CHAPTER IXSMOLLETT A ‘SWEATER’—TRAVELS ABROAD—THE ADVENTURES OF AN ATOM—HUMPHREY CLINKER—LAST DAYS.So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been slightly unsettled. Constitutionally of a nervously sensitive nature, excessive joy or sorrow had a thoroughly unhinging effect upon him. He had not the self–command requisite to look upon grief as one of those ills to which flesh is heir. In his estimation, everything affecting himself was in the superlative degree. Never were sorrows so overwhelming as his, he considered, and oftentimes he seriously mortified people by brusquely breaking in upon their anguish with the statement that they did not really know what grief meant in comparison with him.After Elizabeth’s death, therefore, Smollett, entirely oblivious of his poor wife’s mental sufferings, seems to have abandoned himself to an excess of grief that seriously accelerated the progress of the maladies by which he was afflicted. Though he could not afford to stop work altogether, he appears from this date to have instituted a sort of literary factory, where works were turned out by the score. Smollett’s name was now so popular, that on a title–page it virtually meant success to the publication. He thereforecontracted the habit of undertaking far more work than any man single–handed could accomplish, but getting it executed at a reduced rate by those whom he retained in his employment. He appears to have kept them in food and clothing, and to have been in the main exceedingly kind to many a struggling author, who would not otherwise have obtained employment; but one cannot approve of methods like these, which degrade the noble profession of ‘man of letters’ into that of a literary task–master. Dr. Carlyle gives a description of Smollett’s relations to what ‘Jupiter’ called his ‘myrmidons,’ which, however, affords a somewhat one–sided picture of the novelist’s methods, though the date is scarcely correct. Smollett, although he had employed others to do his work for him when he found it to be too onerous, did not really institute his ‘literary factory’ until well on in the ‘sixties’ of the eighteenth century, when his health was beginning to fail. ‘Jupiter’ describes the ‘factory’ as in full swing in 1758–59. But as the chatty old clerical gossip wrote his Autobiography after his seventy–ninth year, and as many of his dates with respect to other matters have been proved incorrect, we may, without much injustice to the best of Scots unepiscopal bishops, ascribe to the mental feebleness of age an error which otherwise would affix a serious stigma on Smollett’s name. Though everylitterateurworth the name will reprobate such a blood–sucking method as literary ‘sweating,’ prosecuted though it has been by men to whom we owe so much as Smollett and Dumas (to say nothing of at least one ‘popular’ author in our own day who engages in the despicable practice), we would fain believe, in the former’s case, that it resulted from failing strength, and from the maddening consciousness of being obliged to leave his wife, if he died, dependent on strangers.But let us to ‘Jupiter’:[9]‘Principal Robertson had never met Smollett (though he had seen him at the Select Club), 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 become a great man, and, being a humorist, 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 in which we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the authors were introduced, 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 surprise at Smollett’s polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity of his conversation. He had imagined that a man’s manners must bear a likeness to his books, and as Smollett had described so well the characters of ruffians and profligates, that he must of course resemble them.’In addition to the pitiful lack of taste and good feeling in making a raree–show of wretchedness, and holding up the misery of the unfortunate authors to a curiosity that was worse than contempt, the whole incident exhibits the characters of Smollett, Carlyle, Robertson, and Home in an exceedingly unfavourable aspect—the first–named as glorifying himself as the Mæcenas of starving Grub Street quill–drivers, the others because they could entertain any other feeling than that of sympathy for honest talent in tatters!In June 1763, Smollett’s health and spirits became alike so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed! Alas, poor Nancy! She pled with her obdurate husband for many a week before he consented to wind up his numberless projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of £1200 left to Mrs. Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That he left England with arrangements made whereby his ‘myrmidons’ were to forward their ‘copy’ to him, whithersoever he might be, goes without the saying. The booksellers, also—Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and others—all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who had done so much for them. But therein they did no more than their duty.For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip,Travels through France and Italy: containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Antiquities, with a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett to friends at home; and in the first letter he remarks: ‘In gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.’ The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is perceptible in the following passage: ‘I am traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.’Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it: ‘His letters afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain over the best disposition.’ Letters written under such circumstances should never have been published. In the exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes: ‘Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not the only people to whom Smollett gave offence: he exposed himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is one to think of a man who likened the snow–clad glories of the Alps to frosted sugar; who said of the famous Venusde Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, “I cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of character”; and who remarked of the Pantheon, “I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top”?’The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of all others, should have remained silent—a man whose whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to reprehend in Smollett—Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of course, was the motive. The author ofTristram Shandycould never forgive the fact that the public preferredPeregrine Pickleto the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state of Smollett’s health, and how it would colour every estimate he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the world was the author ofTristram Shandyto have sat as moral or æsthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty sledge–hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill–natured critic! Sterne wrote: ‘The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “It is nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus Medicis,” replied I—for in passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I poppedupon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi.” He had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. “I’ll tell it,” said Smelfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”’ Now, though Smollett deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited above is not the manner in which such literary punishment should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter: ‘Be it said without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne’s writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was—“Like a lusty winter,Frosty, but kindly.”’Alas! not long now was the worn tenement of the great novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was known to be only a question of a year or two at most. Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ‘My poor Nancy; let me make the best use of the time for her.’ Constant rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drainedhis strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A premature break–up of the system, rather than the positive disease of consumption, numbered his days.Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, with that keen insight into the future which often distinguishes the aged, said, ‘We’ll no’ be long parted, any way. If you go first, I’ll be close on your heels: if I lead the way, ye’ll no’ be far behind me, I’m thinking.’ And so it proved. Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew better. ‘The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,’ she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and get his health thoroughly established.But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for theCritical Review, compiling travels, translating from French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature of the day—anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer.Only two more works of any moment was he to live to accomplish—one, an indifferent production judged by his own high standard—the other, like the dying cygnet’s song in Grecian fable—the greatest and the last! In 1769 appearedThe History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols.12mo. This is a politico–social satire, wherein are represented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till the dissolution of Lord Chatham’s administration in 1762, but under the thin veil of Japanese names. GeorgeIII.was consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been to–day an integral part of the Empire, which would have feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short–sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to be evolved.The History of an Atomwas successful, but is to–day the portion of Smollett’s writings with which we could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity.Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to all, that if Smollett’s life was to be preserved, he must henceforth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered his existence during the past few years, and faction was jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. His only political friends neglected him who had fought so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their ingratitude.When the final verdict was given, Smollett endeavoured to obtain some consulship abroad, that would have lessened his labours. He was still dependent on his pen for dailybread. Almost despairingly he implored even his political enemies to help him to some means whereby he might demit some portion of his killing work. But his ‘noble’ friends were all deaf. Lord Shelburne was applied to, but stated the consulships at Nice and Leghorn were already promised to some of his own political creatures. One man only stood his friend; one man only, and he an opponent albeit a countryman, did his best for Smollett, but, alas! unavailingly. All honour to David Hume the historian, then Under Secretary of State! In the end the dying novelist was disappointed at all points. He had to go abroad depending on the staff that had supplied him with bread all through the long years until now—and which alone would not now fail him—his pen!Smollett left England in December 1768, and proceeded to LeghornviaLucca and Pisa. Here he settled at Monte Nova, a little township situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. Dr. Armstrong, his friend and countryman, had secured for him a beautiful villa on the outskirts of the village. Here he gradually grew weaker, but was tended with the utmost devotion by his wife, and some of the English families in the neighbourhood. Here, too, he penned the greatest of his novels, the work that for its subtle insight into human nature, its keen and incisive studies of character, its delightful humour, its matchlessbonhomieand raciness, takes rank amidst the treasured classics of our literature—the immortalHumphrey Clinker.But with this exertion the feeble flame of the great novelist’s life slowly flickered out. His work was done, and nobly done. He had carved for himself an imperishable niche in the great Temple of Fame. His last words were spoken to his wife—‘All is well, my dear;’ and on the 21st October 1771, in the 52nd year of his age, TobiasGeorge Smollett laid down the burden of that life which had pressed so wearily upon him, and passed—within the Silence!He had the pleasure of seeingHumphrey Clinkerin its published form a day or two before his death. When the public learned that the hand which so often had delighted them in the past would now delight them no more, a mournful interest was exhibited in his last work. Edition after edition was exhausted. But what booted it to him, then, when the strife and the anguish as well as the exultation born of success were all over? ‘After labour cometh rest, and after strife the guerdon.’ Alas! too late the latter came to cheer him whose life had been one long–drawn–out epic of anguish from the cradle to the grave!Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have inherited the estate of Bonhill and an income of £1000 per annum, which in default of him passed to Mrs. Telfer, his sister, and her heirs. O the irony of fate! Alas! the thorn of apprehension which disturbed his dying pillow proved too true a dread. His wife was left in Leghorn in dire penury, until relieved by the charity of friends who werenotrelatives, and also by the proceeds of a theatrical performance given in her aid after some years by Mr. Graham of Gartmore. An indelible stain is it upon the Telfers and the Smolletts that they should have allowed the widow of their most distinguished relative to die dependent on the charity of strangers. But relatives are proverbially the hardest–hearted of potential benefactors when the day of trouble comes. Poor “Narcissa”! the lines of her life were not cast in pleasant places.Smollett was interred in the English cemetery at Leghorn, with the blue Mediterranean stretching in front of his last resting–place. Many are the pilgrims that journey to histomb, and as the years roll on they increase rather than diminish. A plain monument was erected by his wife over the remains, the Latin inscription on which was written by his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. At Bonhill, a splendid obelisk, over sixty feet high, was raised on the banks of the Leven, by his cousin James Smollett (a few months before his own death), the inscription being revised and corrected by Dr. Johnson.Dr. Moore, as the friend of Smollett, has preserved for us the appearance and portrait of the great novelist in the following description: “The person of Dr. Smollett was stout and well proportioned, his countenance engaging, his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. He was 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. Though few could penetrate with more acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook misconduct when attended by misfortune. Free from vanity, Smollett had a considerable share of pride and great sensibility; his passions were easily moved, and too impetuous when roused. He could not conceal his contempt of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain from proclaiming his indignation against every instance of oppression. He was of an intrepid, independent, imprudent disposition, equally incapable of deceit and adulation, and more disposed to cultivate the acquaintance of those he could serve than of those who could serve him.”Such being the character of the man, the key is obtained to the enigma of Smollet’s lack of political and social success. He was of too honest a nature to do the dirty work of the ‘Ministers’ of the time, amongst whom independenceof character was rated as a sin of the first magnitude. But in the hearts of the admirers of his literary works, Smollett will also live as one of the greatest of our countrymen—a man whose virtues are yearly becoming recognised in their true light, as readers realise he is one of the world’s great moral teachers, whose lessons are communicated by exhibiting the naked hideousness of vice. And so the star of his fame will shine more and yet more clearly unto the perfect day!CHAPTER XSMOLLETT AS A NOVELISTSmollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’ In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. The grounds for such a comparison do not exist, save in the initial fact that all three wrote novels!Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. Nothing missed his ‘inevitable eye,’ either in a situation, an incident, or a landscape. If he had not Fielding’s keen power of vision into the mental and moral characteristics of his fellow–men, he had twice his aptness of objective photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance or of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to forget the humorous bearings of any experience through which he had passed, or of which he had learned. Theaffaire de cœurwith Melinda inRoderick Random, the challenge and arrest through the affection of Strap, also the inimitable ‘banquet after the manner of the ancients’ inPeregrine Pickle, were described from incidents occurring in Smollett’s own history. To few writers has the faculty been given in measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes he was describing upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, whence he transferred them to his pages. The naturalness of setting in the case of all the incidents is so marked, and stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded in theMemoirs of a Lady of Quality(published inPeregrine Pickle), that one scarcely knows which to admire most—the originality of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and impressiveness of the painter’s reproduction.Smollett’s strength lay in his great power of self–restraint. He knew what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept himself within the limits of his imaginative ability. He could very easily have made either Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist, sighing after his mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and fears and ups and downs of the knights–errant of love. But therein he would have trenched upon Richardson’s province, and placed himself in a decidedly unfavourable comparison with the author ofPamelaandClarissa Harlowe. He might have developed a splendid character–study out of the colossal Borgia–like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom, who can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime which possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of Shakespeare’s early days, Aaron inTitus Andronicus, who, when dying, curses the world with the words—‘If one good deed in all my life I did,I do repent it from my very soul.’But had he done so, he would have entered into direct competition with Fielding; a competition he knew he was unfitted to support. But in his own department he wassupreme. In fertility of invention and apt adaptation of means to end he had no rival. His novels present one bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes, imprisonments, love–makings, and what not, until the mind positively becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident provided for it. A less profound genius than Smollett would in all probability have worn itself out in a vain attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the principle ‘never venture, never win.’ Smollett was a surer critic, on this point at least, than many of his friends, who were continually urging him to attempt something in the mode of Fielding. ‘There is but one husbandman can reap that field,’ he replied. He knew what hecoulddo and what hecould notdo, and therein, as has been said, lay his strength.Viewing his novels as a whole,—Roderick Random,Peregrine Pickle,Ferdinand Count Fathom,Launcelot Greaves,The Adventures of an Atom, andHumphrey Clinker,—the first quality which strikes a critical reader is the family likeness existing between all the leading characters. Dissimilar though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Peregrine Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, and Lismahago in what may be termed his nobler qualities, there is nevertheless in all that happy–go–lucky carelessness, that supreme indifference to consequences, that courage that never flinches from the penalties of its own misdeeds, but accepts them without a murmur—in a word, abonhomiediversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in no other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that sentimental, melodramatic, watery ‘gush’ which the taste of last century denominated pathos—the sort of thing Dickens long after described in the phrase ‘drawing tears from hiseyes and a handkerchief from his pocket’; but of that quality there is not the faintest trace in Smollett. If anything, his characters are too callous, too fond of the rough–and–tumble Tom–and–Jerry life in which their creator so perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there a curve, heightening the light in one place, deepening the shading in another, never picturing an incident or a trait without some definite end to be served in perfecting the final portrait. Smollett never takes time for such microscopic character studies. He is a veritable pen–and–ink draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he sketches, through the agency of incident, the outlines of his characters, filling in these outlines with but few subsidiary details regarding the feelings and moral impulses of his creations. For such he has neither the time nor the space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of the setting of the story and study them apart, paying no heed to anything affecting the other personages, and he will see at once how completely Smollett relied on incident to do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings of his heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better story–teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, Smollett the more vigorous painter of contemporary manners. Further, let the reader carefully study Lovelace in Richardson’sClarissa Harlowe, Blifil in Fielding’s novel ofTom Jones, and Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse method of the three great novelists. Richardson builds up what might be called the ‘architectonic’ of the creation by a series of great scenes wherein dialogue plays the greatest part. Lovelace has all the light–hearted villainy of a man towhom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and whose standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richardson does everything by square and rule. He expends at the outset a wealth of ingenuity in portraying the most insignificant qualities of Lovelace’s nature. And so fully does he make us acquainted with his nature, that at the end of the novel we know in reality very little more of him than we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand, winds his way into the very heart of a character, ‘like a serpent round its prey,’ as Goldsmith said of Burke’s treatment of a subject in conversation. Every chapter gives us some addition to the creation, even to the very close of the novel. But when that is reached, the great synthesis is complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master Blifil stands pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is contemptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of Ferdinand Count Fathom the initial description of the character is reduced to a minimum. Everything is left to the effect produced by incident. All Fathom’s pitilessness, his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his colossal selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader’s own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not formally labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson and Fielding the author is constantly present in his creation. So with Smollett, he is ever in evidence. None of them attain that superb art of Walter Scott, who simply effaces himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says: ‘He sits like a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights to the view; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria the author himself never appears to take part with his characters. It is the perfection of art to conceal art, and this is here done so completely, that, while it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the meritof the author. As he does not thrust himself into the foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.’By the critical student closely attentive to the development of Smollett’s genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that in the gallery of his characters, chronologically considered, there is a definitely progressive growth or increase in the power wherewith he limned character. Bearing in mind our initial position, that in Smollett’s art incident was the prime element, and the delineation of character subordinate to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of circumstance, I would invite attention to the following analysis, as being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be deduced from a patient, faithful, and impartial study of the personages named. My contention is that in the character sequence we have a series of ascending psychologic gradations, each one presenting features of greater complexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more clearly the value of a system in that concatenation of event which influenced so intimately his personages.Roderick Randomis little else than theGil Blasof Le Sage Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellentLazarillo de Tormesof Hurtado de Mendoza. In his Preface to the novel Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness to French and Spanish fiction, and announces his conviction of the superiority of the novel of circumstance over all others.Roderick Random, therefore, as a novel consists of a succession of incidents, some startling, some improbable, some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative affinity to each other. The book is a record of the ‘adventures’ of the hero from his cradle to his marriage. As in the case of all such books, the peg whereon the incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose anddisjointed, happy–go–lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick is only a big schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal passions, far, very far from being a saint, yet as far from being an irreclaimable sinner. He is the plaything of his passions, carried like a straw on the stream of circumstance. He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it woe, be it good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. He treats his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his fidelity, worse than indifferently. He is not by any means faithful, and certainly not very respectful, to his lady–love, Narcissa; nay, he even takes the discovery of his long–lost father—a circumstance materially altering his social station—quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was the spirit incarnate of the cold–blooded, coarse–fibred, religionless eighteenth century—a century wherein virtue was perpetually on the lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts of its men, a century wherein its women were colourless puppets, without true individuality or definite aims, but oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism to escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true culture. Roderick Random as a creation was a purely adventitious one, resulting from the fortuitous concourse of incidents. How the character was to shape itself, morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator little, provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, and the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. Incidents were piled up, whether tending to heighten the effect of thedramatis personæ, or not. There was no conservation of material, no wise economy, no evidence of careful selection. Prodigality and profusion were everywhere present, with the signs of youth and inexperiencewrit large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick Random, critically estimated as a work of art, is little better than Lobeyra’s Amadis de Gaul, a portrait limned wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas without premeditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of character contemporaneously with the evolution of event. The character has gathered no wisdom during its course. It is represented to us in quite as immature a state at the end of the story as at the beginning. There is a heartlessness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive is this phase of the hero’s character; nay, the novel is only saved from being as darkly shaded and as morally repellent as Count Fathom, by the pathetic doglike fidelity of poor Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of nature in a chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book.From the criticisms onRoderick Random, Smollett learned many lessons. He noted that, though his free and easy method of letting character shape itself through the medium of incident had its advantages, these were liable to be counterbalanced unless the chain of incident was so forged that each link would be related to the leading characters of the novel, so as to promote their development and tend to fill in the bare black and white outlines by some distinguishing trait, mannerism, or eccentricity. InPeregrine Pickle, therefore, the characters are seen to be more vertebrate. They are no longer the stalking lay figures of the first novel. Albeit Peregrine is only Roderick under another name, and endowed with a year or two more of experience and sense,—the subtle differentiation of personages visible inHumphrey Clinkerhaving yet to be learned,—there is a marked improvement in thetechniqueof the novel. The chain of incident is every whit as varied, the events as events are more stirring and startling than in the first novel, but there is now the attempt—though as yet but an attempt—to subject the unflagging flow of incident to an artistic adaptation towards definite ends. Incident is no longer piled on incident regardless of the fact whether it tend to advance the development of the characters or not. Then Smollett has learned the value of contrast in character–painting. Peregrine is contrasted with such humorous creations as Godfrey Gauntlet, Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Bo’sun Tom Pipes. The virtue of relative proportion among his characters according to their ratio of importance in influencing the story, though still faulty, has been carefully studied. Peregrine therefore is supreme as hero. There is no Strap to dispute the honours with him, and as a portrait he is more consistent than in the case of Roderick. Though the same callous indifference to morality is manifest, though the likeness to Lazarillo de Tormes is even more patent in this latter creation than in the former, though the same polite villainy passes current under the name of gallantry, the same cheap appreciation of female honour,—witness that degrading scene so reprobated by Sir Walter Scott, where Peregrine assails Emilia Gauntlet’s chastity,—the hero is not so glaring a moral imbecile as Roderick. He has gleams of better things. But, as in the former novel so in the latter, the noblest character of the book is the foil or contrast to Peregrine—Godfrey Gauntlet, on whom Smollett seems to lavish all his powers.Then comesFerdinand Count Fathom, indicating a still further advance in thetechniqueof novel–writing. In this work the stage is not so crowded as inRoderick RandomandPeregrine Pickle. The whole interest centresin the career of crime of this archfiend, this pitiless Nero, Iago, and Cæsar Borgia in one. A more terrible picture of human depravity has never been drawn unless inOthelloandTitus Andronicus. But Smollett had now learned the lesson of the conservation of imaginative power. There are no needless incidents in this novel. Everyone reveals the character of the hero in a new light. Relative proportion, differentiation, and contrast have all been carefully studied. Notwithstanding our loathing of crimes so unspeakable, notwithstanding our hatred of animalism so unbridled as would sacrifice the trustful Monimia to his base passions, a sort of sneaking sympathy with Fathom begins to find entrance into the breast. As inParadise Lostone feels a sorrow for Satan’s position after his magnificent resistance to the Almighty, so here the same sentiment finds place. One hopes Fathom may have time given him wherein to repent. But Smollett was now too consummate an artist for that concession to sentimentalism. InRoderick Randomhe might have committed such an artistic mistake. Not now. Fathom receives retributive justice, and only repents when he has expiated to the uttermost his sins and wrong–doings.Passing bySir Launcelot GreavesandThe History of an Atomas outside the pale of our criticism, inasmuch as they were written when he was worried and distracted with other matters, besides being in wretched health, so that they are unworthy of his genius, we come to the consideration of Matthew Bramble and Lieutenant Lismahago inHumphrey Clinker. They are undoubtedly the two greatest characters in the Smollett gallery of imaginative portraits. They must be viewed together. To separate them is to lose the reflected lustre they cast by contrast on each other. Likenesses many and important they have. Both aresufferers from the world’s fickle changes. Both are weary and irritated with society’s meannesses and petty falsehoods. Both are testy, tetchy, and prickly–tempered. But how truly men! Smollett had now reached the meridian of his powers. He realised now that in a great novel incident and the delineation of character must occupy co–ordinate positions. To assign excessive predominance to either, is to mar the ultimate effect. Therefore inHumphrey Clinker, while still revelling in inexhaustible variety of incident, Smollett assigns to the synthesis of character its proper place. In place of portraying the characters himself, he adopted the course, so favoured by his great rival Richardson, and long years after to be employed with such rare effect by Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray, of achieving the evolution of character through the medium of letters, a mutual analysis as well as a distinctive synthesis. Risky though the expedient was, for it demanded a man of the highest genius to make the letters popular, in Smollett’s hands it proved eminently successful. We accordingly have Matthew Bramble alternately described by himself and Jerry Melford, each giving varying phases of the same kindly, dogmatic, generously obstinate, and wholly noble–hearted fellow. Lismahago’s character, besides being drawn by the two above–named fellow–travellers in that expedition to Scotland wherein Humphrey Clinker was the footman and hero, has the blanks in the portrait filled in by Miss Tabitha Bramble, the bitter–sweet spinster whom he afterwards married, and the inimitably delightful lady’s–maid, Winnifred Jenkins. More highly finished pictures could scarcely be desired. Side by side with Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty and Thackeray’s Esmond, Lismahago may assuredly be placed, while Matthew Bramble falls little short, in completeness of details, ofJonathan Oldbuck in theAntiquary. Yet Bramble is still Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle purged of their faults and follies, and with the experience of years upon them. We realise that Bramble possesses all their shortcomings, albeit held in check by his strong good sense, while they potentially had all his virtues, though the fever of youth i’ the blood obscured them for the nonce. A noble gallery do these five characters compose. If Fathom be the Cain or the Esau of the company, he has many of the family features to show to what race he belongs.In one imaginative type Smollett has never been approached as a creator, to wit, in his delineation of British seamen. Captain Marryat exhibits a greater knowledge of nautical affairs than Smollett, but nothing in the younger novelist quite touches the racy humour of Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Bowling, Hatchway, and Pipes. David Hannay, in his introduction toJaphet in Search of a Father, says: ‘Captain Savage of theDiomede, Captain M—— of theKing’s Own, Captain Hector Maclean inJacob Faithful, Terence O’Brien, the mate Martin, the midshipman Gascoigne, Thomas Saunders the boatswain’s mate, and Swinburne the quartermaster, are beyond all question not less lifelike portraits of the officers and men of the navy than Trunnion and Bowling, Pipes and Hatchway. In one respect Marryat had an inevitable advantage over his predecessor. Smollett never shows us the seaman at his work. He could not, because he did not know it sufficiently well to understand it himself.’ That is perfectly true. But, on the other hand, Marryat’s intimate knowledge was often a hindrance to his art. It led him to inflict the minutiæ of the service on his readers more than was needful. Hence the reason why some parts of Marryat’s books are decidedly tiresome. Smollett’s arenever so. His sense of artistic proportion was finer than Marryat’s, and he avoided the pitfall whereinto the other fell. As a delineator of the nautical character, Mr. Clark Russell is the greatest we have had since Smollett, and in him the latter finds his most dangerous rival. Yet, if Mr. Russell has equalled his master in many other respects, it is doubtful if he has quite reached the high–water mark of Commodore Trunnion and Lismahago.Finally, Smollett’s women are deserving of a word. Sainte Beuve said he judged a novelist’s powers by the manner in which he drew his female characters. If so, Smollett would not have excited much sympathy in the mind of the brilliant author of theCauseries du Lundi. His women are of varying excellence. Narcissa inRoderick Randomand Emilia inPeregrine Pickleare only sweet dolls. Until his closing years he could not differentiate between puling sentimentality and piquancy. Into the charming perversity, the delightful contradictoriness, that often make up for us one–half the attractiveness of the female character, he could not enter. To rise to the height of spiritual insight that was requisite to conceive and execute a Di Vernon, an Ethel Newcome, or a Rose Vincy, was for him impossible, simply because he could not realise in his earlier years of authorship that women are the equals, not the inferiors of man. The hapless Miss Williams inRoderick Randomexhibits this feeling on the part of Smollett. She was nobility itself in character, yet she was made over to Strap. One of the finest of his creations is the hapless Monimia inCount Fathom. Tenderness, purity, grace, and beauty are all united in her. She falls, it is true, but her fall left her virtue unimpugned, seeing that her betrayer resorted to means as cruel as they were irresistible to accomplish his diabolic purpose. Monimiaoccupies a pedestal apart, but, she excepted, the two most delightful creations in all his works are those inHumphrey Clinker, Tabitha Bramble and Winnifred Jenkins. Lydia Melford is too milk–and–waterish, but the two first–named are drawn with masterly precision and force. Tabitha Bramble is a capital portrait of the soured, disappointed old maid, whose lover had died long before, but to whose memory she had been ever faithful—a woman whose nature is only encrusted with prejudice, not inter–penetrated by it, so that we may justly hope that, under the loving care of Lieutenant Lismahago, her frigidity may thaw, and that in matrimony she may discover the world not to be so very bad after all. Winnifred Jenkins is the prototype of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’sRivals, and is infinitely more amusing. All the vanity, self–assertiveness, and jealousy of a small mind, conjointly with the love of appearing to move in a higher circle of society than she really does, are admirably sketched, while her misappropriate use of the language of that circle is most felicitously rendered. The portrait is Smollett’s best, and no touch is finer than Winnifred’s conduct in the menagerie. Let her speak for herself. ‘Last week I went with mistress to the Tower to see the crowns and wild beastis. There was a monstracious lion with teeth half a quarter long, and a gentleman bid me not go near him if I wasn’t a maid, being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens. Now I had no mind to go near him, for I cannot abide such dangerous honeymils, not I—but mistress would go, and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing that I tho’t he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I’ll go death upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firgkin as the child unborn; and therefore either the gentleman told a phib, orthe lion ought to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness against his neighbour.’ Tabitha Bramble and Win Jenkins are those two in Smollett’s gallery of fiction which the world will not willingly let die.Such, then, is Smollett as a novelist—the great master of incident and humorous narration, the painter of the faults, foibles, and eccentricities of his fellow–men. In his own sphere he was unrivalled, and he in nothing showed more saliently his good sense than by refusing to attempt works for which he knew he was both by temperament and training unfitted. I cannot quite agree with Professor Saintsbury’s view in his charming and sympathetic Life of Smollett, prefixed to what bids fair to be the standard edition of his works.[10]‘The only one of the deeper and higher passions which seems to have stirred Smollett was patriotism, in which a Scot rarely fails, unless he is an utter gaby or an utter scoundrel.’ Does not the worthy Professor, following the popular definition, fail to differentiate between anemotionand apassion. In depicting the passions, Smollett, I grant, was singularly deficient; in such emotions as patriotism, sympathy with the oppressed, and a pure devotion to the cause of truth, he showed himself a man whose heart was permeated with the warmest and deepest enthusiasm.
CHAPTER IXSMOLLETT A ‘SWEATER’—TRAVELS ABROAD—THE ADVENTURES OF AN ATOM—HUMPHREY CLINKER—LAST DAYS.So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been slightly unsettled. Constitutionally of a nervously sensitive nature, excessive joy or sorrow had a thoroughly unhinging effect upon him. He had not the self–command requisite to look upon grief as one of those ills to which flesh is heir. In his estimation, everything affecting himself was in the superlative degree. Never were sorrows so overwhelming as his, he considered, and oftentimes he seriously mortified people by brusquely breaking in upon their anguish with the statement that they did not really know what grief meant in comparison with him.After Elizabeth’s death, therefore, Smollett, entirely oblivious of his poor wife’s mental sufferings, seems to have abandoned himself to an excess of grief that seriously accelerated the progress of the maladies by which he was afflicted. Though he could not afford to stop work altogether, he appears from this date to have instituted a sort of literary factory, where works were turned out by the score. Smollett’s name was now so popular, that on a title–page it virtually meant success to the publication. He thereforecontracted the habit of undertaking far more work than any man single–handed could accomplish, but getting it executed at a reduced rate by those whom he retained in his employment. He appears to have kept them in food and clothing, and to have been in the main exceedingly kind to many a struggling author, who would not otherwise have obtained employment; but one cannot approve of methods like these, which degrade the noble profession of ‘man of letters’ into that of a literary task–master. Dr. Carlyle gives a description of Smollett’s relations to what ‘Jupiter’ called his ‘myrmidons,’ which, however, affords a somewhat one–sided picture of the novelist’s methods, though the date is scarcely correct. Smollett, although he had employed others to do his work for him when he found it to be too onerous, did not really institute his ‘literary factory’ until well on in the ‘sixties’ of the eighteenth century, when his health was beginning to fail. ‘Jupiter’ describes the ‘factory’ as in full swing in 1758–59. But as the chatty old clerical gossip wrote his Autobiography after his seventy–ninth year, and as many of his dates with respect to other matters have been proved incorrect, we may, without much injustice to the best of Scots unepiscopal bishops, ascribe to the mental feebleness of age an error which otherwise would affix a serious stigma on Smollett’s name. Though everylitterateurworth the name will reprobate such a blood–sucking method as literary ‘sweating,’ prosecuted though it has been by men to whom we owe so much as Smollett and Dumas (to say nothing of at least one ‘popular’ author in our own day who engages in the despicable practice), we would fain believe, in the former’s case, that it resulted from failing strength, and from the maddening consciousness of being obliged to leave his wife, if he died, dependent on strangers.But let us to ‘Jupiter’:[9]‘Principal Robertson had never met Smollett (though he had seen him at the Select Club), 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 become a great man, and, being a humorist, 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 in which we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the authors were introduced, 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 surprise at Smollett’s polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity of his conversation. He had imagined that a man’s manners must bear a likeness to his books, and as Smollett had described so well the characters of ruffians and profligates, that he must of course resemble them.’In addition to the pitiful lack of taste and good feeling in making a raree–show of wretchedness, and holding up the misery of the unfortunate authors to a curiosity that was worse than contempt, the whole incident exhibits the characters of Smollett, Carlyle, Robertson, and Home in an exceedingly unfavourable aspect—the first–named as glorifying himself as the Mæcenas of starving Grub Street quill–drivers, the others because they could entertain any other feeling than that of sympathy for honest talent in tatters!In June 1763, Smollett’s health and spirits became alike so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed! Alas, poor Nancy! She pled with her obdurate husband for many a week before he consented to wind up his numberless projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of £1200 left to Mrs. Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That he left England with arrangements made whereby his ‘myrmidons’ were to forward their ‘copy’ to him, whithersoever he might be, goes without the saying. The booksellers, also—Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and others—all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who had done so much for them. But therein they did no more than their duty.For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip,Travels through France and Italy: containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Antiquities, with a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett to friends at home; and in the first letter he remarks: ‘In gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.’ The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is perceptible in the following passage: ‘I am traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.’Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it: ‘His letters afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain over the best disposition.’ Letters written under such circumstances should never have been published. In the exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes: ‘Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not the only people to whom Smollett gave offence: he exposed himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is one to think of a man who likened the snow–clad glories of the Alps to frosted sugar; who said of the famous Venusde Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, “I cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of character”; and who remarked of the Pantheon, “I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top”?’The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of all others, should have remained silent—a man whose whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to reprehend in Smollett—Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of course, was the motive. The author ofTristram Shandycould never forgive the fact that the public preferredPeregrine Pickleto the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state of Smollett’s health, and how it would colour every estimate he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the world was the author ofTristram Shandyto have sat as moral or æsthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty sledge–hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill–natured critic! Sterne wrote: ‘The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “It is nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus Medicis,” replied I—for in passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I poppedupon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi.” He had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. “I’ll tell it,” said Smelfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”’ Now, though Smollett deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited above is not the manner in which such literary punishment should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter: ‘Be it said without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne’s writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was—“Like a lusty winter,Frosty, but kindly.”’Alas! not long now was the worn tenement of the great novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was known to be only a question of a year or two at most. Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ‘My poor Nancy; let me make the best use of the time for her.’ Constant rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drainedhis strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A premature break–up of the system, rather than the positive disease of consumption, numbered his days.Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, with that keen insight into the future which often distinguishes the aged, said, ‘We’ll no’ be long parted, any way. If you go first, I’ll be close on your heels: if I lead the way, ye’ll no’ be far behind me, I’m thinking.’ And so it proved. Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew better. ‘The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,’ she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and get his health thoroughly established.But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for theCritical Review, compiling travels, translating from French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature of the day—anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer.Only two more works of any moment was he to live to accomplish—one, an indifferent production judged by his own high standard—the other, like the dying cygnet’s song in Grecian fable—the greatest and the last! In 1769 appearedThe History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols.12mo. This is a politico–social satire, wherein are represented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till the dissolution of Lord Chatham’s administration in 1762, but under the thin veil of Japanese names. GeorgeIII.was consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been to–day an integral part of the Empire, which would have feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short–sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to be evolved.The History of an Atomwas successful, but is to–day the portion of Smollett’s writings with which we could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity.Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to all, that if Smollett’s life was to be preserved, he must henceforth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered his existence during the past few years, and faction was jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. His only political friends neglected him who had fought so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their ingratitude.When the final verdict was given, Smollett endeavoured to obtain some consulship abroad, that would have lessened his labours. He was still dependent on his pen for dailybread. Almost despairingly he implored even his political enemies to help him to some means whereby he might demit some portion of his killing work. But his ‘noble’ friends were all deaf. Lord Shelburne was applied to, but stated the consulships at Nice and Leghorn were already promised to some of his own political creatures. One man only stood his friend; one man only, and he an opponent albeit a countryman, did his best for Smollett, but, alas! unavailingly. All honour to David Hume the historian, then Under Secretary of State! In the end the dying novelist was disappointed at all points. He had to go abroad depending on the staff that had supplied him with bread all through the long years until now—and which alone would not now fail him—his pen!Smollett left England in December 1768, and proceeded to LeghornviaLucca and Pisa. Here he settled at Monte Nova, a little township situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. Dr. Armstrong, his friend and countryman, had secured for him a beautiful villa on the outskirts of the village. Here he gradually grew weaker, but was tended with the utmost devotion by his wife, and some of the English families in the neighbourhood. Here, too, he penned the greatest of his novels, the work that for its subtle insight into human nature, its keen and incisive studies of character, its delightful humour, its matchlessbonhomieand raciness, takes rank amidst the treasured classics of our literature—the immortalHumphrey Clinker.But with this exertion the feeble flame of the great novelist’s life slowly flickered out. His work was done, and nobly done. He had carved for himself an imperishable niche in the great Temple of Fame. His last words were spoken to his wife—‘All is well, my dear;’ and on the 21st October 1771, in the 52nd year of his age, TobiasGeorge Smollett laid down the burden of that life which had pressed so wearily upon him, and passed—within the Silence!He had the pleasure of seeingHumphrey Clinkerin its published form a day or two before his death. When the public learned that the hand which so often had delighted them in the past would now delight them no more, a mournful interest was exhibited in his last work. Edition after edition was exhausted. But what booted it to him, then, when the strife and the anguish as well as the exultation born of success were all over? ‘After labour cometh rest, and after strife the guerdon.’ Alas! too late the latter came to cheer him whose life had been one long–drawn–out epic of anguish from the cradle to the grave!Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have inherited the estate of Bonhill and an income of £1000 per annum, which in default of him passed to Mrs. Telfer, his sister, and her heirs. O the irony of fate! Alas! the thorn of apprehension which disturbed his dying pillow proved too true a dread. His wife was left in Leghorn in dire penury, until relieved by the charity of friends who werenotrelatives, and also by the proceeds of a theatrical performance given in her aid after some years by Mr. Graham of Gartmore. An indelible stain is it upon the Telfers and the Smolletts that they should have allowed the widow of their most distinguished relative to die dependent on the charity of strangers. But relatives are proverbially the hardest–hearted of potential benefactors when the day of trouble comes. Poor “Narcissa”! the lines of her life were not cast in pleasant places.Smollett was interred in the English cemetery at Leghorn, with the blue Mediterranean stretching in front of his last resting–place. Many are the pilgrims that journey to histomb, and as the years roll on they increase rather than diminish. A plain monument was erected by his wife over the remains, the Latin inscription on which was written by his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. At Bonhill, a splendid obelisk, over sixty feet high, was raised on the banks of the Leven, by his cousin James Smollett (a few months before his own death), the inscription being revised and corrected by Dr. Johnson.Dr. Moore, as the friend of Smollett, has preserved for us the appearance and portrait of the great novelist in the following description: “The person of Dr. Smollett was stout and well proportioned, his countenance engaging, his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. He was 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. Though few could penetrate with more acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook misconduct when attended by misfortune. Free from vanity, Smollett had a considerable share of pride and great sensibility; his passions were easily moved, and too impetuous when roused. He could not conceal his contempt of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain from proclaiming his indignation against every instance of oppression. He was of an intrepid, independent, imprudent disposition, equally incapable of deceit and adulation, and more disposed to cultivate the acquaintance of those he could serve than of those who could serve him.”Such being the character of the man, the key is obtained to the enigma of Smollet’s lack of political and social success. He was of too honest a nature to do the dirty work of the ‘Ministers’ of the time, amongst whom independenceof character was rated as a sin of the first magnitude. But in the hearts of the admirers of his literary works, Smollett will also live as one of the greatest of our countrymen—a man whose virtues are yearly becoming recognised in their true light, as readers realise he is one of the world’s great moral teachers, whose lessons are communicated by exhibiting the naked hideousness of vice. And so the star of his fame will shine more and yet more clearly unto the perfect day!
SMOLLETT A ‘SWEATER’—TRAVELS ABROAD—THE ADVENTURES OF AN ATOM—HUMPHREY CLINKER—LAST DAYS.
So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been slightly unsettled. Constitutionally of a nervously sensitive nature, excessive joy or sorrow had a thoroughly unhinging effect upon him. He had not the self–command requisite to look upon grief as one of those ills to which flesh is heir. In his estimation, everything affecting himself was in the superlative degree. Never were sorrows so overwhelming as his, he considered, and oftentimes he seriously mortified people by brusquely breaking in upon their anguish with the statement that they did not really know what grief meant in comparison with him.
After Elizabeth’s death, therefore, Smollett, entirely oblivious of his poor wife’s mental sufferings, seems to have abandoned himself to an excess of grief that seriously accelerated the progress of the maladies by which he was afflicted. Though he could not afford to stop work altogether, he appears from this date to have instituted a sort of literary factory, where works were turned out by the score. Smollett’s name was now so popular, that on a title–page it virtually meant success to the publication. He thereforecontracted the habit of undertaking far more work than any man single–handed could accomplish, but getting it executed at a reduced rate by those whom he retained in his employment. He appears to have kept them in food and clothing, and to have been in the main exceedingly kind to many a struggling author, who would not otherwise have obtained employment; but one cannot approve of methods like these, which degrade the noble profession of ‘man of letters’ into that of a literary task–master. Dr. Carlyle gives a description of Smollett’s relations to what ‘Jupiter’ called his ‘myrmidons,’ which, however, affords a somewhat one–sided picture of the novelist’s methods, though the date is scarcely correct. Smollett, although he had employed others to do his work for him when he found it to be too onerous, did not really institute his ‘literary factory’ until well on in the ‘sixties’ of the eighteenth century, when his health was beginning to fail. ‘Jupiter’ describes the ‘factory’ as in full swing in 1758–59. But as the chatty old clerical gossip wrote his Autobiography after his seventy–ninth year, and as many of his dates with respect to other matters have been proved incorrect, we may, without much injustice to the best of Scots unepiscopal bishops, ascribe to the mental feebleness of age an error which otherwise would affix a serious stigma on Smollett’s name. Though everylitterateurworth the name will reprobate such a blood–sucking method as literary ‘sweating,’ prosecuted though it has been by men to whom we owe so much as Smollett and Dumas (to say nothing of at least one ‘popular’ author in our own day who engages in the despicable practice), we would fain believe, in the former’s case, that it resulted from failing strength, and from the maddening consciousness of being obliged to leave his wife, if he died, dependent on strangers.
But let us to ‘Jupiter’:[9]‘Principal Robertson had never met Smollett (though he had seen him at the Select Club), 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 become a great man, and, being a humorist, 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 in which we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the authors were introduced, 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 surprise at Smollett’s polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity of his conversation. He had imagined that a man’s manners must bear a likeness to his books, and as Smollett had described so well the characters of ruffians and profligates, that he must of course resemble them.’
In addition to the pitiful lack of taste and good feeling in making a raree–show of wretchedness, and holding up the misery of the unfortunate authors to a curiosity that was worse than contempt, the whole incident exhibits the characters of Smollett, Carlyle, Robertson, and Home in an exceedingly unfavourable aspect—the first–named as glorifying himself as the Mæcenas of starving Grub Street quill–drivers, the others because they could entertain any other feeling than that of sympathy for honest talent in tatters!
In June 1763, Smollett’s health and spirits became alike so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed! Alas, poor Nancy! She pled with her obdurate husband for many a week before he consented to wind up his numberless projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of £1200 left to Mrs. Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That he left England with arrangements made whereby his ‘myrmidons’ were to forward their ‘copy’ to him, whithersoever he might be, goes without the saying. The booksellers, also—Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and others—all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who had done so much for them. But therein they did no more than their duty.
For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip,Travels through France and Italy: containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Antiquities, with a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett to friends at home; and in the first letter he remarks: ‘In gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.’ The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is perceptible in the following passage: ‘I am traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.’
Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it: ‘His letters afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain over the best disposition.’ Letters written under such circumstances should never have been published. In the exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes: ‘Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not the only people to whom Smollett gave offence: he exposed himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is one to think of a man who likened the snow–clad glories of the Alps to frosted sugar; who said of the famous Venusde Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, “I cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of character”; and who remarked of the Pantheon, “I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top”?’
The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of all others, should have remained silent—a man whose whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to reprehend in Smollett—Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of course, was the motive. The author ofTristram Shandycould never forgive the fact that the public preferredPeregrine Pickleto the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state of Smollett’s health, and how it would colour every estimate he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the world was the author ofTristram Shandyto have sat as moral or æsthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty sledge–hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill–natured critic! Sterne wrote: ‘The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “It is nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus Medicis,” replied I—for in passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I poppedupon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi.” He had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. “I’ll tell it,” said Smelfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”’ Now, though Smollett deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited above is not the manner in which such literary punishment should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter: ‘Be it said without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne’s writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was—
“Like a lusty winter,Frosty, but kindly.”’
Alas! not long now was the worn tenement of the great novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was known to be only a question of a year or two at most. Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ‘My poor Nancy; let me make the best use of the time for her.’ Constant rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drainedhis strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A premature break–up of the system, rather than the positive disease of consumption, numbered his days.
Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, with that keen insight into the future which often distinguishes the aged, said, ‘We’ll no’ be long parted, any way. If you go first, I’ll be close on your heels: if I lead the way, ye’ll no’ be far behind me, I’m thinking.’ And so it proved. Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew better. ‘The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,’ she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and get his health thoroughly established.
But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for theCritical Review, compiling travels, translating from French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature of the day—anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer.
Only two more works of any moment was he to live to accomplish—one, an indifferent production judged by his own high standard—the other, like the dying cygnet’s song in Grecian fable—the greatest and the last! In 1769 appearedThe History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols.12mo. This is a politico–social satire, wherein are represented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till the dissolution of Lord Chatham’s administration in 1762, but under the thin veil of Japanese names. GeorgeIII.was consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been to–day an integral part of the Empire, which would have feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short–sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to be evolved.The History of an Atomwas successful, but is to–day the portion of Smollett’s writings with which we could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity.
Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to all, that if Smollett’s life was to be preserved, he must henceforth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered his existence during the past few years, and faction was jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. His only political friends neglected him who had fought so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their ingratitude.
When the final verdict was given, Smollett endeavoured to obtain some consulship abroad, that would have lessened his labours. He was still dependent on his pen for dailybread. Almost despairingly he implored even his political enemies to help him to some means whereby he might demit some portion of his killing work. But his ‘noble’ friends were all deaf. Lord Shelburne was applied to, but stated the consulships at Nice and Leghorn were already promised to some of his own political creatures. One man only stood his friend; one man only, and he an opponent albeit a countryman, did his best for Smollett, but, alas! unavailingly. All honour to David Hume the historian, then Under Secretary of State! In the end the dying novelist was disappointed at all points. He had to go abroad depending on the staff that had supplied him with bread all through the long years until now—and which alone would not now fail him—his pen!
Smollett left England in December 1768, and proceeded to LeghornviaLucca and Pisa. Here he settled at Monte Nova, a little township situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. Dr. Armstrong, his friend and countryman, had secured for him a beautiful villa on the outskirts of the village. Here he gradually grew weaker, but was tended with the utmost devotion by his wife, and some of the English families in the neighbourhood. Here, too, he penned the greatest of his novels, the work that for its subtle insight into human nature, its keen and incisive studies of character, its delightful humour, its matchlessbonhomieand raciness, takes rank amidst the treasured classics of our literature—the immortalHumphrey Clinker.
But with this exertion the feeble flame of the great novelist’s life slowly flickered out. His work was done, and nobly done. He had carved for himself an imperishable niche in the great Temple of Fame. His last words were spoken to his wife—‘All is well, my dear;’ and on the 21st October 1771, in the 52nd year of his age, TobiasGeorge Smollett laid down the burden of that life which had pressed so wearily upon him, and passed—within the Silence!
He had the pleasure of seeingHumphrey Clinkerin its published form a day or two before his death. When the public learned that the hand which so often had delighted them in the past would now delight them no more, a mournful interest was exhibited in his last work. Edition after edition was exhausted. But what booted it to him, then, when the strife and the anguish as well as the exultation born of success were all over? ‘After labour cometh rest, and after strife the guerdon.’ Alas! too late the latter came to cheer him whose life had been one long–drawn–out epic of anguish from the cradle to the grave!
Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have inherited the estate of Bonhill and an income of £1000 per annum, which in default of him passed to Mrs. Telfer, his sister, and her heirs. O the irony of fate! Alas! the thorn of apprehension which disturbed his dying pillow proved too true a dread. His wife was left in Leghorn in dire penury, until relieved by the charity of friends who werenotrelatives, and also by the proceeds of a theatrical performance given in her aid after some years by Mr. Graham of Gartmore. An indelible stain is it upon the Telfers and the Smolletts that they should have allowed the widow of their most distinguished relative to die dependent on the charity of strangers. But relatives are proverbially the hardest–hearted of potential benefactors when the day of trouble comes. Poor “Narcissa”! the lines of her life were not cast in pleasant places.
Smollett was interred in the English cemetery at Leghorn, with the blue Mediterranean stretching in front of his last resting–place. Many are the pilgrims that journey to histomb, and as the years roll on they increase rather than diminish. A plain monument was erected by his wife over the remains, the Latin inscription on which was written by his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. At Bonhill, a splendid obelisk, over sixty feet high, was raised on the banks of the Leven, by his cousin James Smollett (a few months before his own death), the inscription being revised and corrected by Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Moore, as the friend of Smollett, has preserved for us the appearance and portrait of the great novelist in the following description: “The person of Dr. Smollett was stout and well proportioned, his countenance engaging, his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. He was 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. Though few could penetrate with more acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook misconduct when attended by misfortune. Free from vanity, Smollett had a considerable share of pride and great sensibility; his passions were easily moved, and too impetuous when roused. He could not conceal his contempt of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain from proclaiming his indignation against every instance of oppression. He was of an intrepid, independent, imprudent disposition, equally incapable of deceit and adulation, and more disposed to cultivate the acquaintance of those he could serve than of those who could serve him.”
Such being the character of the man, the key is obtained to the enigma of Smollet’s lack of political and social success. He was of too honest a nature to do the dirty work of the ‘Ministers’ of the time, amongst whom independenceof character was rated as a sin of the first magnitude. But in the hearts of the admirers of his literary works, Smollett will also live as one of the greatest of our countrymen—a man whose virtues are yearly becoming recognised in their true light, as readers realise he is one of the world’s great moral teachers, whose lessons are communicated by exhibiting the naked hideousness of vice. And so the star of his fame will shine more and yet more clearly unto the perfect day!
CHAPTER XSMOLLETT AS A NOVELISTSmollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’ In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. The grounds for such a comparison do not exist, save in the initial fact that all three wrote novels!Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. Nothing missed his ‘inevitable eye,’ either in a situation, an incident, or a landscape. If he had not Fielding’s keen power of vision into the mental and moral characteristics of his fellow–men, he had twice his aptness of objective photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance or of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to forget the humorous bearings of any experience through which he had passed, or of which he had learned. Theaffaire de cœurwith Melinda inRoderick Random, the challenge and arrest through the affection of Strap, also the inimitable ‘banquet after the manner of the ancients’ inPeregrine Pickle, were described from incidents occurring in Smollett’s own history. To few writers has the faculty been given in measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes he was describing upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, whence he transferred them to his pages. The naturalness of setting in the case of all the incidents is so marked, and stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded in theMemoirs of a Lady of Quality(published inPeregrine Pickle), that one scarcely knows which to admire most—the originality of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and impressiveness of the painter’s reproduction.Smollett’s strength lay in his great power of self–restraint. He knew what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept himself within the limits of his imaginative ability. He could very easily have made either Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist, sighing after his mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and fears and ups and downs of the knights–errant of love. But therein he would have trenched upon Richardson’s province, and placed himself in a decidedly unfavourable comparison with the author ofPamelaandClarissa Harlowe. He might have developed a splendid character–study out of the colossal Borgia–like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom, who can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime which possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of Shakespeare’s early days, Aaron inTitus Andronicus, who, when dying, curses the world with the words—‘If one good deed in all my life I did,I do repent it from my very soul.’But had he done so, he would have entered into direct competition with Fielding; a competition he knew he was unfitted to support. But in his own department he wassupreme. In fertility of invention and apt adaptation of means to end he had no rival. His novels present one bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes, imprisonments, love–makings, and what not, until the mind positively becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident provided for it. A less profound genius than Smollett would in all probability have worn itself out in a vain attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the principle ‘never venture, never win.’ Smollett was a surer critic, on this point at least, than many of his friends, who were continually urging him to attempt something in the mode of Fielding. ‘There is but one husbandman can reap that field,’ he replied. He knew what hecoulddo and what hecould notdo, and therein, as has been said, lay his strength.Viewing his novels as a whole,—Roderick Random,Peregrine Pickle,Ferdinand Count Fathom,Launcelot Greaves,The Adventures of an Atom, andHumphrey Clinker,—the first quality which strikes a critical reader is the family likeness existing between all the leading characters. Dissimilar though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Peregrine Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, and Lismahago in what may be termed his nobler qualities, there is nevertheless in all that happy–go–lucky carelessness, that supreme indifference to consequences, that courage that never flinches from the penalties of its own misdeeds, but accepts them without a murmur—in a word, abonhomiediversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in no other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that sentimental, melodramatic, watery ‘gush’ which the taste of last century denominated pathos—the sort of thing Dickens long after described in the phrase ‘drawing tears from hiseyes and a handkerchief from his pocket’; but of that quality there is not the faintest trace in Smollett. If anything, his characters are too callous, too fond of the rough–and–tumble Tom–and–Jerry life in which their creator so perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there a curve, heightening the light in one place, deepening the shading in another, never picturing an incident or a trait without some definite end to be served in perfecting the final portrait. Smollett never takes time for such microscopic character studies. He is a veritable pen–and–ink draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he sketches, through the agency of incident, the outlines of his characters, filling in these outlines with but few subsidiary details regarding the feelings and moral impulses of his creations. For such he has neither the time nor the space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of the setting of the story and study them apart, paying no heed to anything affecting the other personages, and he will see at once how completely Smollett relied on incident to do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings of his heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better story–teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, Smollett the more vigorous painter of contemporary manners. Further, let the reader carefully study Lovelace in Richardson’sClarissa Harlowe, Blifil in Fielding’s novel ofTom Jones, and Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse method of the three great novelists. Richardson builds up what might be called the ‘architectonic’ of the creation by a series of great scenes wherein dialogue plays the greatest part. Lovelace has all the light–hearted villainy of a man towhom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and whose standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richardson does everything by square and rule. He expends at the outset a wealth of ingenuity in portraying the most insignificant qualities of Lovelace’s nature. And so fully does he make us acquainted with his nature, that at the end of the novel we know in reality very little more of him than we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand, winds his way into the very heart of a character, ‘like a serpent round its prey,’ as Goldsmith said of Burke’s treatment of a subject in conversation. Every chapter gives us some addition to the creation, even to the very close of the novel. But when that is reached, the great synthesis is complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master Blifil stands pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is contemptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of Ferdinand Count Fathom the initial description of the character is reduced to a minimum. Everything is left to the effect produced by incident. All Fathom’s pitilessness, his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his colossal selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader’s own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not formally labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson and Fielding the author is constantly present in his creation. So with Smollett, he is ever in evidence. None of them attain that superb art of Walter Scott, who simply effaces himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says: ‘He sits like a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights to the view; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria the author himself never appears to take part with his characters. It is the perfection of art to conceal art, and this is here done so completely, that, while it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the meritof the author. As he does not thrust himself into the foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.’By the critical student closely attentive to the development of Smollett’s genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that in the gallery of his characters, chronologically considered, there is a definitely progressive growth or increase in the power wherewith he limned character. Bearing in mind our initial position, that in Smollett’s art incident was the prime element, and the delineation of character subordinate to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of circumstance, I would invite attention to the following analysis, as being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be deduced from a patient, faithful, and impartial study of the personages named. My contention is that in the character sequence we have a series of ascending psychologic gradations, each one presenting features of greater complexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more clearly the value of a system in that concatenation of event which influenced so intimately his personages.Roderick Randomis little else than theGil Blasof Le Sage Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellentLazarillo de Tormesof Hurtado de Mendoza. In his Preface to the novel Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness to French and Spanish fiction, and announces his conviction of the superiority of the novel of circumstance over all others.Roderick Random, therefore, as a novel consists of a succession of incidents, some startling, some improbable, some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative affinity to each other. The book is a record of the ‘adventures’ of the hero from his cradle to his marriage. As in the case of all such books, the peg whereon the incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose anddisjointed, happy–go–lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick is only a big schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal passions, far, very far from being a saint, yet as far from being an irreclaimable sinner. He is the plaything of his passions, carried like a straw on the stream of circumstance. He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it woe, be it good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. He treats his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his fidelity, worse than indifferently. He is not by any means faithful, and certainly not very respectful, to his lady–love, Narcissa; nay, he even takes the discovery of his long–lost father—a circumstance materially altering his social station—quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was the spirit incarnate of the cold–blooded, coarse–fibred, religionless eighteenth century—a century wherein virtue was perpetually on the lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts of its men, a century wherein its women were colourless puppets, without true individuality or definite aims, but oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism to escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true culture. Roderick Random as a creation was a purely adventitious one, resulting from the fortuitous concourse of incidents. How the character was to shape itself, morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator little, provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, and the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. Incidents were piled up, whether tending to heighten the effect of thedramatis personæ, or not. There was no conservation of material, no wise economy, no evidence of careful selection. Prodigality and profusion were everywhere present, with the signs of youth and inexperiencewrit large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick Random, critically estimated as a work of art, is little better than Lobeyra’s Amadis de Gaul, a portrait limned wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas without premeditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of character contemporaneously with the evolution of event. The character has gathered no wisdom during its course. It is represented to us in quite as immature a state at the end of the story as at the beginning. There is a heartlessness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive is this phase of the hero’s character; nay, the novel is only saved from being as darkly shaded and as morally repellent as Count Fathom, by the pathetic doglike fidelity of poor Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of nature in a chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book.From the criticisms onRoderick Random, Smollett learned many lessons. He noted that, though his free and easy method of letting character shape itself through the medium of incident had its advantages, these were liable to be counterbalanced unless the chain of incident was so forged that each link would be related to the leading characters of the novel, so as to promote their development and tend to fill in the bare black and white outlines by some distinguishing trait, mannerism, or eccentricity. InPeregrine Pickle, therefore, the characters are seen to be more vertebrate. They are no longer the stalking lay figures of the first novel. Albeit Peregrine is only Roderick under another name, and endowed with a year or two more of experience and sense,—the subtle differentiation of personages visible inHumphrey Clinkerhaving yet to be learned,—there is a marked improvement in thetechniqueof the novel. The chain of incident is every whit as varied, the events as events are more stirring and startling than in the first novel, but there is now the attempt—though as yet but an attempt—to subject the unflagging flow of incident to an artistic adaptation towards definite ends. Incident is no longer piled on incident regardless of the fact whether it tend to advance the development of the characters or not. Then Smollett has learned the value of contrast in character–painting. Peregrine is contrasted with such humorous creations as Godfrey Gauntlet, Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Bo’sun Tom Pipes. The virtue of relative proportion among his characters according to their ratio of importance in influencing the story, though still faulty, has been carefully studied. Peregrine therefore is supreme as hero. There is no Strap to dispute the honours with him, and as a portrait he is more consistent than in the case of Roderick. Though the same callous indifference to morality is manifest, though the likeness to Lazarillo de Tormes is even more patent in this latter creation than in the former, though the same polite villainy passes current under the name of gallantry, the same cheap appreciation of female honour,—witness that degrading scene so reprobated by Sir Walter Scott, where Peregrine assails Emilia Gauntlet’s chastity,—the hero is not so glaring a moral imbecile as Roderick. He has gleams of better things. But, as in the former novel so in the latter, the noblest character of the book is the foil or contrast to Peregrine—Godfrey Gauntlet, on whom Smollett seems to lavish all his powers.Then comesFerdinand Count Fathom, indicating a still further advance in thetechniqueof novel–writing. In this work the stage is not so crowded as inRoderick RandomandPeregrine Pickle. The whole interest centresin the career of crime of this archfiend, this pitiless Nero, Iago, and Cæsar Borgia in one. A more terrible picture of human depravity has never been drawn unless inOthelloandTitus Andronicus. But Smollett had now learned the lesson of the conservation of imaginative power. There are no needless incidents in this novel. Everyone reveals the character of the hero in a new light. Relative proportion, differentiation, and contrast have all been carefully studied. Notwithstanding our loathing of crimes so unspeakable, notwithstanding our hatred of animalism so unbridled as would sacrifice the trustful Monimia to his base passions, a sort of sneaking sympathy with Fathom begins to find entrance into the breast. As inParadise Lostone feels a sorrow for Satan’s position after his magnificent resistance to the Almighty, so here the same sentiment finds place. One hopes Fathom may have time given him wherein to repent. But Smollett was now too consummate an artist for that concession to sentimentalism. InRoderick Randomhe might have committed such an artistic mistake. Not now. Fathom receives retributive justice, and only repents when he has expiated to the uttermost his sins and wrong–doings.Passing bySir Launcelot GreavesandThe History of an Atomas outside the pale of our criticism, inasmuch as they were written when he was worried and distracted with other matters, besides being in wretched health, so that they are unworthy of his genius, we come to the consideration of Matthew Bramble and Lieutenant Lismahago inHumphrey Clinker. They are undoubtedly the two greatest characters in the Smollett gallery of imaginative portraits. They must be viewed together. To separate them is to lose the reflected lustre they cast by contrast on each other. Likenesses many and important they have. Both aresufferers from the world’s fickle changes. Both are weary and irritated with society’s meannesses and petty falsehoods. Both are testy, tetchy, and prickly–tempered. But how truly men! Smollett had now reached the meridian of his powers. He realised now that in a great novel incident and the delineation of character must occupy co–ordinate positions. To assign excessive predominance to either, is to mar the ultimate effect. Therefore inHumphrey Clinker, while still revelling in inexhaustible variety of incident, Smollett assigns to the synthesis of character its proper place. In place of portraying the characters himself, he adopted the course, so favoured by his great rival Richardson, and long years after to be employed with such rare effect by Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray, of achieving the evolution of character through the medium of letters, a mutual analysis as well as a distinctive synthesis. Risky though the expedient was, for it demanded a man of the highest genius to make the letters popular, in Smollett’s hands it proved eminently successful. We accordingly have Matthew Bramble alternately described by himself and Jerry Melford, each giving varying phases of the same kindly, dogmatic, generously obstinate, and wholly noble–hearted fellow. Lismahago’s character, besides being drawn by the two above–named fellow–travellers in that expedition to Scotland wherein Humphrey Clinker was the footman and hero, has the blanks in the portrait filled in by Miss Tabitha Bramble, the bitter–sweet spinster whom he afterwards married, and the inimitably delightful lady’s–maid, Winnifred Jenkins. More highly finished pictures could scarcely be desired. Side by side with Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty and Thackeray’s Esmond, Lismahago may assuredly be placed, while Matthew Bramble falls little short, in completeness of details, ofJonathan Oldbuck in theAntiquary. Yet Bramble is still Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle purged of their faults and follies, and with the experience of years upon them. We realise that Bramble possesses all their shortcomings, albeit held in check by his strong good sense, while they potentially had all his virtues, though the fever of youth i’ the blood obscured them for the nonce. A noble gallery do these five characters compose. If Fathom be the Cain or the Esau of the company, he has many of the family features to show to what race he belongs.In one imaginative type Smollett has never been approached as a creator, to wit, in his delineation of British seamen. Captain Marryat exhibits a greater knowledge of nautical affairs than Smollett, but nothing in the younger novelist quite touches the racy humour of Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Bowling, Hatchway, and Pipes. David Hannay, in his introduction toJaphet in Search of a Father, says: ‘Captain Savage of theDiomede, Captain M—— of theKing’s Own, Captain Hector Maclean inJacob Faithful, Terence O’Brien, the mate Martin, the midshipman Gascoigne, Thomas Saunders the boatswain’s mate, and Swinburne the quartermaster, are beyond all question not less lifelike portraits of the officers and men of the navy than Trunnion and Bowling, Pipes and Hatchway. In one respect Marryat had an inevitable advantage over his predecessor. Smollett never shows us the seaman at his work. He could not, because he did not know it sufficiently well to understand it himself.’ That is perfectly true. But, on the other hand, Marryat’s intimate knowledge was often a hindrance to his art. It led him to inflict the minutiæ of the service on his readers more than was needful. Hence the reason why some parts of Marryat’s books are decidedly tiresome. Smollett’s arenever so. His sense of artistic proportion was finer than Marryat’s, and he avoided the pitfall whereinto the other fell. As a delineator of the nautical character, Mr. Clark Russell is the greatest we have had since Smollett, and in him the latter finds his most dangerous rival. Yet, if Mr. Russell has equalled his master in many other respects, it is doubtful if he has quite reached the high–water mark of Commodore Trunnion and Lismahago.Finally, Smollett’s women are deserving of a word. Sainte Beuve said he judged a novelist’s powers by the manner in which he drew his female characters. If so, Smollett would not have excited much sympathy in the mind of the brilliant author of theCauseries du Lundi. His women are of varying excellence. Narcissa inRoderick Randomand Emilia inPeregrine Pickleare only sweet dolls. Until his closing years he could not differentiate between puling sentimentality and piquancy. Into the charming perversity, the delightful contradictoriness, that often make up for us one–half the attractiveness of the female character, he could not enter. To rise to the height of spiritual insight that was requisite to conceive and execute a Di Vernon, an Ethel Newcome, or a Rose Vincy, was for him impossible, simply because he could not realise in his earlier years of authorship that women are the equals, not the inferiors of man. The hapless Miss Williams inRoderick Randomexhibits this feeling on the part of Smollett. She was nobility itself in character, yet she was made over to Strap. One of the finest of his creations is the hapless Monimia inCount Fathom. Tenderness, purity, grace, and beauty are all united in her. She falls, it is true, but her fall left her virtue unimpugned, seeing that her betrayer resorted to means as cruel as they were irresistible to accomplish his diabolic purpose. Monimiaoccupies a pedestal apart, but, she excepted, the two most delightful creations in all his works are those inHumphrey Clinker, Tabitha Bramble and Winnifred Jenkins. Lydia Melford is too milk–and–waterish, but the two first–named are drawn with masterly precision and force. Tabitha Bramble is a capital portrait of the soured, disappointed old maid, whose lover had died long before, but to whose memory she had been ever faithful—a woman whose nature is only encrusted with prejudice, not inter–penetrated by it, so that we may justly hope that, under the loving care of Lieutenant Lismahago, her frigidity may thaw, and that in matrimony she may discover the world not to be so very bad after all. Winnifred Jenkins is the prototype of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’sRivals, and is infinitely more amusing. All the vanity, self–assertiveness, and jealousy of a small mind, conjointly with the love of appearing to move in a higher circle of society than she really does, are admirably sketched, while her misappropriate use of the language of that circle is most felicitously rendered. The portrait is Smollett’s best, and no touch is finer than Winnifred’s conduct in the menagerie. Let her speak for herself. ‘Last week I went with mistress to the Tower to see the crowns and wild beastis. There was a monstracious lion with teeth half a quarter long, and a gentleman bid me not go near him if I wasn’t a maid, being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens. Now I had no mind to go near him, for I cannot abide such dangerous honeymils, not I—but mistress would go, and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing that I tho’t he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I’ll go death upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firgkin as the child unborn; and therefore either the gentleman told a phib, orthe lion ought to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness against his neighbour.’ Tabitha Bramble and Win Jenkins are those two in Smollett’s gallery of fiction which the world will not willingly let die.Such, then, is Smollett as a novelist—the great master of incident and humorous narration, the painter of the faults, foibles, and eccentricities of his fellow–men. In his own sphere he was unrivalled, and he in nothing showed more saliently his good sense than by refusing to attempt works for which he knew he was both by temperament and training unfitted. I cannot quite agree with Professor Saintsbury’s view in his charming and sympathetic Life of Smollett, prefixed to what bids fair to be the standard edition of his works.[10]‘The only one of the deeper and higher passions which seems to have stirred Smollett was patriotism, in which a Scot rarely fails, unless he is an utter gaby or an utter scoundrel.’ Does not the worthy Professor, following the popular definition, fail to differentiate between anemotionand apassion. In depicting the passions, Smollett, I grant, was singularly deficient; in such emotions as patriotism, sympathy with the oppressed, and a pure devotion to the cause of truth, he showed himself a man whose heart was permeated with the warmest and deepest enthusiasm.
SMOLLETT AS A NOVELIST
Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’ In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. The grounds for such a comparison do not exist, save in the initial fact that all three wrote novels!
Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. Nothing missed his ‘inevitable eye,’ either in a situation, an incident, or a landscape. If he had not Fielding’s keen power of vision into the mental and moral characteristics of his fellow–men, he had twice his aptness of objective photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance or of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to forget the humorous bearings of any experience through which he had passed, or of which he had learned. Theaffaire de cœurwith Melinda inRoderick Random, the challenge and arrest through the affection of Strap, also the inimitable ‘banquet after the manner of the ancients’ inPeregrine Pickle, were described from incidents occurring in Smollett’s own history. To few writers has the faculty been given in measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes he was describing upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, whence he transferred them to his pages. The naturalness of setting in the case of all the incidents is so marked, and stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded in theMemoirs of a Lady of Quality(published inPeregrine Pickle), that one scarcely knows which to admire most—the originality of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and impressiveness of the painter’s reproduction.
Smollett’s strength lay in his great power of self–restraint. He knew what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept himself within the limits of his imaginative ability. He could very easily have made either Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist, sighing after his mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and fears and ups and downs of the knights–errant of love. But therein he would have trenched upon Richardson’s province, and placed himself in a decidedly unfavourable comparison with the author ofPamelaandClarissa Harlowe. He might have developed a splendid character–study out of the colossal Borgia–like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom, who can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime which possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of Shakespeare’s early days, Aaron inTitus Andronicus, who, when dying, curses the world with the words—
‘If one good deed in all my life I did,I do repent it from my very soul.’
But had he done so, he would have entered into direct competition with Fielding; a competition he knew he was unfitted to support. But in his own department he wassupreme. In fertility of invention and apt adaptation of means to end he had no rival. His novels present one bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes, imprisonments, love–makings, and what not, until the mind positively becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident provided for it. A less profound genius than Smollett would in all probability have worn itself out in a vain attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the principle ‘never venture, never win.’ Smollett was a surer critic, on this point at least, than many of his friends, who were continually urging him to attempt something in the mode of Fielding. ‘There is but one husbandman can reap that field,’ he replied. He knew what hecoulddo and what hecould notdo, and therein, as has been said, lay his strength.
Viewing his novels as a whole,—Roderick Random,Peregrine Pickle,Ferdinand Count Fathom,Launcelot Greaves,The Adventures of an Atom, andHumphrey Clinker,—the first quality which strikes a critical reader is the family likeness existing between all the leading characters. Dissimilar though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Peregrine Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, and Lismahago in what may be termed his nobler qualities, there is nevertheless in all that happy–go–lucky carelessness, that supreme indifference to consequences, that courage that never flinches from the penalties of its own misdeeds, but accepts them without a murmur—in a word, abonhomiediversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in no other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that sentimental, melodramatic, watery ‘gush’ which the taste of last century denominated pathos—the sort of thing Dickens long after described in the phrase ‘drawing tears from hiseyes and a handkerchief from his pocket’; but of that quality there is not the faintest trace in Smollett. If anything, his characters are too callous, too fond of the rough–and–tumble Tom–and–Jerry life in which their creator so perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there a curve, heightening the light in one place, deepening the shading in another, never picturing an incident or a trait without some definite end to be served in perfecting the final portrait. Smollett never takes time for such microscopic character studies. He is a veritable pen–and–ink draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he sketches, through the agency of incident, the outlines of his characters, filling in these outlines with but few subsidiary details regarding the feelings and moral impulses of his creations. For such he has neither the time nor the space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of the setting of the story and study them apart, paying no heed to anything affecting the other personages, and he will see at once how completely Smollett relied on incident to do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings of his heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better story–teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, Smollett the more vigorous painter of contemporary manners. Further, let the reader carefully study Lovelace in Richardson’sClarissa Harlowe, Blifil in Fielding’s novel ofTom Jones, and Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse method of the three great novelists. Richardson builds up what might be called the ‘architectonic’ of the creation by a series of great scenes wherein dialogue plays the greatest part. Lovelace has all the light–hearted villainy of a man towhom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and whose standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richardson does everything by square and rule. He expends at the outset a wealth of ingenuity in portraying the most insignificant qualities of Lovelace’s nature. And so fully does he make us acquainted with his nature, that at the end of the novel we know in reality very little more of him than we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand, winds his way into the very heart of a character, ‘like a serpent round its prey,’ as Goldsmith said of Burke’s treatment of a subject in conversation. Every chapter gives us some addition to the creation, even to the very close of the novel. But when that is reached, the great synthesis is complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master Blifil stands pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is contemptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of Ferdinand Count Fathom the initial description of the character is reduced to a minimum. Everything is left to the effect produced by incident. All Fathom’s pitilessness, his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his colossal selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader’s own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not formally labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson and Fielding the author is constantly present in his creation. So with Smollett, he is ever in evidence. None of them attain that superb art of Walter Scott, who simply effaces himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says: ‘He sits like a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights to the view; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria the author himself never appears to take part with his characters. It is the perfection of art to conceal art, and this is here done so completely, that, while it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the meritof the author. As he does not thrust himself into the foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.’
By the critical student closely attentive to the development of Smollett’s genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that in the gallery of his characters, chronologically considered, there is a definitely progressive growth or increase in the power wherewith he limned character. Bearing in mind our initial position, that in Smollett’s art incident was the prime element, and the delineation of character subordinate to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of circumstance, I would invite attention to the following analysis, as being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be deduced from a patient, faithful, and impartial study of the personages named. My contention is that in the character sequence we have a series of ascending psychologic gradations, each one presenting features of greater complexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more clearly the value of a system in that concatenation of event which influenced so intimately his personages.
Roderick Randomis little else than theGil Blasof Le Sage Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellentLazarillo de Tormesof Hurtado de Mendoza. In his Preface to the novel Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness to French and Spanish fiction, and announces his conviction of the superiority of the novel of circumstance over all others.Roderick Random, therefore, as a novel consists of a succession of incidents, some startling, some improbable, some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative affinity to each other. The book is a record of the ‘adventures’ of the hero from his cradle to his marriage. As in the case of all such books, the peg whereon the incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose anddisjointed, happy–go–lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick is only a big schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal passions, far, very far from being a saint, yet as far from being an irreclaimable sinner. He is the plaything of his passions, carried like a straw on the stream of circumstance. He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it woe, be it good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. He treats his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his fidelity, worse than indifferently. He is not by any means faithful, and certainly not very respectful, to his lady–love, Narcissa; nay, he even takes the discovery of his long–lost father—a circumstance materially altering his social station—quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was the spirit incarnate of the cold–blooded, coarse–fibred, religionless eighteenth century—a century wherein virtue was perpetually on the lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts of its men, a century wherein its women were colourless puppets, without true individuality or definite aims, but oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism to escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true culture. Roderick Random as a creation was a purely adventitious one, resulting from the fortuitous concourse of incidents. How the character was to shape itself, morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator little, provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, and the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. Incidents were piled up, whether tending to heighten the effect of thedramatis personæ, or not. There was no conservation of material, no wise economy, no evidence of careful selection. Prodigality and profusion were everywhere present, with the signs of youth and inexperiencewrit large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick Random, critically estimated as a work of art, is little better than Lobeyra’s Amadis de Gaul, a portrait limned wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas without premeditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of character contemporaneously with the evolution of event. The character has gathered no wisdom during its course. It is represented to us in quite as immature a state at the end of the story as at the beginning. There is a heartlessness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive is this phase of the hero’s character; nay, the novel is only saved from being as darkly shaded and as morally repellent as Count Fathom, by the pathetic doglike fidelity of poor Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of nature in a chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book.
From the criticisms onRoderick Random, Smollett learned many lessons. He noted that, though his free and easy method of letting character shape itself through the medium of incident had its advantages, these were liable to be counterbalanced unless the chain of incident was so forged that each link would be related to the leading characters of the novel, so as to promote their development and tend to fill in the bare black and white outlines by some distinguishing trait, mannerism, or eccentricity. InPeregrine Pickle, therefore, the characters are seen to be more vertebrate. They are no longer the stalking lay figures of the first novel. Albeit Peregrine is only Roderick under another name, and endowed with a year or two more of experience and sense,—the subtle differentiation of personages visible inHumphrey Clinkerhaving yet to be learned,—there is a marked improvement in thetechniqueof the novel. The chain of incident is every whit as varied, the events as events are more stirring and startling than in the first novel, but there is now the attempt—though as yet but an attempt—to subject the unflagging flow of incident to an artistic adaptation towards definite ends. Incident is no longer piled on incident regardless of the fact whether it tend to advance the development of the characters or not. Then Smollett has learned the value of contrast in character–painting. Peregrine is contrasted with such humorous creations as Godfrey Gauntlet, Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Bo’sun Tom Pipes. The virtue of relative proportion among his characters according to their ratio of importance in influencing the story, though still faulty, has been carefully studied. Peregrine therefore is supreme as hero. There is no Strap to dispute the honours with him, and as a portrait he is more consistent than in the case of Roderick. Though the same callous indifference to morality is manifest, though the likeness to Lazarillo de Tormes is even more patent in this latter creation than in the former, though the same polite villainy passes current under the name of gallantry, the same cheap appreciation of female honour,—witness that degrading scene so reprobated by Sir Walter Scott, where Peregrine assails Emilia Gauntlet’s chastity,—the hero is not so glaring a moral imbecile as Roderick. He has gleams of better things. But, as in the former novel so in the latter, the noblest character of the book is the foil or contrast to Peregrine—Godfrey Gauntlet, on whom Smollett seems to lavish all his powers.
Then comesFerdinand Count Fathom, indicating a still further advance in thetechniqueof novel–writing. In this work the stage is not so crowded as inRoderick RandomandPeregrine Pickle. The whole interest centresin the career of crime of this archfiend, this pitiless Nero, Iago, and Cæsar Borgia in one. A more terrible picture of human depravity has never been drawn unless inOthelloandTitus Andronicus. But Smollett had now learned the lesson of the conservation of imaginative power. There are no needless incidents in this novel. Everyone reveals the character of the hero in a new light. Relative proportion, differentiation, and contrast have all been carefully studied. Notwithstanding our loathing of crimes so unspeakable, notwithstanding our hatred of animalism so unbridled as would sacrifice the trustful Monimia to his base passions, a sort of sneaking sympathy with Fathom begins to find entrance into the breast. As inParadise Lostone feels a sorrow for Satan’s position after his magnificent resistance to the Almighty, so here the same sentiment finds place. One hopes Fathom may have time given him wherein to repent. But Smollett was now too consummate an artist for that concession to sentimentalism. InRoderick Randomhe might have committed such an artistic mistake. Not now. Fathom receives retributive justice, and only repents when he has expiated to the uttermost his sins and wrong–doings.
Passing bySir Launcelot GreavesandThe History of an Atomas outside the pale of our criticism, inasmuch as they were written when he was worried and distracted with other matters, besides being in wretched health, so that they are unworthy of his genius, we come to the consideration of Matthew Bramble and Lieutenant Lismahago inHumphrey Clinker. They are undoubtedly the two greatest characters in the Smollett gallery of imaginative portraits. They must be viewed together. To separate them is to lose the reflected lustre they cast by contrast on each other. Likenesses many and important they have. Both aresufferers from the world’s fickle changes. Both are weary and irritated with society’s meannesses and petty falsehoods. Both are testy, tetchy, and prickly–tempered. But how truly men! Smollett had now reached the meridian of his powers. He realised now that in a great novel incident and the delineation of character must occupy co–ordinate positions. To assign excessive predominance to either, is to mar the ultimate effect. Therefore inHumphrey Clinker, while still revelling in inexhaustible variety of incident, Smollett assigns to the synthesis of character its proper place. In place of portraying the characters himself, he adopted the course, so favoured by his great rival Richardson, and long years after to be employed with such rare effect by Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray, of achieving the evolution of character through the medium of letters, a mutual analysis as well as a distinctive synthesis. Risky though the expedient was, for it demanded a man of the highest genius to make the letters popular, in Smollett’s hands it proved eminently successful. We accordingly have Matthew Bramble alternately described by himself and Jerry Melford, each giving varying phases of the same kindly, dogmatic, generously obstinate, and wholly noble–hearted fellow. Lismahago’s character, besides being drawn by the two above–named fellow–travellers in that expedition to Scotland wherein Humphrey Clinker was the footman and hero, has the blanks in the portrait filled in by Miss Tabitha Bramble, the bitter–sweet spinster whom he afterwards married, and the inimitably delightful lady’s–maid, Winnifred Jenkins. More highly finished pictures could scarcely be desired. Side by side with Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty and Thackeray’s Esmond, Lismahago may assuredly be placed, while Matthew Bramble falls little short, in completeness of details, ofJonathan Oldbuck in theAntiquary. Yet Bramble is still Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle purged of their faults and follies, and with the experience of years upon them. We realise that Bramble possesses all their shortcomings, albeit held in check by his strong good sense, while they potentially had all his virtues, though the fever of youth i’ the blood obscured them for the nonce. A noble gallery do these five characters compose. If Fathom be the Cain or the Esau of the company, he has many of the family features to show to what race he belongs.
In one imaginative type Smollett has never been approached as a creator, to wit, in his delineation of British seamen. Captain Marryat exhibits a greater knowledge of nautical affairs than Smollett, but nothing in the younger novelist quite touches the racy humour of Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Bowling, Hatchway, and Pipes. David Hannay, in his introduction toJaphet in Search of a Father, says: ‘Captain Savage of theDiomede, Captain M—— of theKing’s Own, Captain Hector Maclean inJacob Faithful, Terence O’Brien, the mate Martin, the midshipman Gascoigne, Thomas Saunders the boatswain’s mate, and Swinburne the quartermaster, are beyond all question not less lifelike portraits of the officers and men of the navy than Trunnion and Bowling, Pipes and Hatchway. In one respect Marryat had an inevitable advantage over his predecessor. Smollett never shows us the seaman at his work. He could not, because he did not know it sufficiently well to understand it himself.’ That is perfectly true. But, on the other hand, Marryat’s intimate knowledge was often a hindrance to his art. It led him to inflict the minutiæ of the service on his readers more than was needful. Hence the reason why some parts of Marryat’s books are decidedly tiresome. Smollett’s arenever so. His sense of artistic proportion was finer than Marryat’s, and he avoided the pitfall whereinto the other fell. As a delineator of the nautical character, Mr. Clark Russell is the greatest we have had since Smollett, and in him the latter finds his most dangerous rival. Yet, if Mr. Russell has equalled his master in many other respects, it is doubtful if he has quite reached the high–water mark of Commodore Trunnion and Lismahago.
Finally, Smollett’s women are deserving of a word. Sainte Beuve said he judged a novelist’s powers by the manner in which he drew his female characters. If so, Smollett would not have excited much sympathy in the mind of the brilliant author of theCauseries du Lundi. His women are of varying excellence. Narcissa inRoderick Randomand Emilia inPeregrine Pickleare only sweet dolls. Until his closing years he could not differentiate between puling sentimentality and piquancy. Into the charming perversity, the delightful contradictoriness, that often make up for us one–half the attractiveness of the female character, he could not enter. To rise to the height of spiritual insight that was requisite to conceive and execute a Di Vernon, an Ethel Newcome, or a Rose Vincy, was for him impossible, simply because he could not realise in his earlier years of authorship that women are the equals, not the inferiors of man. The hapless Miss Williams inRoderick Randomexhibits this feeling on the part of Smollett. She was nobility itself in character, yet she was made over to Strap. One of the finest of his creations is the hapless Monimia inCount Fathom. Tenderness, purity, grace, and beauty are all united in her. She falls, it is true, but her fall left her virtue unimpugned, seeing that her betrayer resorted to means as cruel as they were irresistible to accomplish his diabolic purpose. Monimiaoccupies a pedestal apart, but, she excepted, the two most delightful creations in all his works are those inHumphrey Clinker, Tabitha Bramble and Winnifred Jenkins. Lydia Melford is too milk–and–waterish, but the two first–named are drawn with masterly precision and force. Tabitha Bramble is a capital portrait of the soured, disappointed old maid, whose lover had died long before, but to whose memory she had been ever faithful—a woman whose nature is only encrusted with prejudice, not inter–penetrated by it, so that we may justly hope that, under the loving care of Lieutenant Lismahago, her frigidity may thaw, and that in matrimony she may discover the world not to be so very bad after all. Winnifred Jenkins is the prototype of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’sRivals, and is infinitely more amusing. All the vanity, self–assertiveness, and jealousy of a small mind, conjointly with the love of appearing to move in a higher circle of society than she really does, are admirably sketched, while her misappropriate use of the language of that circle is most felicitously rendered. The portrait is Smollett’s best, and no touch is finer than Winnifred’s conduct in the menagerie. Let her speak for herself. ‘Last week I went with mistress to the Tower to see the crowns and wild beastis. There was a monstracious lion with teeth half a quarter long, and a gentleman bid me not go near him if I wasn’t a maid, being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens. Now I had no mind to go near him, for I cannot abide such dangerous honeymils, not I—but mistress would go, and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing that I tho’t he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I’ll go death upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firgkin as the child unborn; and therefore either the gentleman told a phib, orthe lion ought to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness against his neighbour.’ Tabitha Bramble and Win Jenkins are those two in Smollett’s gallery of fiction which the world will not willingly let die.
Such, then, is Smollett as a novelist—the great master of incident and humorous narration, the painter of the faults, foibles, and eccentricities of his fellow–men. In his own sphere he was unrivalled, and he in nothing showed more saliently his good sense than by refusing to attempt works for which he knew he was both by temperament and training unfitted. I cannot quite agree with Professor Saintsbury’s view in his charming and sympathetic Life of Smollett, prefixed to what bids fair to be the standard edition of his works.[10]‘The only one of the deeper and higher passions which seems to have stirred Smollett was patriotism, in which a Scot rarely fails, unless he is an utter gaby or an utter scoundrel.’ Does not the worthy Professor, following the popular definition, fail to differentiate between anemotionand apassion. In depicting the passions, Smollett, I grant, was singularly deficient; in such emotions as patriotism, sympathy with the oppressed, and a pure devotion to the cause of truth, he showed himself a man whose heart was permeated with the warmest and deepest enthusiasm.