or other Smollett 
 was made to understand that the Admiral was prepared 
 to accept the satisfaction of a gentleman. He at once 
 took the course which might have been expected of him. 
 Smollett may have been quarrelsome, and occasionally 
 even insolent, but he had the qualities of his defects.
 
 SMOLLETT. 133 
 
 He was not the man to skulk behind a printer, and he 
 came forward at once ; whereupon the Admiral brought 
 an action against him personally, and got him sentenced 
 to a fine of ;^ioo, and three months' imprisonment in the 
 King's Bench prison. The needful comment upon this 
 most unseamanlike and unsportsmanlike behaviour on 
 the Admiral's part has been made by Sir Walter Scott, 
 who himself, when threatened with a challenge by 
 General Gourgaud, was cheerfully prepared to shoot 
 his man with the pistols which had once belonged to the 
 General's old master. Napoleon. " How the Admiral," 
 says Sir Walter, " reconciled his conduct to the rules 
 usually observed by gentlemen, we are not informed ; but 
 the proceeding seems to justify even Smollett's strength 
 of expression, when he terms him an officer without 
 resolution, and a man without veracity." Admiral Knowles 
 seems decidedly to have belonged to the class of naval 
 officers who had to be " encouraged " by the shooting of 
 Byng. 
 
 Smollett did his three months and paid his fine. Im- 
 prisonment in the King's Bench prison had its com- 
 pensations. Gentlemen confined there were treated (as 
 long as they could pay their fees) on the footing of State 
 prisoners. They had their rooms, could receive visitors, 
 and do their work if they had any to do. Smollett does 
 not seem to have had any difficulty in finding money to 
 meet the expenses brought upon him by the trial. Except 
 indeed during one period of his life, before and after the 
 translation of " Don Quixote," he docs not appear ever 
 to have been in serious difficulties, and then they were 
 partly caused by the failure of somebody in the West
 
 134 LIFE OF 
 
 Indies, who owed money to Mrs. Smollett, and to his own 
 generosity in helping a friend. He gave his help in the 
 form of a promissory note, like a good Scotchman. There 
 is something irresistibly attractive it seems to the Scotch 
 mind in the act of signing a bill. Sir Walter Scott 
 observed, and also proved by his own example, that a 
 Scotchman who will think twice before parting with half- 
 a-crown of ready money, will make himself liable for 
 hundreds of pounds of paper quite gaily. Once at least 
 in his life Smollett's blood was too much fur him, and he 
 suffered for being a Scotchman. The period of financial 
 distress seems to have lasteJ from 1753 to 1756, and in 
 the course of it, Smollett was at times hard pressed. Ee 
 had to borrow money from his wife's relations, and h's 
 own friends, till remittances came in from the West Indies, 
 and earnings were attained to in London. In '53 his need 
 was so great that he was compelled to cash a bill for fifty 
 guineas at a month's date which he was allowed to draw 
 on Provost Drummond, at a discount of ;£^2 12s. 6d., for 
 the month. The money was due for editorial work done 
 for the Provost's brother, who had written a book, and 
 wanted it revised. Provost Drummond was p'ainly 
 another good Scotchman, for it can only have been aa 
 artistic love of a bill which prevented him from agreeing 
 to pay at call. Continued delays in the remittances from 
 the West Indies, and the difficulty of making money in 
 London, kept Smollett under the necessity of appealing 
 to his brother-in-law, Mr. Telfer, or to his friend Dr. 
 Macaulay, until the appearance of The Critical Revieiu 
 in 1756. In 1754 the difticulties of the day were 
 aggravated by an unpleasant adventure of a not un-
 
 SMOLLETT. 13J 
 
 common kind in the eighteenth century : Smollett was 
 robbed of his watch and purse, in " the stage coach be- 
 tween Chelsea and London," by some gentleman of the 
 road, of the stamp of his own Rifle. After 1756, however, 
 he seems to have attained to a regular income. He was 
 able to meet the costs of Admiral Knowles' action, and to 
 travel to Scotland and abroad, and to find the necessary 
 money himself. To some extent his comparative prosperity 
 may have been due to good fortune in securing a solvent 
 tenant for Mrs. Smollett's West Indian property. In a 
 letter written to an American correspondent in 1763, just 
 before he left England, he speaks of himself as enjoying, 
 in right of his wife, " a comfortable tho' moderate estate 
 in Jamaica." But the bulk of his income must have 
 come from his own work. According to the bad custom 
 of the time, he had been paid for the translation of " Don 
 Quixote " before the work was done, and as an inevitable 
 consequence the task had to be toiled through in the 
 midst of money trouble. Later on, however, Smollett 
 seems to have been able to avoid the pitfall of payment 
 in advance. The sums w-hich he actually received cannot 
 have been insignificant. The actual money paid for the 
 history is said to have been, first and last, ^^2, 000, which 
 was as good, all things considered, as twice the sum would 
 be now. When the eighteenth century is spoken of as a 
 time in which men of letters were very badly paid, and 
 the reading public small (and these rather self-righteous 
 assertions turn up every now and then), it is well to re- 
 member that books on a large scale were often fairly well 
 paid for, and that the bookseller seems to have been able 
 to rely on a purchasing public for them with a confidence
 
 136 LIFE OF 
 
 which his successor, the pubHsher, does not seem often 
 able to feel. 
 
 No portion of the writing which Smollett did during these 
 years belongs to the living part of his work. The great 
 history helped, no doubt, to gain him his right to the 
 adjectives " learned and ingenious " before his name in 
 his own time, but it can hardly be said to have survived 
 as part of the historical literature of the country. It was 
 a considerable feat to write four quartos, founded on the 
 consultation of three hundred books, in fourteen months. 
 Speaking roughly, the feat was equivalent, in mere 
 writing, to two full leading articles a day, done for a year 
 and two months right on without a break. When it 
 is remembered that this was done in addition to the 
 monthly labour for The Critical Review, of which 
 Smollett seems to have written the greater part, during 
 the early years at least, it is not surprising that he should 
 have been unable to leave his house, and have ruined 
 his health by incessant application to the desk. Nothing 
 can be more honourable than this work as a piece of 
 honest labour, undertaken to pay off debts and win a 
 position of independence ; but from the literary point of 
 view it was toil wasted. The result was, and could only 
 be, journalism, which, from the very nature of it, is not 
 "a thing immortal," but, on the contrary, a thing fit 
 for immediate consumption. No man who was meant 
 by nature to be an historian would undertake to read up 
 and write a history of England on any scale, still less in four 
 volumes quarto, in fourteen months. In this generation 
 no writer of anything approaching Smollett's standing 
 would, for very conscience' sake, undertake the task for
 
 SMOLLETT. 137 
 
 ten times the pay, even if he could get it. But in the 
 middle of the last century, there seems to have been a 
 belief that the good workman was fit for all w'ork, and as 
 the booksellers saw that the public would buy history, 
 they made their arrangements accordingly. Smollett 
 wrote history as Goldsmith did, though on a larger 
 scale, as part of the day's work. Whoever will turn to his 
 history without expecting more than he ought to expect, 
 will find a well-wTitten narrative, belonging, for the most 
 part, to the same order of work as the summaries of the 
 year printed by some newspapers, only decidedly better 
 done than such things usually are. Smollett himself 
 took it very seriously, and assured Dr. Moore, with 
 almost touching earnestness, that he had written " with- 
 out espousing any faction." The words which follow 
 are too good to be left unquoted: "though," he goes 
 on, "I own I sat down to write with a warm side to those 
 principles in which I was educated ; but in the course of 
 my inquiries some of the Whig ministers turned out such 
 a set of sordid knaves, that I could not help stigmatizing 
 them for their want of integrity and sentiment." The study 
 of history had produced on Smollett's mind what some 
 will think is its proper effect. It had made him a good 
 sound Tory. But has not SnoUett's position as an 
 historian been summed up by ]\Ir. Thackeray ? "Once 
 w'hen Mr. Crawley asked what the young people were 
 reading, the governess replied 'Smollett.' 'Oh, Smollett,' 
 said Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied. 'Ilis history is more 
 dull, but by no means so dangerous as that of Mr. Hume. 
 It is history you are reading.?' 'Yes,' said Miss Rose; 
 without, however, adding that it was the history of Mr.
 
 138 LIFE OF 
 
 Humphrey Clinker." This is one of the many things 
 for which unprejudiced people love Miss Rebecca Sharpe. 
 '■' The Compendium of Voyages," " The Modern Univer- 
 sal History," and the rest, were openly done as honest 
 journeyman work for want of a better, and Smolle'.t's 
 share in them must have been mainly confined to recruit- 
 ing, and exercising a paternal control over, the workmen 
 whom Mr. Jerry Melford met at his house in Chelsea. 
 
 The translations belong to a higher order. For a man 
 who loved Cervantes and Le Sage so well as Smollett did, 
 it must have been a pleasure to live with them, and his 
 versions of their masterpieces would necessarily have the 
 merit of work that is done with zest. As regards the 
 Spaniard, Smollett had the usual fate of translators of 
 "Don Quixote." "A gentleman from the country" 
 wrote to point out he did not know the language well 
 enough, and had come to "grief and breakage" over 
 that notorious stumbling-block " duelos y quebrantos," 
 and other rough places. The critic, however, was as 
 much at sea as the translator, and as all men were till 
 Diego Clemencin came and made the rough places smooth. 
 Smollett shows no sign of ignorance of Spanish ; indeed 
 he had ample time to learn it between the date of payment 
 for his translation and the actual doing of it, and his 
 faults were not of a kind which knowledge of the language 
 would have saved him from. When he goes wrong, it is 
 generally not because he does not understand the original, 
 but because he chooses to add to its meaning. He had 
 a tendency to abound in the sense of his author, to force 
 the note, and heighten the colour, which could at times 
 produce a degree of falsity nearly equal to downright
 
 SMOLLETT, 10) 
 
 mistranslation. Take, for example, the very first sentence 
 of " Don Quixote," which is not only convenient but 
 good as a text. Cervantes says, " In a village of La 
 Mancha, -whereof I do not care to remember the name, 
 there lived not long ago one of those gentlemen who 
 have a lance on the rack, an old-fashioned buckler, a 
 lean hackney, and a coursing greyhound." In Smollett 
 this becomes, " In a certain corner of La IMancha, the 
 name of v;hich I do not choose to remember, there 
 lately lived one of those country gentlemen w^ho adorn 
 their halls with a rusty lance and worm-eaten target, and 
 ride forth on the skeleton of a horse, to course witli a 
 sort of starved greyhound." Obviously one half of tins 
 is pure surplusage, mere useless insistance on the author's 
 meaning. Som.e of this padding may be due to mere 
 haste, since it is far easier to use many words than few in 
 translations as elsewhere ; but much of it must also have 
 been deliberately put in with the object of giving the 
 spirit of the author. The attempt was frequently doomed 
 to failure. In the course of this amplification and ex- 
 aggeration the flavour of the original is lost. There is, 
 however, this much to be said for Smollett's translation, 
 that he was sufficienUy in sympathy with Cervantes 
 to exaggerate on his lines, and the translation has an 
 original literary value of its own. Me treated Cervantes 
 somewhat as Urquhart treated Rabelais; but in the 
 opinion of competent judges, Urquhart's " Rabelais " is 
 no mean feat in literature. 
 
 There is a difficulty in the way of all criticism of the 
 value of the other translations which pass under Smollett's 
 name, and for which he is nominally answerable— and it is
 
 140 LIFE OF 
 
 the difficulty of knowing how much of them he did 
 himself, and how much of them was done for him by 
 workmen of the stamp of those he used to meet at Far- 
 mer's Coffee House. Even in his own time, the " Gil 
 Bias " was spoken of as "passing under his name," and 
 it is now confidently attributed to another hand. As 
 regards the " Complete Works of M. de Voltaire," we have 
 his own word, in the letter to an American friend already 
 quoted, that he did only a very small part of it, over and 
 above the historical and critical notes. Within the last few 
 months, the translation of " Candide " given in the "Com- 
 plete Works " — of both the parts, the first which no son of 
 Adam but Voltaire could possibly have written, and the 
 second which he allowed to pass under his name, but 
 which cannot be his — has been reprinted in a Bowdlerized 
 form by Professor Morley in The Universal Library. This 
 version is so spirited that the temptation to attribute it to 
 Smollett is great. That he took hints for some of the 
 nastiest passages in the "Adventures of an Atom" from the 
 very un-Voltairian second part is not to be doubted. But 
 this is no proof that he did the translation, and it is unlikely 
 that he would have failed to claim such an important piece 
 of work as a version of "Candide," if he had really been its 
 author. On the other hand, he did claim the " Gil Bias" 
 which is disputed. Judging by internal evidence (the only 
 really satisfactory test when direct evidence is wanting), 
 I am inclined to think that he cannot have done the 
 "Candide." It does not seem to me to have the notes of 
 the undoubted translation of "Don Quixote," the continual 
 exaggeration and forcing of the tone which make Smol- 
 lett's English such a swollen version of the Spanish of
 
 SMOLLETT. 141 
 
 Cervantes. On the whole, Smollett appears to have done 
 most of this part of his work by contract. He hired a 
 gang of literary workmen, and supervised them. In the 
 literary world of his time he would have no difficulty in 
 finding a number of good hands who would do very well 
 under intelligent supervision. 
 
 While Admiral Knowles' action was hanging over his 
 head, Smollett was inclined to grumble at The Critical 
 Review, and expresses a rather ungrateful wish tliat he 
 could hang his pen up for good, and be done with praise 
 and blame. Yet it might be plausibly argued that by 
 much the most really important work which Smollett did 
 between "Peregime Pickle," and "Humphrey Clinker," was 
 done for The Critical Review. It is true that nobody can 
 now-a-days be expected to read the two hundred volumes 
 of this magazine, or even that part of them to which 
 SmoUettcontributed; butthen who reads "TheReprisal," or 
 "Sir Launcelot Greaves," or at least who reads them twice? 
 The Critical Reviezu had a place of some importance in 
 the history of English journalism. It was a distinct effort 
 at least to establish a scholarly literary magazine which 
 should not be written, like Griffiths' Monthly, by hack 
 writers resident in a bookseller's garret, but by a " society 
 of gentlemen," who could boast of some pretensions to a 
 position of independence. The magazine looks poor and 
 rather crude alongside of its modern successors. It would 
 be rash to make a general statement as to the contents of 
 the whole two hundred volumes, and the biographer of 
 Smollett is not bound to take note of them beyond the 
 year 1760 or thereabouts. Possibly enough there may 
 be longer and more elaborate work hidden away some-
 
 142 LIFE OF 
 
 where in this heap of volumes, but as a rule, and certainly 
 in the earlier years, TJie Critical Review consisted almost 
 wholly of short notices of books, such as are now printed 
 under a heading of " recent publications," or " the editor's 
 table," or some such thing. Speaking from a knowledge 
 which does not profess to be more than superficial, I 
 should feel inclined to say that this work was done, at 
 least during Smollett's editorship, with considerable spirit. 
 As for the fairness, that was a matter of opinion at the 
 time, and can hardly be estimated now. The books 
 reviewed have been in so many cases hopelessly forgotten, 
 and it is impossible to check the reviewer even if one 
 wished to do so. " The Critical reviewers I believe,'' 
 said Doctor Johnson, " often review without reading the 
 books through ; but lay hold of a topic and write chiefly 
 from their own minds." The practice is one which, if all 
 tales be true, has not passed away with The Critical Review. 
 Naturally the author and the critic take very different 
 views of its legitimacy. The latter perhaps justifies him- 
 self by the excuse for this custom of indolent irrespon. 
 sible reviewing implied in Johnson's criticism on the 
 rival of The Critical^'-'- The Montiily reviewers are duller 
 men, and are glad to read the book through." During 
 Smollett's rule at least The Critical Review was not dull, 
 and if it did not contain much criticism of permanent 
 value, at least it supplied its readers with some smart talk 
 about the books and the topics of the day, and helped to 
 popularize literary things. In this respect Smollett's work 
 for it was very similar to his history, which was undoubt- 
 edly written to meet a popular demand, and was 
 republished in a second edition in parts, and with plates
 
 SMOLLETT. 143 
 
 executed by Strange, obviously in order that it might be 
 put within the reach of the most modest purse. As a book- 
 seller's speculation it seems to have been highly successful. 
 Twelve thousand numbers was the average of the sale, 
 and it may be doubted, whether even in these days, with 
 a larger purchasing public, and when paper is cheaper, 
 though certainly not so good, and when steam has made 
 it possible to print on a larger scale at a much more 
 moderate rate, such a work could either be sold for less, 
 or relied upon to find so good a sale. 
 
 Smollett's connection with The British was confined to 
 the contribution of "Sir Launcelot Greaves." It is hardly 
 a far-fetched supposition that Smollett's residence in the 
 King's Bench prison suggested to him the unfortunate 
 scheme of reviving "Don Quixote and his Squire" in the 
 England of the eighteenth century. He also may have 
 wished to produce a work in a prison, "which is the seat of 
 inconvenience and the habitation of every dismal sound." 
 It was certainly a most ill-advised attempt. Whatever 
 chance " Sir Launcelot Greaves " may have had of being 
 a good story, was ruined by the lumbering and hope- 
 lessly unmanageable machinery Smollett chose to adopt 
 in a spirit of unintelligent imitation. There are flashes 
 of the old fire of "Roderick Random" in "Sir Launce- 
 lot." Whenever SmoUelt is dealing with picaresque 
 adventure, or is pillorying an enemy, he is still alive. 
 Sir Launcelot Greaves is himself a fine fellow. The 
 sailor, Captain Crewe, and his nephew, the attorney, have 
 also some of the old vitality. But the story as a whole is 
 crushed by the comparison with " Don Quixote," which 
 Smollett forced on his reader. lie was himself conscious
 
 144 LIFE OP 
 
 of his mistake, and after apologizing for it, if that can be 
 called an apology which was, in fact, an expression of 
 high contempt for carping critics, he dropped the parody 
 of the Don and Sancho, and gave himself up freely to 
 make sketches of rogues and of madmen. But it was 
 too late, and "Sir Launcelot Greaves "was doomed to 
 remain an unsuccessful copy of the mere outside of 
 Cervantes' novel, redeemed here and there by scenes 
 which prove that Smollett had not yet lost his old verve, 
 and might yet do work as original, and as much his own, 
 as "Roderick Random" or "Peregrine Pickle." 
 
 The " Reprisal," which appeared in 1757, stands alone 
 in two respects in Smollett's life. It was his only suc- 
 cessful attempt to reach the stage, and it led to the 
 soldering up of an old quarrel. The plot of this two-act 
 comedy may have given Marryat the first idea of " The 
 Three Cutters," and is worked up with no small liveliness. 
 Its characters have a distinct comic I'is of a rather broad 
 kind. The sailors Lyon, Haulyard, and Block, are good 
 as Smollett's sailors always were ; Oclabber and Maclay- 
 more, the exiled Jacobites in the French service, are first 
 drafts of the immortal Lismahago. Like most of 
 Smollett's work in those years, this comedy has its touch 
 of journalism. It was written to revive the patriotic 
 sentiment of the nation, which had been much depressed 
 by Byng's failure off Minorca, and the consequent loss of 
 the island in the previous year. The actiialite of the 
 subject may have helped to persuade Garrick to accept 
 the piece for Drury Lane; but he would have been a less 
 sagacious man than he was if he had not seen that the 
 editor of The Critical Review was entitled to more con-
 
 SMOLLETT. 145 
 
 sideration than the unknown author of the " Regicide." 
 He certainly behaved handsomely in the matter by acting 
 the part of Zara on the first night to draw a good house, 
 and then contributing twenty pounds out of his own pocket 
 to increase tlie author's profits. Smollett did penance 
 for Marmozet by writing the great actor a most grateful 
 letter, and then repaid the service by praising him most 
 heartily in TJie Critical Review — for the wicked practice 
 of " log-rolling " was already known, though not yet 
 named. Smollett rolled logs himself, and for himself, in 
 the most gallant fashion. The Critical Reviav praised 
 him, and he praised his friends in The Critical Revieio. 
 When, as was the case with the author of " Douglas," one 
 of the editor's friends was by accident "slated," or even 
 not sufficiently praised, Smollett hastened to explain that 
 it was an oversight, and would not have happened if he 
 had been on the spot to prevent it. One would hardly 
 state the immoral proposition that one's friends were to. 
 be "cracked up accordingly," with more audacity. 
 
 lO
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BEFORE Smollett left England in 1763, he had gone 
 through what must have been the most unpleasant 
 •experience of his career. From May '62 to February '63 
 Avas for him a period of political journalism, the first 
 and the last in his life. In an evil hour he under- 
 took to edit The Briton, a weekly paper in support 
 uf Bute's administration. There is no reason to 
 suppose that Smollett did not enter on the fight 
 with perfect honesty. It is true that he dedicated his 
 " History " to the great Pitt, and that he had praised him 
 in public, and equally true that he afterwards attacked 
 him with unmeasured ferocity in the " Adventures of an 
 Atom." Nothing, I think, not even disappointment, 
 disease, and a systema nervosum niaxime irriiabiic, can 
 justify the tone of that political satire; but Smollett might 
 well have reconciled a belief in the Minister's personal 
 greatness with a conviction that the war had been carried 
 on long enough for the interest of the country, and that 
 it was now time to make peace. If he also thought that 
 enough English money had gone to help Frederick of 
 Prussia in his fight with the House of Austria, and that 
 the sooner we cut ourselves adrift from the wars of the 
 Continent the better, he was in agreement with many
 
 LIFE OF SMOLLETT. 1-17 
 
 Englishmen, and might have cited not a little of Pitt's 
 own eloquence in early years in support of his views. 
 Unfortunately honesty of conviction is not enough to 
 make successful journalism ; ability even will hardly do it. 
 There must be a cause to fight for, and leaders who will 
 head the fight. Bute, however, and the king, though 
 they had a cause, and a very fair one, contrived to ruin 
 it effectually by their own backstairs intrigue. They 
 condemned their supporters to fight what must in any 
 case have been an uphill battle, under particularly disad- 
 vantageous circumstances. Then, when they had done 
 their best, Bute left them in the lurch. The history of 
 The Briton is figuratively told, in the " Adventures of 
 an Atom," in a passage which may be quoted Avith sup- 
 pressions. Mr. Orator Taycho [Pitt] takes the field, 
 and then Yak-strot [Bute] " began to put himself in a 
 posture of defence. He hired a body of mercenaries, 
 and provided some dirtmen and rhymers. Then, taking 
 the field, a sharp contest and pelting match ensued, but 
 the dispute was soon terminated. Yak-strot's versifier, 
 turned out no great conjurers on the trial." (Here 
 follows a description of the pelting match, which may be 
 read in the original.) "Yak-strot having suffered wofully 
 in his own person, and seeing his partizans in confusion, 
 thought proper to retreat. Yet although discomfited he 
 was not discouraged. On the contrary, having at bottom 
 a fund of fanaticism, which, like camomile, grows the 
 faster for being trod upon, he became more obstinately 
 bent than ever upon prosecuting his own schemes for the 
 good of the people in their own despite. His vanity was 
 likewise buoyed up by the flattery of his creatures, who 
 
 a
 
 148 LIFE OF 
 
 extolled the passive courage he had shown m the late 
 engagement. Though every part of him still tingled and 
 stunk from the balls of the enemy, he persuaded himself 
 that not one of their missiles had taken place ; and of 
 consequence that there was something of divinity in his 
 person. Full of this notion he discarded his rhymers 
 and his dirt-casters as unnecessary, and resolved to bear 
 the brunt of the battle in his own individual." 
 
 In other words, Bute had become convinced, before 
 the year was out, that the only effect of The Briton was 
 to draw more attacks upon him. The failure must have 
 been cruelly humiliating to Smollett. He was not the 
 man to take kindly to figuring on the beaten side. He 
 had quarrelled, as a necessary consequence of his activity 
 as Bute's supporter, with Wilkes. The good-natured 
 demagogue was, for his part, quite prepared to go through 
 the battle of dirt-throwing with good humour, but Smollett 
 was too much in earnest to imitate his example. He 
 attacked his old friend in unmeasured terms. Naturally 
 he was himself very roughly handled by Wilkes and his 
 men, and Smollett's sensitiveness to personal attack was 
 in exact proportion to his readiness to attack others. 
 When T/ie Briton was given up, he was stung, aggravated, 
 and humiliated beyond endurance. His sense of his 
 personal importance had been horribly shocked. The 
 emotions of this year of conflict, and the disappointment 
 which came at the end of it, acted with killing force on 
 his enfeebled health. Early in 1763, the death of his 
 daughter and only child gave him a final blow, and in 
 the following June he left England accompanied by Mrs. 
 Smollett, and two young ladies who were put under their
 
 SMOLLETT. 140 
 
 care, and sought for peace and health in the south of 
 Europe. 
 
 He stayed abroad from the June of ^^i till the early 
 spring of '65. The history of this period of exile has 
 been told by himself in those " Travels through France 
 and Italy " which, justly enough, excited the ridicule of 
 Sterne. They are certainly dreary reading. Smollett 
 went abroad in a frame of mind sufficiently clearly 
 described by himself. He looked upon himself as 
 a man " traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, 
 abandoned by false patrons ; " and, however much this 
 view may have been coloured by his own atrabilious frame 
 of mind, there was no doubt absolute truth in the follow- 
 ing words, which describe him as " overwhelmed by the 
 sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the 
 power of fortune to repair." It was not until shortly 
 before his return to England, that rest, and the climate 
 of Northern Italy, began to restore him to some measure 
 of health and peace of mind. 
 
 His view of what he saw of France and Italy is naturally 
 darkened by his own sufferings, and the book in which 
 he described his experiences is full of melancholy details 
 of the state of his health, and dreary stories of the extor- 
 tion of landlords and the insolence of postilions. Almost 
 the only parts of it which flash up into any tolerable degree 
 of vitality, are those very heterodox opinions on works of 
 art, for which the learned Smelfungus was laughed at by 
 the author of the " Sentimental Journey." Some of them 
 do not look nearly so heterodox now as they did in 1766. 
 There are probably a good few persons who would not feel 
 themselves conscious of guilt if they expressed very much
 
 150 LIFE OF 
 
 the same opinion as Smollett's on tlie famous Venus at 
 Florence. On the whole, these judgments on works of 
 art, which Smollett introduces with a disclaimer of any 
 pretensions to the title of judge, show a certain hard sense 
 which is not without its attractions. At least they are 
 considerably more honest, and incomparably more critical, 
 than the routine admiration of people who get into 
 ecstasies because they think it is the right thing to do. 
 Smollett looked at these marvels for himself, and 
 when he did not feel any spontaneous admiration, he said 
 so. His independence is the more respectable because 
 there is not a trace in him of that flippant and ignorant 
 contempt for things which they have neither the training 
 nor the capacity to understand, which certain so-called 
 humourists think fit to display with ostentation in our 
 time. 
 
 After his return to England, Smollett does not seem to 
 have lived much in London ; he was barely three years 
 in his native country before his health compelled him to 
 fly back to Northern Italy. During that period he resided 
 for a time at Bath, which had always been a favourite 
 haunt of his, and he paid one long and last visit to Scot- 
 land. In the midst of these movements he still pushed 
 on with his work ; he published his travels, he wrote the 
 continuation of his history down to the year 1762, which 
 is generally bound up with Hume's, and just before leaving 
 England he published the " Adventures of an Atom." 
 This work, for which he undoubtedly got some hints from 
 the spurious second part of " Candide," is that part of all 
 his writing which could best be spared. Except in certain 
 parts of Swift, there is nothing, at least in the productions
 
 SMOLLETT. 131 
 
 of any writer of a high rank, to surpass the mere animal 
 Hastiness of this satire. From first to last Smollett rings 
 the changes on the words dirt, sores, filth, evacuations 
 up and down, till he produces an intolerable feeling of 
 disgust, not at the things and persons he meant to deride, 
 but at himself. Then, too, the satire is so utterly indis- 
 criminate. Not only are George II., the Duke of Cum- 
 berland, and the Duke of Newcastle bespattered with 
 nastiness, but the same treatment is meted out to Anson, 
 JNIansfield, and, above all, to Pitt. It is impossible not 
 to feel the vigour with which this rather ignoble work is 
 done; and certain passages haunt the mind like the 
 memory of something odious and cruel one has seen by 
 accident, and in the streets. The best that can be said 
 for it is that it seems to have cleared Smollett's bosom of 
 much perilous stuff. It was a poorness in him to unpack 
 his heart with curses, but at least he did it once and for 
 all \ when he took his pen up again in exile, and in full 
 view of death, it was to write with a kindlier humanity 
 than he had ever shown before. 
 
 The good done to Smollett's health by the first visit to- 
 Italy had been very temporary. Shortly after his return 
 to England, he had begun to suffer from insomnia. A 
 visit to Scotland in 1766 gave him some relief, but his 
 constitution was irretrievably ruined, and two years later 
 he was under the necessity of leaving England for ever. 
 He attempted to secure the post of Consul, and ap- 
 plied to Hume, who was at that time Under Secretary of 
 State, to help him in his application. Hume, with his 
 usual good nature; did his best with Lord Shelburne, but 
 it wus to no purpose. The consulates at Nice and Leg
 
 152 LIFE OF 
 
 horn were already disposed of, and Smollett was com- 
 pelled to go abroad relying entirely on his own resources. 
 He left England at the end of 1768, and made his way 
 by Lucca and Pisa to Leghorn. Here he settled at the 
 village of Monte Novo, where he remained until his 
 death in 1771. His work followed him to Italy; at 
 Lucca and at Pisa he was engaged in finishing up what 
 editing was still due to the "Modern Universal History." 
 This seems to have been the last piece of mere business 
 industry he did. At Leghorn he was engaged on 
 "Humphrey Clinker," which appeared in 17 71, in the 
 ^-ery year of his death. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott has called " The Expedition of Hum- 
 phrey Clinker," " the last, and like music sweetest 
 in the close, the most pleasing" of the works of 
 Smollett. The description is not only true, but short 
 of the truth. " Humphrey Clinker " is not only, by 
 general consent, the best of Smollett's works, but 
 it has a manifold superiority to anything else he did 
 in the course of his literary life. If his life had ended 
 before it was written, he would still have been a con- 
 siderable figure in the literature of his time, and have 
 exercised a decided influence on his contemporaries. 
 He would have been admired by Doctor Carlyle, and 
 his society would have been sought by men whose 
 friendship was an honour. Robertson and Hume would 
 have been proud to recognize him as a countryman 
 and fellow-man of letters. The " Adventures of a 
 Guinea " would have equally been written by his pupil 
 Johnson. But without " Humphrey Clinker," Smollett 
 would not have been distinctly and undeniably one of
 
 SMOLLETT. 153 
 
 the first humourists of the eighteenth century, and still 
 less would the tenderness, which lay under all the fierce- 
 ness of his disposition, have been made so manifest. 
 His own description of Lord Bute as a man with "a 
 fund of fanaticism which, hke camomile, grows tl^e 
 faster for being trod on," invites the application to 
 himself, in an infinitely more honourable way, of a flimous 
 sentence in Bacon's essay "Of Adversity:" "certainly 
 Virtue is like precious Odours, most fragrant when they 
 are incensed or crushed; for Frospenty doth best 
 discover Vice, but Adversity doth best discover Virtue." 
 Toil, disappointment, suffering, and domestic calamity 
 had tamed and disciplined the ferocity out of Smollett 
 before he sat down to work at " Humphrey Clinker." 
 He was still the same man. He had not lost his fond- 
 ness for speaking of certain physical facts, and even for 
 dwelling on them. He still introduced individuals, and 
 fought out private quarrels, even in the last of his books. 
 The picture of the ungrateful Nabob at Bath and his 
 benefactor, Mr. Serle, is supposed, apparently on good 
 evidence, to be Smollett's revenge for the ungrateful 
 behaviour of a man whom he had once befriended; but if 
 he was the same Smollett, it was with a difference. There 
 is an atmosphere of kindliness in " Humphrey Clinker '' 
 peculiar to this alone among his works. It leaves no 
 bitter taste in the mouth. The intention to make vice 
 hateful by dwelling only on vice, which renders his earlier 
 works such one-sided pictures of life, is absent here. He 
 seems to have been glad to be done with rogues, and even 
 \\ith fools, and to have wished at the end of his warfare 
 on earth to live for a time with people who might be
 
 154 LIFE OF 
 
 laughable, but were never to be wholly hateful. Even 
 Tabitha Bramble, old cat as she is, is a pardonable old cat. 
 One has a general impression that if the Lieutenant in H. 
 M.'s navy, who fell so untimely in action with the French 
 frigate, had not lost the number of his mess on that 
 occasion, Tabitha would not have been the Vixen whom 
 it required all Lieutenant Lismahago's courage to tackle. 
 As for the others, there is not one of them we would 
 not have liked to have met. Miss Lydia Melford is 
 a somewhat shadowy young lady, but on farther acquaint- 
 ance, she would no doubt have been found to be a very 
 charming girl. The sliil more shadowy Wilson was 
 doubtless much to be envied. As for Mr. Jerry Melford, 
 he was a very fine young fellow, a very gallant young 
 gentleman indeed, and when he bullied his sister, it was 
 all out of pure brotherly love and desire for her good. 
 Even the impersonal things — the Methodist craze, for 
 example — are kindly treated. Smollett was Scotchman 
 enough not to share Fielding's dislike of a movement 
 which damaged the Church of England, but he had a 
 great deal of the eighteenth-century dislike and distrust 
 of fanaticism. PTe would certainly not in earlier years 
 have preferred to dwell on whatever was good in 
 Methodism, as he does in " Humphrey Clinker." 
 
 Because of this very humanity, because he vras not 
 intent on rousing the generous indignation of his reader 
 with the sordid and vicious disposition of the world, 
 because it may almost be said Smollett had gone back, at 
 the end of his life, to the spirit of Le Sage, after beginning 
 it by imitating his form, these characters of his have 
 an unwonted human realit)'. Beneath all their oddities
 
 SMOLLETT. 155 
 
 and their external crust of eccentricy, there is a living 
 personality. They are, none of them, altogether good, 
 any more than they are altogether bad. Matthew Bramble 
 shows himself in the course of his " lamentations " as 
 probably tlie most credible specimen of the bourreau 
 bienfaisant in literature. Poor Tabitha is not only the 
 soured old maid of comedy, but a human being with a 
 distinct character of her own. There is something to be 
 said even for her unconscionable use of her brother's 
 poultry yard and his flocks and herds. Even the affection 
 she lavishes on that insufterable brute Chowder, only went 
 that bad road for want of a better. She schemes and 
 scolds and is frightened when INIatthew does at last rebel 
 in a very individual way. No old maid was ever quite 
 like that, except Tabitha Bramble. Winifred Jenkins is 
 not all misspelling and servant-maid gossip. Humphrey 
 Clinker, though he gives his name to the book, is com- 
 paratively colourless, but even he leaves a distinct 
 impression of good and honest simplicity. The flower of 
 the book is beyond all question Lismahago. Until Rett- 
 meister Dugald Dalgetty came to stand by his side, the 
 lieutenant was unique ; even now he is very much a 
 "thing in itself." His pedantry, his prickly pride, his 
 firm conviction that he was an ill-used man, combined with 
 an almost ferocious determination to accept nobody's 
 pit}', his stern economy, and his perfect readiness to be 
 lavish on what he thought a i)ropcr occasion, are all 
 individual traits consistent with one another, blended 
 together to make an absolutely credible character. Then, 
 too, Lismahago is an undoubted Scotchman ; no man of 
 any other race could have been quite so fond of a good
 
 IJG LIFE OF 
 
 wrangle, or have defended a paradox with such lough 
 dexterity. His foniily pride too is very Scotch, and so is 
 the unconscious contradiction between his contempt for 
 his brother's mechanical pursuits and his own perfect 
 readiness to attain to comfort by a mercenary marriage 
 with an unattractive old maid. When he has attained to 
 this curious victory, and knows that for the rest of his life 
 he has got into tolerable quarteis, it is delightful to see 
 how he expands in the sunshine of prosperity, and be- 
 comes almost frisky without ever losing his formidable 
 power of hitting hard on provocation, a power born in 
 him and developed in a life of war and wild adventure. 
 In whatever heaven the characters of novelists may attain 
 unto, one hopes that Lismahago and Lieutenant Thomas 
 Bowling may have met and discussed the fortunes of life 
 together. 
 
 The background of " Humphrey Clinker" differs from 
 the background of " Roderick Random" as the characters 
 of the last of Smollett's novels do from those of the first. 
 Bath and London are drawn again, but in quite another 
 spirit. The testy comments of Matthew Bramble are 
 themselves modified by the goodness of heart of the 
 man himself. Then alongside of his pictures, there are 
 always the views of Jerry Melford or even of Winifred 
 Jenkins. The old man is bitter and disappointed, but 
 they in their several ways are full of youth and enjoy- 
 ment. They can revel heartily where he sees nothing but 
 the crush, and professes to feel nothing but the hot air, 
 and even less pleasant things which affect his nerves 
 and his nose. Perhaps the most striking contrast between 
 the beginning and the end of Smollett's work is to be
 
 SMOLLETT. 157 
 
 traced between the Scotch scenes of "Roderick Random" 
 and those of "Humphrey Clinker." Roderick seems 
 only too happy to shake the dust of Scotland off his feet, 
 and when he comes back to it, it is only to triumph and 
 insult. In "Humphrey Clinker" Smollett dwells with a 
 longing affection on the country of his fathers. He 
 makes the amende honorable to the house at Bonhill 
 for the pictures of the old judge and the young Acta:on. 
 Smollett had too good an eye for what was ridiculous, 
 and still more for what was offensive, to spare his 
 countrymen some wholesome ridicule where he thought 
 it good for them. Swift himself could not have com- 
 mented on certain unsanitary practices of the worthy 
 people of Edinburgh in a more outspoken manner than 
 Smollett. But these are only the wholesome corrections 
 of a friend, and therefore, all the more Hkely to be 
 effective. If servants in Edinburgh have not of later 
 years been subjected to the inconveniences on which 
 Winifred Jenkins commented, Smollett must have some 
 of the credit. Even the rather sudden increase in the 
 prevailing kindliness of the book which follows Matthew 
 Bramble's entry into Scotland, is touching. Doctor 
 Johnson himself would surely have pardoned a Scotch- 
 man for praise of Scotland written in disease and exile. 
 
 "Humphrey Clinker" appeared in time to shed some 
 consolation on Smollett's deathbed. He was visited at 
 Leghorn by his friend Doctor Armstrong, and he received 
 some offices of courtesy from Sir Horace Mann; but 
 disease must have confined him to his house, and have 
 shut him off from society, even more completely than 
 his multifarious occupations had done in London. The
 
 153 LIFE OF 
 
 weakness in his chest and the scorbutic illness of which 
 he has himself given such ample details, wore him 
 rapidly down. He met his death, as became him, with 
 perfect courage and even a certain grim jocularity. Not 
 long before the end came, he wrote to his friend and 
 countryman the famous John Hunter, " With respect 
 to myself I have nothing to say but that, if I can 
 prevail upon my wife to execute my last will, you shall 
 receive my poor carcase in a box after I am dead to be 
 placed among your rarities. I am already so dry and 
 emaciated, that I may pass for an Egyptian mummy, 
 without any other preparation than some pitch and 
 painted linen." There is some doubt as to the exact 
 date of his death, but it must have happened sometime 
 in September in 177 1. He was only fifty-one years of 
 age. Like Fielding, he died comparatively young, and 
 lies buried in a foreign country. His grave is in the 
 old English cemetery at Leghorn, with the Mediterranean 
 to the west of him, as the ocean lies to the west of 
 Fielding at Oporto. 
 
 Two years after Smollett's death Professor Richardson, 
 who had been his friend, published at Glasgow the " Ode 
 to Independence," which was his only posthumous work, 
 unless the "prophetic passages," supposed to be extracted 
 from a letter written a few months before his death to 
 
 the Rev. Dr. of in Northumberland, and 
 
 pubhshed in 1795 in a "Dissertation on the Existence, 
 Nature, and Extent of the Prophetic Powers in the 
 Human Mind," are to be counted as genuine. Con- 
 sidering, however, that these passages predict the French 
 Revolution with considerable accuracy, they may safely
 
 SMOLLETT. 159 
 
 be classed v.iih the more famous, and incomparably 
 superior " Prophecy of Cazotte." The Ode may be read 
 because it is the work of the creator of Lieutenants Bowl- 
 ing and Lismahago. It is the production of a vigorous 
 u-orkman, and if it is not poetry, at least Smollett was very 
 much in earnest when he sang the offspring of Liberty and 
 Disdain. 
 
 Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have 
 inherited the estate of Bonhill, which passed, on the 
 death of his cousin James, to the children of his sister, 
 Mrs. Telfer, who carried on the family name. It is a 
 melancholy pendant to the history of Smollett's life, that 
 his widow, who survived him for many years, was left in 
 great poverty at Leghorn. The family of Bonhill appear 
 to have done nothing for her. The estate in Jamaica 
 had either been frittered away, or had ceased for some 
 unknown reason to be productive. In 17S3, Mr. Gra- 
 ham of Gartmore, and other admirers of her husband's, 
 raised some money for her by a theatrical performance. 
 The date of her death is unknown, but it is only too cer- 
 tain that the lady who was the original of Narcissa was 
 reduced to subsist at last on the charity of strangers. 
 
 I have endeavoured to point out the literary quality 
 of Smollett's work in the course of this book. To go 
 back upon it now could only lead to repetition. Still in 
 taking leave of one's man there is some profit in trying 
 to place him — to use a convenient phrase. I cannot feel 
 enough of the proper biographer's enthusiasm to profess a 
 belief that I have been dealing — however inadequately — 
 with one of the very great names of literature. It would 
 not, I think, be possible to show that any great living force
 
 102 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 G. 
 
 Garrick, 22, 23 ; pacifies Smollett, 
 
 144. 145 
 Gordon, John, Smollett's master 
 
 in Glasgow, 15, 18 
 Gordon, Peter, beaten by Smollett, 
 
 122-124 
 Graham of Gartmore, Mr., 159 
 Grainger, his Tibullus, 127 
 
 H. 
 
 Hatchway, Jack, 107 
 Hipsy, how made, 99 
 " History of England," 125, 136- 
 
 138 
 Hoseander, East Indiaman, 105 
 "Humphrey Clinker," 152, 153, 
 
 154. 155. 156, 157 
 
 J- 
 
 Jenkins, Winifred, see " Hum- 
 phrey Clinker " 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 113 ; his opinion of 
 The Critical RevicLi), i^-z 
 
 K. 
 
 King's Bench Prison, Smollett in, 
 133 
 
 "Lady of Quality," 86-87 
 Lascelles, Anne, see Smollett, 
 
 Mrs. 
 " Legend, Ben," Congreve's, 94 
 Leghorn, Smollett's death at, 158 
 Lismahago, see " Humplu-ey 
 
 Clinker '' 
 Lockhart's "Life of Scott," re- 
 ferred to, 119 
 "Log-rolling," not unknown in 
 eighteenth century, 145 
 
 Lxttelton, Lord, patronage of 
 Smollett, 22, 23 
 
 M. 
 
 M , Mr., see Mackercher, 
 
 Daniel 
 Mackercher, Daniel, 124 
 Mackshane, Surgeon, 103, 107 
 Marryat, Captain, 96 
 Melford, Jerry, see " Humphrey 
 
 Clinker " 
 Melford, Lydia, see " Humphrey 
 
 Clinker " 
 " Modern Universal History," 13B 
 Monmouth House, 112 ; see 
 
 Smollett, T. G. 
 Moore, Dr. John, quoted, 19 
 
 N. 
 Navy, State of, in Smollett's time, 
 
 29-3 1 
 Novels, Smollett's general 
 
 character of, 59-67 
 
 O. 
 
 Oakum, Captain, loi 
 
 "Ode to Independence," 158 
 
 P. 
 
 " Peregrine Pickle," 85-89 
 Physician, The, 84, 85 
 Pipes, boatswain's mate, 107, no 
 Prophecy, Smollett's imaginary, 
 158 
 
 R. 
 
 " Regicide, Tlie," a Tragedy, 23- 
 
 27 
 " Reprisal, The," 144 
 " Reproof, a Satire," 49-51 
 Rich, Manager, 52 
 " Roderick Random,'" analysis 
 
 and criticism of, 59-82
 
 INDEX. 
 
 1G3 
 
 S. 
 
 S , Dr., dedication of " Hum- 
 phrey Clinker" to, 114; sec 
 Smollett, T. G. 
 
 Sailor in Literature, 93, 94, 95, 
 96 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 132 ; opinion 
 of " Humphrey Clinker," 152 
 
 Siielvocke, Captain George, 99, 
 103 
 
 "Sir Launcelot Greaves," 143, 
 
 144 
 Smollett, Archibald, father of 
 
 novelist, 13 
 Smollett, James, novelist's brother, 
 
 15 
 
 Smolletts of Bonhill, family of, 11 
 
 Smollett, Mrs., 41, 159 ; her pro- 
 perty in Jamaica, 135 
 
 Smollett, Sir James, novelist's 
 grandfather, 11, 12, 13 
 
 Smollett, Tobias George, birth, 
 II ; parentage, 13 ; at Glasgow, 
 15 ; leaves for London, 16 ; 
 anecdote of, 19 ; comes to 
 London, 21 ; his tragedy {jee 
 " Regicide ") ; enters navy as 
 surgeon's mate, 29 ; account of 
 attack on Carthagena, 35 ; in 
 Jamaica, 40 ; marriage, 41 ; 
 returns to London, 42 ; tries to 
 get medical practice in Downing 
 Street, 42 ; attitude during Jaco- 
 bite rebellion, 43, 44, 45, 46 ; 
 writes "Tears of Scotland,'' 
 48 ; "Satires," 49 ; quarrel with 
 Rich, 52 ; '' Roderick Random," 
 " Peregrine Pickle," and "Fer- 
 dinand Count Fathom," pub- 
 lished, 59 ; imitates Le Sage, 
 60; his aim in writing, 62- 
 
 65 ; visit to Paris, 82 ; obtains 
 degree of M.D. from Aberdeen, 
 III ; settled in London, 112 ; 
 house at Chelsea, 112 ; charac- 
 ter of himself, 114, 115 ; picture 
 of his surroundings, 116-119 ; 
 quarrel with Peter Gordon, 122 ; 
 letter to Mr. Hume Campbell, 
 123 ; his hack work, 125 ; visit 
 to Scotland, 126 ; quarrel with 
 Admiral Knowles, and its con- 
 sequences, 128-133 ; money 
 matters, 134, 135 ; reconciled to 
 Garrick, 145 ; goes to Italy, 
 148; edits T/ie Brifon, 146-148 ; 
 return home, 150 ; publishes 
 "Travels," 150; "Adventures 
 of an Atom," 150-151 ; visit to 
 Scotland, 151 ; applies for con- 
 sulate, 151 ; leaves England for 
 last time, 152 ; writes "Hum- 
 phrey Clinker " at Leghorn, 
 153 ; his death, 158 ; his place 
 in literature, 159-160 
 
 T. 
 
 "Tears of Scotland," poi-m, 46, 
 
 47. 48, 49 
 Telfer, Mrs., 159 
 Thunder, H.M.S., 97, 98 
 Translations, Smollett's, 138-141 
 "Travels in France and Italy," 
 
 149 
 Trunnion, Commodore Hawser, 
 
 107-110 
 
 V. 
 
 Vane, Lady, j-tr " Lady of Quality" 
 Voltaire, Translation of, 125 
 
 W. 
 Walton, Captain, his famou* 
 despatch, 106
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 I. Works. 
 II. Poetical Works. 
 
 III. Selections. 
 
 IV. Single Works. 
 v. Translations. 
 
 VI. Miscellaneous. 
 
 VII. Appendix — 
 
 Biogivapliy, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles. 
 
 VIII. Chronological List of 
 Works. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Miscellanrous Works of Tobias 
 Smollett. With a short aceouut 
 of the author [and frontispieces 
 by Rowlandson]. 6 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1790, 8vo. 
 
 Reprinted with the same plates, 
 Edinljurgh, 1S09, in 5 vols., Svo. 
 
 The Miscellaneous Works of 
 T. S., with jMemoirs of his Life 
 and Writings, by R. Anderson. 
 6 vols. London, 1796, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 6 vols. 
 
 1806, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 6 vols. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1811, Svo. 
 -Fifth edition, with j'ortrait of 
 
 Smollett. 6 vols. Edinburgh, 
 1817, Svo. 
 
 The Miscellaneous Works of T. S. 
 Sixtli edition. 6 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1&20, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 12 vols. 
 
 London, 1824, 12mo, 
 
 The Works of T. S., with memoirs 
 of his life, to which is prefixed 
 a view of the commencement 
 and progress of romance, by J. 
 Moore. S vols. London, 1797, 
 Svo. 
 
 Another edition, edited by 
 
 J. P. Browne. S vols. London, 
 1S72, Svo. 
 
 The Miscellaneous Works of 
 T. S., complete in one volume, 
 witli memoir of the author, by 
 Tliomus Koscoe. London, 1841, 
 Svo.
 
 11 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Miscellaneous Works of T. S. 
 Another edition, illustrated 
 by George Cruikshank. Lon- 
 don, 18-15, Svo. 
 
 The Works of T. S., carefully 
 selected and edited from the 
 best authorities, with numer- 
 ous original historical notes and 
 a life of the author, by David 
 Herbert. Edinburgh, 1870 
 [lS6f»], Svo. 
 
 II. POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 The Poetical Work of Tobias 
 Smollett, to which is prefixed 
 the life of the author {Ander- 
 son's Poets of Great Britain, 
 vol, X.). Edinburgh, 1794, 8vo. 
 
 The Poetical Works of T. S., 
 collated with the best editions, 
 by Thomas Park ( Works of the 
 British Poets, vol. xli. ). Lon- 
 don, 1808, 16mo. 
 
 The Poems of T. S., with a life by 
 Jlr. Chalmers ( Works of the Eng- 
 lish Poets, vol. XV.). London, 
 1810, Svo. 
 
 Select Poems of T. S., with a life 
 of the Author ( Works of the 
 PritishPoets, vol. xxxiii). Bos- 
 ton [U.S.], 1822, 12mo. 
 
 The Poems of T. S. The life by 
 S. W. Singer {British Poets, vol. 
 Ixvi). Chiswick, 1822, 12ino. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Oliver 
 Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, etc. 
 Illustrated by John Gilbert. 
 (Routledgc's British Poets.) Lon- 
 don, 1853, Svo. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Johnson, 
 Parnell, Gray, and Smollett. 
 With memoirs, critical disserta- 
 tions, and explanatory notes, by 
 the Rev. George Gilfillan. Edin- 
 burgh, 1855, Svo. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Johnson, 
 Parnell, Gray, and Smollett. 
 Another edition. Tiie text 
 edited by C. C. Clarke. Lon- 
 don [1878], Svo. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Oliver 
 Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, 
 Samuel Johnson, and William 
 Shenstone, with biographical 
 notices and notes. London 
 [1881], Svo. 
 
 IIL SELECTIONS. 
 
 The Beauties of tlio Magazines, 
 consisting of essays, moral 
 tales, etc., by Colman, Gold- 
 smith, Murpliy, Smollett, etc. 
 2 vols. London, 1772, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1775, Svo. 
 
 Plays and Poems written by T. 
 
 5., with memoirs of the life and 
 writings of the autlior. Lon- 
 don, 1777, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 1784, Svo. 
 
 The Novels of Tobias Smollett, to 
 which is prefixed, a memoir of 
 the life of the author, by Sir 
 Walter Scott. {Novelists' Li- 
 brary, vols, ii.i iii.) 2 vols. 
 London, 1821, Svo. 
 
 Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, 
 and Goldsmith, in a series of 
 forty-one plates, designed and 
 engraved by George Cruikshank. 
 Accompanied by descriptive ex- 
 tracts. London, 1832, Svo. 
 
 Tlie Beauties of Smollett, consist- 
 ing of selections from his prose 
 and poetry, by A. Howard. 
 London [1834], 12mo. 
 
 lY. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 Advice ; a Satire [in verse, by T. 
 
 5.1. London, 1746, fol.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Reproof ; a Satire [in verse]. The 
 Sequel to Advice. London, 
 1747, fol. 
 
 Advice and Eeproof ; two Satires 
 first published in tlie year 1746 
 and 1747. London, 1748, 4to. 
 
 Another edition {British Satir- 
 
 M). Glasgow, 1826, 12mo. 
 
 The Adventures of Roderick Ran- 
 dom. 2 vols. London, 1748, 
 12mo. 
 
 Third edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1750, 12mo. 
 
 Seventh edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1766, 12mo. 
 
 — Eightii edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1770, 12ino. 
 
 — Tenth edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1778, 8vo. 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1780, 12mo. 
 — Twelfth edition. 2 vols. Lou- 
 
 don, 1784, 8vo. 
 
 — Anotlier edition, abridged by 
 R. Lewis. Dublin, 1791, 12mo. 
 
 — Another edition, with the 
 life of the author. 2 vols. 
 London [1793], 12mo. 
 
 Vols. viii. and ix. of a series en- 
 titled "Cooke's edition of Select 
 British Novels." 
 
 — Anotlier edition ( Walker'' s 
 Classics). London, 1815, 24mo. 
 
 — Another edition, with illus- 
 trations by George Cruikshank. 
 (Roscoe's novelist's Librarij, 
 vol. ii. ) London, 1831, 12rno. 
 
 — Another edition. (Tauchnitz 
 
 Collection of British Antlwrs, 
 vol. Ixxxviii.) Leijizig, 1845, 
 lomo. 
 
 -Another edition. With a me- 
 moir of the author [by G. H. T. 
 — i.e., G. H. Townsend], Lon- 
 don, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition, illustrated 
 
 by George Cruikshank. Lon- 
 don, 1836, 12mo. 
 
 The Adventures of Roderick Ran- 
 dom. Another edition. Loudon 
 [1S67], 8vo. 
 
 One of a series, entitled "Rout- 
 ledge's Railway Library." 
 
 The Regicide: or, James the First 
 of Scotland. A Tragedy, by 
 the autlior of Roderick Random. 
 London, 1749, 8vo. 
 
 The Adventures of Peregrine 
 Pickle. Li which are included, 
 Memoirs of a Lady of Quality. 
 4 vols. London, 1751, 12ino. 
 
 Second edition. London, 
 
 1751, 12mo. 
 
 Third edition. 4 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1765, 12mo. 
 
 Fourth edition. 4 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1769, 12mo. 
 — Fifth edition. 4 vols. 
 
 don, 1773, 12mo. 
 — Another edition. 4 
 
 Lon- 
 
 vols. 
 London, 1781, 8vo. 
 
 The pagination is continuous 
 throughout the 4 vols. 
 — Seventh edition. 4 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1784, 12mo. 
 
 — Cooke's edition. 4 vols. Lon- 
 don [1794], 12mo. 
 
 One of a .series entitled " Cooke's 
 edition of Select British Novels." 
 
 — Another edition. With plates 
 by Rowlandson. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1805, 8vo. 
 
 Anotlier edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1815, 12mo. 
 
 l''.ach volume has an engraved 
 title-page and frontispiece. 'J'liis 
 foiTOs part of " Walker's Briti-sli 
 Classics." 
 
 — Another edition, with illus- 
 
 trations by George Cruikshank. 
 (Roscoe's Novelist's Library, 
 vols, iii., iv. ) 2 vols. London, 
 1831, 12mo. 
 
 — Another edition. With illus- 
 trations by Piiiz. London, 1857, 
 Svo.
 
 ly 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Adventures of Pctegrino 
 Pickle. Another edition. 2 vols. 
 London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 One of " Routleilge's Sixpenny 
 Xovels." 
 
 Another edition, London, 
 
 1882, Svo. 
 
 E.-isay on the external use of Water, 
 with particular remarks on the 
 mineral waters of Bath. Lon- 
 don, 1752, 4to. 
 
 A Faithful Narrative of the base 
 and inhuman arts that were 
 lately practised upon the brain 
 of Habbakkuk Hilding [i.e., 
 Henry Fielding], J ustiee, Dealer, 
 and Chapman. By Drawcansir 
 Alexander [i.e. Tobias Smollett]. 
 London, 1752, Svo. 
 
 Tiie Adventures of Ferdinand, 
 Count Fathom. [By T. S.] 
 2 vols. London, 1753, 12mo. 
 
 ^Second edition. 2 vol 
 
 lion, 1771, 12:no. 
 — Another edition. 2vols. 
 
 don, 1780, 12mo. 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 don, 1782, Svo. 
 The pagination is 
 
 tlivoughout the 2 vols. 
 — -Another edition. 
 
 Lon- 
 Lon- 
 Lon- 
 
 continuous 
 
 London 
 [1795], 12mo. 
 
 One of a series, entitled " Cooke's 
 edition of Select British Novels." 
 
 A Compendium of Authentic and 
 Entertaining Voyages digested 
 in a Chronological Series, etc. 
 [Edited by T. Smollett.] 7 vols. 
 London, 1756, 12mo. 
 
 Second edition. 7 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1766, 12mo. 
 
 The Reprisal : or, the Tars of Old 
 England. A Comedy [by T. S.] 
 of two acts, as performed at the 
 Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. 
 London, 1757, Svo. 
 
 A Compleat History of I'mgland, 
 deduced from the descent of 
 
 Julius Ciesar to the Treaty of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, 17-18, contain- 
 ing the transactions of one 
 thousand ei^^ht liundred and 
 three years. 4 vols. London, 
 1757-58, 4to. 
 
 Second edition. 11 vols. 
 
 London, 1753-60, Svo. 
 
 Continuation of the Complete 
 
 History of England. 5 vols. 
 London, 1763-65, Svo. 
 
 The History of England from 
 
 the Revolution to the death of 
 George the Second. (Designed 
 as a continuation of Mr. Hume's 
 History.) A new edition. 5 vols. 
 London, 1789, Svo. 
 
 Numerous subsequent editions. 
 
 The Adventures of Sir Launcelot 
 Greaves, by the author of 
 Roderick Random. 2 vols. 
 London, 1762, 12mo. 
 
 Originally appeared in the British 
 Marpiziwi for 1760-61, when the 
 author was in prison for a liljel in 
 the Critical Review on Admiral 
 Kuowles. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1774, 12ino. 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1780, 12mo. 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1782, Svo. 
 
 The pagination is continuous 
 throughout the 2 vols. 
 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 London, 1783, r2mo. 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1793, 12mo. 
 — Another edition. London, 
 ISIO, 24mo. 
 
 There is also an engraved title- 
 page dated 1803. 
 
 — Another edition, with illustra- 
 
 tions by George Cruikshank. 
 (Roscoe's Novelist's Library, vol. 
 X.) London, 1S32, r2mo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Present State of all Nations. 
 Containing a geographical, 
 natural, commercial, and 
 political history of all the coun- 
 tries in the known world. 
 8 vols. London, 1764, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 8 vols. 
 
 London, 1768-9, Svo. 
 
 Travels through France and Ital}', 
 etc. 2 vols. London, 1766, 
 Svo. 
 
 The British Museum possesses a 
 copy with MS. notes by the author. 
 
 Second edition. 2 vols. Dub- 
 lin, 1772, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1778, 12mo. 
 
 The History and Adventures of an 
 Atom. By Nathaniel Peacock 
 [t.e., Tobias Smollett]. 2 vols. 
 London, 1749 [1769], 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1769, 12mo. 
 
 Tenth edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1778, 12ino. 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1784, 12mo. 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1786, Svo. 
 
 The pagination is continuous 
 throimhout tlie 2 vols. 
 
 The E.xpedition of Humphry 
 Clinker, by the author of 
 Roderick Random. 3 vols. 
 London, 1671 [1771], 12mo. 
 
 Second edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1772, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1788, 12mo. 
 
 — Fourth edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1792, 12mo. 
 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 London [1794], 12mo. 
 
 One of a series, entitled " Cooke's 
 edition of Select British Novels." 
 
 — Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 The Fxpedition of Humphry 
 Clinker. Anothereditiou. Lon- 
 don, ISOS, 12mo. 
 
 With a second and engraved title- 
 page. 
 
 Another eilition. {BiUish 
 
 Novelists, vols, xx.k., xxxi.) 2 
 vols. London, 1810, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. Loudon. 
 
 1815, 24mo. 
 
 Another edition. With illus- 
 
 trations by George Cruikshank. 
 (Hoscoe's Novelist's Library, 
 vol. 1.) London, 1831, 12mo. 
 
 — Another edition. ( Tauchnitz 
 Collection, vol. xcii.) Leipzig, 
 1846, 16mo. 
 
 — Another edition. With illus- 
 trations by Phiz [i.e., H. K. 
 Browne]. London, 1807, Svo. 
 
 — Another edition. London, 
 
 1882, Svo. 
 Ode to Independence, 
 and observations. 
 
 1773, 4to. 
 
 Another edition. 
 
 1774, 4to. 
 Another edition. 
 
 [1500], 12mo. 
 
 With notes 
 Gla.sgow, 
 
 London, 
 
 Glasgow 
 
 y. TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 The Adventures of Gil Bias of 
 Santillane. A new translation 
 [by T. S.] from the best French 
 edition. 4 vols. London, 1749, 
 12uio. 
 
 Another edition. 
 
 London, 1750, 12nio. 
 Another edition. 
 
 London, 1761, 12mo. 
 Fourth edition. 
 
 London, 1805, Svo. 
 
 4 vols. 
 4 vols. 
 
 London, 
 
 1773, 12mo. 
 
 Other editions :— London, 1780, 
 241110, in 8 vols. ; I.oiuloii, IVSl. 
 l-iiiio, in 4 vols. ; Dublin, :7Sf>, 
 12nio, in i vols. ; London, lTi^O, 
 12I110, in 4 vols. ; Loiuloii, 1792, in 
 4 vols.; London [17'J3], 12iuo, in 4 
 vols. ; London, 17U7, \i\w, in t
 
 VI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 vols. ; London, 1818, 12mo, in 2 
 vols. ; London, 1819, 8vo, in 3 vols. ; 
 London, 1826, 12mo, in 4 vols. ; 
 London, 1836, 8vo, in 2 vols., illus- 
 trated by Gigoux ; London, 1835, 
 Svo, edited by T. Roscoe, illus- 
 trated by G. Cruikshank ; London, 
 1841, 8vo, illustrated; London, 
 1866, 8vo ; London, 1881, 8vo, in 
 3 vols., preceded by a biographical 
 and critical notice of Lesage, by 
 George Saintsbury, with twelve 
 original etchings by B. de Los Rios. 
 
 The History and Adventures of 
 the renowned Don Quixote. 
 Translated from the Spanish of 
 M. de Cervantes Saavedra. To 
 which is prefixed an account of 
 the autlior's life. By T. S. 
 [Illustrated with twenty-eight 
 plates desirjned by Hayman.] 
 2 vols. London, 1755, 4to. 
 
 Second edition. 4 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1761, 8vo. 
 — Fifth edition. 
 
 don, 1782, 12nio, 
 — Sixth edition. 
 
 4 vols. Lon- 
 
 4 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1792, V2mo. 
 — Sixth edition corrected. 4 
 
 vols. London, 1793, 12nio. 
 — Another edition. 4 vols. 
 
 Dublin, 1796, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. 5 vols. 
 
 London [1799], 12mo. 
 
 Another edition, abridged 
 
 [from Smollett's translation]. 
 Halifax, 1839, 16mo. 
 
 The Works of M. de Voltaire. 
 Translated from the French. 
 With notes, historical and 
 critical. [With portraits and 
 frontispieces.] By Dr. Smollet 
 and others. 33 vols. London, 
 1761-1774, 12mo. 
 
 All the volumes, with the excep- 
 tion of the first, bear the name of 
 Dr. T. Francklin in addition to that 
 of Dr. Smollett on the title-page. 
 
 A new edition. London, 
 
 1778, etc., 12mo. 
 
 The Adventures of Telemachus, 
 the son of Ulysse.s. Translated 
 from the French by T. S. 
 2 vols. London, 1776, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Dublin, 1793, r2mo. 
 
 YL MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 The Modvrn Part of an Universal 
 History, from the earliest 
 account of Time. Compiled 
 from original writers by the 
 authors of the Ancient Part. 
 44 vols. London, 1759-66, 8vo. 
 Smollett assisted in the compila- 
 tion of this work, and is supposed, 
 among other articles, to have con- 
 tributed the HUtoriei of Fran:e, 
 Itahi, and Germiinj. 
 
 The Tears of Scotland. Written 
 in the year 1746. 
 
 This Ode was first printed without 
 the author's name in " A Collection 
 of the most esteemed Pieces of 
 Poetry that have appeared for 
 several years : with variety of 
 originals, by the late Moses 
 Mendez." London, 1767, 12mo. 
 
 The Critical Review ; or, Annals 
 of Literature. By a Societv of 
 Gentlemen. [Edited by " T. 
 Smollett.] London, 1756, etc., 
 8vo. 
 
 The British Magazine, or Monthly 
 Repository for Gentlemen and 
 Ladies. [Eilited by T. Smollett, 
 assisted by Oliver Goldsmith.] 
 8 vols. London [1760-67], 
 8vo. 
 
 The Briton. [Edited by T. S.] 
 London (1762-63), fol. 
 
 Vn. APPENDIX. 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 
 Anderson, Robert. — The Life of 
 
 Tobias Smollett, with critical 
 
 observations on his works. 
 London, 1796, 8vo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Vll 
 
 Aiulerson, Kohert. — The Life of 
 Tobias Smollett. Second edi- 
 tion. Edinburgh, 1800, 8vo. 
 
 Fourth edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1803, Svo. 
 — Fifth edition. 
 
 Edinburgh, 
 ISOd, Svo, 
 
 Anderson, William. — The Scot- 
 tish Nation : or, the surnames, 
 families, literature, honours, and 
 biographical history of the ]ieo- 
 ple of Scotland. 3 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1863, Svo. 
 
 Tobias Smollett, with portrait, 
 vol. iii., pp. 483-485. 
 
 British Plutarch.— The British 
 Plutarch, containing the Lives 
 of the most eminent Statesmen, 
 etc. Third edition. 8 vols. 
 London, 1791, Svo. 
 
 Life of Dr. Tobias Smollett, vol. 
 viii., pp. 117-128. 
 
 Carlyle, Rev. Dr. Alexander. — 
 Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. 
 A. Carlyle. Edinburgh, 1860, 
 Svo. 
 
 References to T. S. in chaps, iv., 
 vii., and ix. 
 
 Gary, Henry Francis. — Lives of 
 the English Poets from Johnson 
 to Kirke White. London, 
 1846, Svo. 
 Tobias Smollett, pp. 119-146. 
 
 Cervantes Saavedra, M. de. — 
 Remarks on the proposals lately 
 published [by T. S.] for a new 
 translation of Don Quixote, etc. 
 London, 1755, Svo. 
 
 Chamber.s, Robert. — Favourite 
 Authors. Smollett : his life 
 and a selection from his writ- 
 ings. London, 1S67, Svo. 
 
 A Biographical Dictionary of 
 
 eminent Scotsmen. New edi- 
 tion, revised by the Rev. T, 
 Thomson. London, 1870, Svo. 
 Tobias Smollett, vol. iii., pp, 380- 
 38.5. 
 
 Chambers Robert — Traditions of 
 Edinburgh. New edition. Lon- 
 don, 1869, Svo. 
 
 SmoUett's visit to Edinburgh, p. 
 323. 
 
 Comber, Thomas. — A Vindication 
 of the Great Revolution in 
 England in 1688 . . . with 
 a confutation of the character of 
 King James the Second, as 
 misrepresented by the author 
 [Dr. S.] of the complete history 
 of England. London, 1758, 
 Svo. 
 
 Davis, William. — A Second 
 Journej' round the Library of a 
 Bibliomaniac, etc. London, 
 1825, Svo. 
 
 Key to Smollett's History and 
 Adventures of an Atom, pp. 115-118. 
 
 Dibdin, Thomas. — Humphry 
 Clinker : a farce, in two acts, 
 by T. D. London, [1828], 
 12mo. 
 
 In vol. iv. of Cumberland's Minor 
 Theatre. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. — Ency- 
 clopcedia Britannica. Ninth 
 edition. Edinburgh, 1887, 
 4 to. 
 
 T, Smollett, by Professor Jlinto, 
 vol. xxii., pp. 183-185. 
 
 Forster, John. — The Life and 
 Times of Oliver Goldsmith. 
 Second edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1854, Svo. 
 References to T. S. 
 
 Forsyth, William. — The Novels 
 and Novelists of tlie Eighteenth 
 Century, etc. London, 1871, 
 Svo. 
 Smollett, pp. 278-303. 
 
 Frail, Lady. — A Parallel between 
 the Characters of Lady Frail and 
 the Lady of Quality in Pere- 
 grine Pickle. In which the 
 lacts alleiiged in both are stated 
 and compared, the character of 
 the licroiue set in a true light ;
 
 Vlll 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the several othei' characters ex- 
 amined, etc. Loiulon, 1751, 8vo. 
 Frail, Lady. — An apolo|T;y for the 
 conduct of a Lady of Quality [i.e., 
 Anne, Viscountess Vane] lately 
 traduc'd under the name of 
 Lady Frail ; wherein her case 
 is fairly stated. In a letter 
 from a person of honour, etc. 
 London, 1751, 8vo. 
 
 Grainger, J. — A letter to Tobias 
 Smollett, occasioned by his 
 criticism upon a late transla- 
 tion of TibuUus. London, 
 1759, 8vo. 
 
 Grant, James. — Cassell's Old and 
 New Edinburgh. 3 vols. Lou- 
 don, 1882, 4to. 
 References to Smollett. 
 
 Hazlitt, William. — Lectures on 
 the English Comic Writers. 
 London, 1819, 8vo. 
 T. Smollett, pp. 229-233. 
 
 Henderson, Andrew. — A second 
 letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson 
 . . . with an impartial character 
 of Doctor Smollet, etc. Lon- 
 don [1775], 8vo. 
 
 Hill, J. —The History of a Woman 
 of Quality ; or, the Adventures 
 of Lady Frail [i.e., Anne, Vis- 
 countess Vane]. By an im- 
 partial hand [J. Hill]. Lou- 
 don, 1751, 12mo. 
 
 Hillard, George Stillman. — Six 
 Months in Italy. 2 vols. Lou- 
 don, 1853, 8vo. 
 Smollett, vol. ii., pp. 295-208. 
 
 Hutton, Laurence. — Literary 
 Landmarks of London. London 
 [1885], 8vo. 
 Tobias Smollett, pp. 280-2S2. 
 
 Irving J. — Some account of the 
 Family of Smollett of Bonhill ; 
 with a series of letters hitlierto 
 unpublished, written by Dr. 
 Tobias Smollett. Dumbarton, 
 1859, 4to. 
 
 Irving, J. — The Book of Dumbar- 
 tonshire : a history of the 
 county, burghs, parishes, and 
 lands, memoirs of families, and 
 notices of industries carried on 
 in the Lennox District. 3 vols. 
 Edinburgh, 1879 4to. 
 
 Family of Smollett of Bonhill, 
 vol. ii., pp. 175-208. 
 
 Jcaffreson, J. Cordy. — Novels 
 and Novelists from Elizabeth to 
 Victoria. 2 vols. London, 
 1858, 8vo. 
 T. Smollett, vol. i., pp, 148-179. 
 
 Masson, David. — British Novelists 
 and their styles ; being a 
 critical sketch of the history of 
 British prose fiction. Gam- 
 bridge, 1859, 8vo. 
 
 Smollett, pp. 104-107; Fielding 
 and Smollett, pp. 128-145. 
 
 Montagu, Lady M. W. — The 
 Letters and Works of Lady M. 
 W. Montagu. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 References to T. S. 
 Nichols, John. — Literary Anec- 
 dotes of the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, etc. 9 vols. London, 
 1812-1815, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to T. S. 
 
 Nicoll, Henry J. — Landmarks of 
 English Literature. London, 
 1883, 8vo. 
 T. Smollett, pp. 222-228. 
 
 Notes and Queries. — General 
 
 Index to Notes and Queries. 
 
 Five series. London, 1856- 
 
 1880, 4to. 
 Numerous references to T. S. 
 
 Prophecies. — Wonderful Prophe- 
 cies ; being a dissertation on 
 the existence, nature, and 
 extent of the prophetic powers 
 in the human mind ; and a re- 
 markable prophecy of Dr. 
 Smollett, just before his death, 
 etc. London, 1795, 8vo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IX 
 
 Reetl, Joseph. — A Sop in the Fan 
 for a physical ciitick ; in a 
 letter to Dr. Sm*n*t [/.«., Tobias 
 
 occasioned 
 
 !'y 
 
 occasion'd by a 
 
 on a late Mock- 
 
 call'd Madrigal and 
 
 By a Halter-maker 
 
 Reed]. London, 
 
 Smollett] 
 criticism 
 Tragi'dv, 
 TruUetta. 
 [i.e., Joseph 
 1759, Svo. 
 Scott, Sir Walter.— A Memoir of 
 the life of Tobias Smollett. 
 (Prefixed to the Novels of T. S. 
 in the isovelist's Library, vols. 
 ii. and iii.) London, 1S21, Svo. 
 Sliebbeaie, Dr. John.— The Occa- 
 sional Critic ; or, the decrees of 
 the Scotch tribunal in the 
 Critical Review rejudged. [By 
 Dr. J. Shebbeare.] [London, 
 ]757], Svo. 
 Taine, H. A. — Histoire de la 
 Litterature Anglaise. 4 tom. 
 Paris, 1863-64,'Svo. 
 
 Smollett, tom. iii., pp. 318-324. 
 
 History of English Literature. 
 
 Translated by H. van Laun. 
 New edition. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1873-74, Svo. 
 
 Smollett, vol. iii., pp. 300-306. 
 Thackeraj', W. M.— The English 
 Humourists of the Eighteenth 
 Centurj'. Second edition. 
 Lon<lon, 1S53, Svo. 
 
 Hoparth, Smollett, and Fielding, 
 pp. 21'.J-268. 
 Tuckerman, Bayard. — A History 
 of English Prose Fiction from 
 Sir Thomas Malory to George 
 Eliot. New York, 1882, Svo. 
 SmoUett, pp. 211-217. 
 Tytler, A. F., Lord Wood- 
 houselee. — Essay on the princi- 
 ples of Translation. Third 
 edition. Edinburgh, 1S13, Svo. 
 
 Comparison of the translation of 
 
 Don Quixote by Motteux with that 
 
 bv Smollett, pp. 281-319. 
 
 Vane, Lady.— A letter to the 
 
 Right Honourable the Lady 
 
 the publication of her Memoirs 
 in the " Adventures of Peregrine 
 Pickle." London, 1751, Svo. 
 
 Wershoven, F. J. — Smollett et 
 Lesage. Berlin, 1SS3, Svo. 
 
 Wilkes, John. — The Correspon- 
 dence of John Wilkes. 5 vols. 
 London. 1805, 12mo. 
 
 Letters of Dr. Smollett to Mr. 
 Wilkes, vol. i., pp. 49-51. 
 
 Wilson, Daniel, — Memorials of 
 Edinburgh in the Olden Time. 
 Edinburgh, 1872, 4to. 
 References to Smollett. 
 
 Reminiscences of Old Edin- 
 burgh. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 
 1878, Svo. 
 
 References to Smollett. 
 
 iL\RAzi3S!E Articles. 
 
 Tobias George Smollett. — Quar- 
 terly Review, vol. 103, 1S58, 
 pp. 66-108 ; same article, Lit- 
 tell's Living Age, vol. 56, pp. 
 641-695. — Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, by George B. Smith, vol. 
 14, N,S.,1S75, pp. 729-737. 
 — at Chelsea. London Maga- 
 zine, by T. H. Gibson, vol. 2, 
 1876, pp. 98-103. 
 -at Nice. Macmillan's Maga- 
 
 zine, by W. J. Prowse, vol. 21, 
 1870, pp. 527-533. 
 — Count Fathom. Monthly 
 Review, vol. 8, 1753, pp. 203- 
 214. 
 -History of England. Monthly 
 
 Review, vol. 16, 1757, pp. 530- 
 536 ; vol. 18, 1758, pp. 289- 
 305 ; vol. 28, 1763, I'p. 249-25ti, 
 359-369.— Critical Review, vol. 
 3, 1757, pp. 449-458, 81-499 ; 
 vol. 5, 1758, pp. 1-17. 
 
 Ineditcd Memorials of. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, by W. Snr- 
 gent, vol. 3, 1859, pp. 693-703.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Smollett, Tobias George. 
 
 Life and Writings of. Lon- 
 
 do!i Magazine, vol. 6, 1822, pp. 
 327-335 ; same article, Port- 
 folio, vol. 15, fourth series, 
 1S23, pp. 89-105. 
 
 Memoir of. Museum of 
 
 Foreign Literature, vol. 5, p. 
 209, etc. 
 
 The Regicide. Monthly Re- 
 view, vol. 1, 1749, pp. 72-79. 
 
 Sterne and Fielding. Port- 
 folio, vol. 6, N.S., 1811, pp. 
 
 Smollett, Tobias George. 
 
 412-431. —Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, by Charles Covvden Clarke, 
 vol. 8, N.S., 1872, pp. 556- 
 580. 
 
 Translation of Don Quixote. 
 
 Monthly Review, vol. 13, 
 
 1755, pp. 195-202. 
 -Translation of 
 
 Voltaire's 
 Works. Montlily Review, vol. 
 29, 1763, pp. 273-282. 
 
 Travels through France and 
 
 Italy. Monthly Review, vol. 
 34, 1766, pp. 419-429. 
 
 VIII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Advice, a Satire 
 Reproof, a Satire 
 
 (Sequel to Advice). 
 Adventures of Roderick 
 
 Random 
 The Regicide, a Tragedy . 
 Adventures of Gil Bias 
 
 {Trans.) 
 Adventures of Peregrine 
 
 Pickle .... 
 Essay on the External Use 
 
 of Water 
 Adventures of Ferdinand, 
 
 Count Fathom 
 History and Adventures of 
 
 Don Quixote (Trans.) 
 
 1746 
 1747 
 
 1748 
 1749 
 1749 
 
 1751 
 
 1752 
 
 1753 
 
 1755 
 The Critical Review 1756, etc. 
 
 {Edited. ) 
 Compendium of authentic 
 
 and entertaining Voyages 1756 
 {Edited. ) 
 The Reprisal, a Comedy . 1757 
 Complete History of Eng- 
 land . . . 1757-58 
 Continuation of do. . 1763-65 
 
 Modern part of an Univer- 1759-66 
 sal History {C'o)Uributed) 
 
 The British Magazine 1760-67 
 {Edited.) 
 
 Works of Voltaire . 1761, etc. 
 ( Trans. ) 
 
 The Briton [Edited) . 1762-3 
 
 Adventures of Sir Launcelot 
 
 Greaves .... 
 
 1762 
 
 The Present State of all 
 
 
 Nations . 
 
 1764 
 
 Travels through France and 
 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1766 
 
 History and Adventures of 
 
 
 an Atom 
 
 1769 
 
 The Expedition of Humphry 
 
 
 Clinker .... 
 
 1771 
 
 Ode to Independence 
 
 1773 
 
 The Adventures of Tele- 
 
 
 machus {Tran^s.) . 
 
 1776
 
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