CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIIVISIT TO SCOTLAND—THE CRITICAL REVIEW—THE REPRISAL. 1755–1759.Smollett was from this time forward plunged into a sea of pecuniary troubles, wherein, with little mitigation, he remained as long as life lasted. The year 1754, wherein he had to meet the costs of the action for assault brought against him by Gordon, seems to have been the one wherein his distresses culminated. For some time he was in danger of arrest. He skulked about London like ‘a thief at large,’ ever afraid of feeling a hand on his shoulder, and of beholding a bailiff ready to conduct him to the ‘sponging–house.’ For some years his monetary difficulties, like a snowball, had been always increasing. In his Life of Smollett, Dr. Robert Chambers has drawn a painful picture of the great genius fretting like some noble steed condemned to pack–horse duty, at the unworthy tasks he was obliged to undertake. Yet five out of every six of his embarrassments were the result of his own folly and extravagance. A man has to cut his coat according to his cloth. Smollett would never consent to exercise present economy to avoid future embarrassment. In a letter dated 1752 he complains of lack of money through failure of his West India revenue. The income from his wife’s property was now greatly decreased, while what remained was frittered away on vexatious lawsuits. ‘Curse the law!’ he cried impatientlyon one occasion, ‘it has damned more honest men to lifelong drudgery than anything else.’ In another letter, in May 1753, addressed to his friend Dr. Macaulay, he acknowledges having received a previous loan of £15, but begs for the favour of another £50 to save him from serious difficulty. He promises payment from the proceeds of some work he then had in hand, probablyDon Quixote. By a bankruptcy he had lost £180, and was obliged to immediately discount a note of hand of Provost Drummond’s, at a sacrifice of sixty per cent., in place of waiting for the due–date. In December 1754 he again laments the failure of remittances from Jamaica and of actual extremities. So far down was he, that he was compelled to write to his brother–in–law, Mr. Telfer, begging the favour of a loan, which after some delay he received. All these accumulated distresses weighed upon his spirits. ‘My life is sheer slavery,’ he wrote to one of his friends; ‘my pen is at work from nine o’ the clock the one morning until one or two the next. I might as well be in Grub Street.’ Still he toiled on, though he realised that the work he was doing was far from being worthy of him. As Anderson says: ‘The booksellers were his principal resource for employment and subsistence; for them he held the pen of a ready writer in the walk of general literature, and towards him they were as liberal as the patronage of the public enabled them to be. They were almost his only patrons; and, indeed, a more generous set of men can hardly be pointed out in the trading world. By their liberality, wit and learning have perhaps received more ample and more substantial encouragement than from all their princely and noble patrons.’Darker and ever darker grows the picture. Whether or not Mrs. Smollett was a poor housewife, or whetherSmollett’s own extravagances were wholly to blame, certain it is that from the period we have now reached until his not unwelcome release from life came in 1771, there was no ease for the toiling hand, no rest for the weary brow of the great novelist. His daily ‘darg’ had to be accomplished whether in sickness or in health; his daily tale of bricks to be handed in, if the rod of poverty’s stern task–mistress was to be averted from his shoulders, or the wolf of want driven from the door. But, alas, at what an expenditure of brain tissue was it achieved! He knew he was unable to take time to produce his best work, and the saddening consciousness weighed ever more heavily upon him. In March 1755, accordingly, there appeared his translation of theHistory of the Renowned Don Quixote; from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, with some Account of the Author’s life, illustrated with 28 new copperplates, designed by Hayman and engraved by the best Artists. The volumes, which were in quarto, were two in number, and were issued by Rivington, being dedicated by permission to Don Ricardo Wall, Principal Secretary of State to His Most Catholic Majesty, who, while he was resident in London as Spanish Ambassador, had exhibited much interest in the work. Though accomplished Spanish scholars, according to Moore, have accused Smollett of not having had a sufficient knowledge of the language when he undertook the task, for to perform it perfectly it would be requisite that the translator had lived some years in Spain, that he had obtained not only a knowledge of the Court and of polite society, but an acquaintance also with the vulgar idioms, the proverbs in use among the populace, and the various customs of the country to which allusions are made; still the fact remains that Smollett’s translation has never been superseded, and that it at once threw into the shadethe previous renderings of Motteux and Jervis. Lord Woodhouselee, in hisEssay on the Principles of Translation, has endeavoured, with a strange perversity of taste, to depreciate Smollett’s version in favour of that of Motteux. But the verdict of time has proved how egregiously he was in the wrong. Smollett’s short ‘Advertisement’ to the work manifests the principles according to which he prosecuted his translation. He states that his ‘aim in this undertaking was to maintain that ludicrous solemnity and self–importance by which the inimitable Cervantes has distinguished the character of Don Quixote, without raising him to the insipid rank of a dry philosopher or debasing him to the melancholy circumstances and unentertaining caprice of an ordinary madman; to preserve the native humour of Sancho Panza from degenerating into mere proverbial phlegm or affected buffoonery; that the author has endeavoured to retain the spirit and ideas without servilely adhering to the literal expressions of the original, from which, however, he has not so far deviated as to destroy that formality of idiom so peculiar to the Spaniards, and so essential to the character of the work.’ It is not often that genius is brought to the service of translation. When it is, however, as in the case of Lord Berners’Froissartand Smollett’sDon Quixote, the result is memorable. Smollett, alas! reaped little immediate benefit from its publication. The work had been contracted and paid for five years before!No sooner did he get this portion of his stipulated labour off his hands, than he determined to visit his relatives in Scotland. His heart yearned to see his mother. Fifteen years had passed since the raw lad, with his tragedy in his pocket, had set out for London, as he fondly hoped, conquering and to conquer. He now returned to his nativecountry the pale, weary, toil–worn man, older–looking than his years by at least a decade. Dr. Moore relates the pathetic scene of the recognition of her celebrated son by the aged mother, then living with her daughter, Mrs. Telfer, at Scotston. Let us quote Dr. Moore’s words: ‘With the connivance of Mrs. Telfer, on his arrival, he was introduced to his mother as a gentleman from the West Indies who had been intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a very serious countenance, approaching a frown; but while the old lady’s eyes were riveted with a kind of wild and eager stare on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling. She immediately sprang from her chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed, “Ah, my son, my son, I have found you at last.” She afterwards told him that if he had kept his austere look, and continued togloom, as she called it, he might have escaped detection some time longer; “but your old roguish smile,” added she, “betrayed you at once.”’Smollett returned to his native country under very different circumstances from those under which he left it. Then, his family connections were anxious to get rid of him, rejoiced, in fact, to see him launched upon any profession that would remove him from their midst. He left, a poor, lonely, depressed, yet at the same time high–spirited lad, eating his heart out owing to the necessity for showing respect to those who lacked the one claim to it acknowledged by him—intellectual eminence. Now he returned, the most popular, perhaps, for the time being, of any of the three great masters of British fiction—a ‘lion,’ with whom to hold intercourse was an honour indeed. That Smollett was not wholly without feelings of this nature, his letters evince. ‘I have returned a little better thanwhen I set out,’ he is reported to have said to John Home as they walked together down the Canongate of Edinburgh.His reception in the Scots metropolis, from which Scotston is distant only some twenty–three miles, was gratifying in the extreme. Smollett had the advantage of seeing the town in all its antiquity before the migration of the better classes took place to George Square and to ‘the New Town’ across the Nor’ Loch. In 1756 it was still the quaint, formal, interesting, self–assertive place it had been before the Union in 1707. Here is a description of it by Gilbert Elliot, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and one of the few friends Smollett had who were connected with the Government. ‘I love the town tolerably well; there is one fine street, and the houses are extremely high. The gentry are a very sensible set of people, and some of them in their youth seem to have known the world; but by being too long in a place their notions are contracted and their faces are become solemn. The Faculty of Advocates is a very learned and a very worthy body. As for the ladies, they are unexceptionable, innocent, beautiful, and of an easy conversation. The staple vices of the place are censoriousness and hypocrisy. There is here no allowance for levity, none for dissipation. I am not a bit surprised I do not find here that unconstrained noble way of thinking and talking which one every day meets with among young fellows of plentiful fortunes and good spirits, who are constantly moving in a more enlarged circle of company.’With Dr. ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle of Inveresk he renewed that acquaintance begun some years before, when neither of them had attained the fame that came to them in the course of time. Carlyle introduced him to many of his influential friends, and, in consequence, Smollett’s visit to Edinburghproved an exceedingly happy one. ‘It was also in one of these days that Smollett visited Scotland for the first time,’ says Carlyle, ‘after having left Glasgow immediately after his education was finished, and his engaging as a surgeon’s mate on board a man–of–war, which gave him an opportunity of witnessing the siege of Carthagena, which he has so minutely described in hisRoderick Random. He came out to Musselburgh and passed a day and a night with me, and went to church and heard me preach. I introduced him to Cardonnel the Commissioner (of Customs), with whom he supped, and they were much pleased with each other. Smollett has reversed this in hisHumphrey Clinker, where he makes the Commissioner his old acquaintance. He went next to Glasgow and that neighbourhood to visit his friends, and returned again to Edinburgh in October, when I had frequent meetings with him, one in particular in a tavern, where there supped with him and Commissioner Cardonnel, Mr. Hepburn of Keith, John Home, and one or two more.... Cardonnel and I went with Smollett to Sir David Kinloch’s and passed the day, when John Home and Logan and I conducted him to Dunbar, where we stayed together all night.’Smollett’s picture of the Edinburgh of his time inHumphrey Clinkeris exceedingly graphic. ‘In the evening we arrived,’ writes Melford, ‘at this metropolis, of which I can say but very little. It is very romantic from its situation on the declivity of a hill, having a fortified castle at the top and a royal palace at the bottom. The first thing that strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless; but what first strikes the eye is the unconscionable height of the houses, which generally rise to five, six, seven, and eight storeys, and in some cases, as I am assured, to twelve. This manner of building, attended by numberless inconveniences,must have been originally owing to want of room. Certain it is the town seems to be full of people.’ In the next letter Matthew Bramble adds: ‘Every storey is a complete house occupied by a separate family, and the stair being common to them all is generally left in a very filthy condition; a man must tread with great circumspection to get safe housed with unpolluted shoes. Nothing, however, can form a stronger contrast between the outside and inside of the door, for the good women of this metropolis are very nice in the ornaments and propriety of their apartments, as if they were resolved to transfer the imputation from the individual to the public. You are no stranger to their method of discharging all their impurities from their windows at a certain hour of the night, as the custom is in Spain, Portugal, and other parts of France and Italy; a practice to which I can by no means be reconciled, for, notwithstanding all the care that is taken by their scavengers to remove this nuisance every morning by break of day, enough still remains to offend the eyes as well as the other organs of those whom use has not hardened against all delicacy of sensation.’ Nor can we omit what the inimitable Winnifred Jenkins—the prototype and model of all futuresoubrettesin fiction—says on the subject: ‘And now, dere Mary, we have got to Haddingborough (Edinburgh) among the Scots, who are cevel enuff for our money, thof I don’t speak their lingo. But they should not go for to impose on foreigners, for the bills on their houses say they have differenteasementsto let; but behold there is nurra geaks in the whole kingdom, nor anything for pore sarvants, but a barril with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs in the family are emptied into this here barril once a day, and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into somestreet or lane, and the Made cries “Gardyloo” to the passengers, which signerfies, “Lord have mercy upon you,” and this is done every night in every house in Haddingborough, so you may guess, Mary Jones, what a sweet savour comes from such a number of profuming pans. But they say it is wholesome; and truly I believe it is; for being in the vapours and thinking of Issabel (Jezabel) and Mr. Clinker, I was going into a fit of astericks when this fiff, saving your presence, took me by the nose so powerfully that I sneezed three times and found myself wonderfully refreshed; this, to be sure, is the raisin why there are no fits in Haddingborough.’From Edinburgh, Smollett, as we have seen, proceeded to Dumbartonshire, and then to Glasgow. His cousin was still laird of Bonhill, and welcomed him with much warmth back to the scene of his early years. In Glasgow he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Moore, who had succeeded him as apprentice with Mr. Gordon, and was now a physician of repute in the western metropolis. With the latter he remained two days, renewing old associations both at the College and elsewhere. Unfortunately, very little information can be gleaned regarding this visit of Smollett’s to Glasgow. Moore dismisses it in two or three lines, and every succeeding biographer, Anderson, Walter Scott, Chambers, Herbert, and Hannay, although mayhap spinning out a few more sentences, really do not add a tittle to our facts.On returning to Edinburgh in October, he was welcomed by all theliteratiof the capital, and was specially invited to a meeting of the famousSelect Society,[6]first mooted by Allan Ramsay the painter, as Mr. John Rae tells us in hisLife of Adam Smith; but the fifteen original members ofwhich had increased well–nigh to a hundred, comprising all the best–known names in literature, philosophy, science, and the arts. There he met or saw Kames and Monboddo (not yet ‘paper lords’ or lords of Session), Robertson and Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Dr. Blair, Wilkie of theEpigoniad, Wallace the statistician, Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller of the Court of Session, the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rosebery, Errol, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Gray, Garlies, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam the architect, Dr. Cullen, John Coutts the banker, and many others.[7]The Society met every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates’ Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Masonic Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers, men like Wedderburn and Robertson, took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland, as intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival.On returning to London, Smollett at once threw himself into the feverish excitement and worry of a journalistic life. In other words, he assumed the editorship of the newCritical Review, representative of High Church and Tory principles. This periodical, with its older rival, theMonthly Review(started by Griffiths in 1749 as the Whig organ), may be considered the prototypes of that plentiful crop of monthly magazines wherewith we are furnished to–day. TheCritical Reviewwas the property of a man named Hamilton, a Scotsman, whose enlightenment and liberality,remarks Herbert, had been proved by his listening to Chatterton’s request for a little money, by sending it to him and telling him he should have more if he wanted it. TheCritical Reviewfor its age was really a very creditable production, though there was little to choose between the rivals as to merit, for theMonthly, at the date of the founding of its antagonist, was edited by a young man of surpassing ability, who won for himself a name in English literature even more distinguished than Smollett’s—Oliver Goldsmith. Thus the authors of theVicar of Wakefieldand ofPeregrine Pickle—compositions wide as the poles apart in character—were thrown into rivalry with each other. That it was a rivalry embittered by any of the rancour and acrimony distinguishing Smollett’s future journalistic relations with John Wilkes, cannot be supposed, inasmuch as Goldsmith contributed several articles to theCritical Review, and as a return compliment Smollett four, at least, to theMonthly. The proprietors of the opposing periodicals may have had their squabbles and bespattered each other with foul names, but the editors seem to have been on the most amicable of terms and to have united in anathematising both parties.Much of Smollett’s time was frittered away on work for theReviewwhich would have been more remuneratively employed in other fields. But the pot had to be kept boiling, and there was but little fuel in reserve wherewith to feed the fire. He was far from making an ideal editor,—indeed, to tell the plain truth, he made an exceedingly bad one. He never kept his staff of contributors in hand. They were permitted to air their own grievances and to revenge their own quarrels in theReview. His criticisms, also, are very one–sided. The remarks on John Home’sDouglas, though true so far,are much too sweeping in their generalisations. The play has many merits, but theCritical Reviewwould fain persuade one it had next to none. The same remarks are true of Wilkie’sEpigoniad, by no means a work of great genius, but deserving better things said of it than theCriticalmeted out. With respect to the criticism on Dr. Grainger, the writer simply displayed the grossest and most culpable ignorance and impertinence towards the productions of a learned and refined Englishman. In a word, the injustice, the intemperance of language, and the inexcusable blunders which characterised Smollett’s occupancy of the editorial chair of theCritical Review, caused it to be deservedly reprobated by those who admired justice and fair play, to say nothing of cultured criticism.In one case, however, he was clearly in the right. A certain Admiral Knowles, who had so disgracefully failed in conducting to a successful issue the secret expedition to Rochelle in 1757, along with Sir John Mordaunt, wrote a pamphlet to justify his actions in the face of the storm of condemnation raised against him after a court–martial had acquitted Mordaunt. This pamphlet fell into Smollett’s hands, who characterised the writer as ‘an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity.’ Knowles entered an action against the printer, giving as his reason ‘his desire to find out the writer, in order to obtain the satisfaction of a gentleman, if the writer’s character would admit of it.’ On Smollett learning this, he at once came forward, acknowledged himself as the writer, and declared his willingness to meet the admiral with any weapons he chose. But the latter was a poltroon and a coward. He had obtained a judgment of the Court, and he sheltered himself under it. Smollett was mulcted in £100, and in 1759sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Knowles seems to have merited Sir Walter Scott’s severe terms of reprobation: ‘How the admiral reconciled his conduct to the rules usually observed by gentlemen we are not informed, but the proceedings seem to justify even Smollett’s strength of expressions.’But we have suffered our account of his relations to theCritical Reviewto run ahead of the narrative of his life. For several years the works he published were mostly hack–compilations for the booksellers. The most notable among these wasA Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, exhibiting a clear view of the Customs, Manners, Religion, Government, Commerce, and Natural History of most nations of the world, illustrated with a variety of Maps, Charts, etc., in 7 vols. 12mo. To this day Smollett’s collection is read with appreciation, and only two years ago another edition (abridged) was published of this most interesting and instructive work.Immense as was the reading and investigation required for such a compilation, Smollett cheerfully gave it, and really there are extraordinarily few errors in it notwithstanding the rapidity wherewith it had been produced. The publisher was Dodsley, and among the voyages recorded are those of Vasco da Gama, Pedro de Cabral, Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, Rowe, Monk, James, Nieuhoff, Wafer, Dampier, Gemelli, Rogers, Anson, etc., with the histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Also included therein was his own account of the expedition to Carthagena.Some time before this Smollett had inserted in theCritical Reviewthe following panegyric on Garrick, evidently intended to compensate for his bitter reflections on him inRoderick RandomandThe Regicide. Smollett’s eyeswere being opened to the more correct estimate of his own powers. Accordingly he wrote: ‘We often see this inimitable actor labouring through five tedious acts to support a lifeless piece, with a mixture of pity and indignation, and cannot help wishing there were in his age good poets to write for one who so well deserves them. He has the art, like the Lydian king, of turning all he touches into gold, and can ensure applause to every fortunate bard.’ Was the wish father to the deed? Be this as it may, within a short time Garrick accepted Smollett’s comedy ofThe Reprisal, orThe Tars of Old England, an afterpiece in two acts. The year 1757–58 had been a period of national disaster. Smollett, indignant at the timorous policy of the Government of the day, wrote the comedy in question to rouse the warlike spirit of the nation. The prologue begins—‘What eye will fail to glow, what eye to brighten,When Britain’s wrath aroused begins to lighten,Her thunders roll—her fearless sons advance,And her red ensigns wave o’er the pale flowers of France;Her ancient splendour England shall maintain,O’er distant realms extend her genial reign,And rise the unrivall’d empress of the main.’The Reprisalwas performed at Drury Lane with great success, and Garrick’s conduct on the occasion was generous in the extreme. It laid the foundations of a lifelong friendship between the two. The piece was afterwards published, and for some time held the stage as a ‘curtain–raiser’ or ‘curtain–dropper,’ but is now entirely forgotten.At this period Smollet was on terms of intimate friendship with the famous John Wilkes, who has been often called ‘the first Radical.’ With Samuel Johnson also he had some friendly intercourse, though they were tooalike to desire a great deal of intimate association with each other. Smollett, however, through his influence with Wilkes, was able to obtain the release of Dr. Johnson’s black servant, Francis Barber, who had been impressed and put on board theStagfrigate. On the occasion Smollett wrote to Wilkes in the following terms:—‘Chelsea,March 16, 1759.‘I am again your petitioner in behalf of that Great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board theStagfrigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in the throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty’s service. You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you, and I daresay you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation.’The application was successful, and Francis Barber returned to the lexicographer’s service. Dr. Johnson always spoke of Dr. Smollett thereafter with great respect:—‘A scholarly man, sir, although a Scot.’CHAPTER VIIIHISTORY OF ENGLAND—SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES—THE NORTH BRITON—HACK HISTORICAL WORK—THE BEGINNING OF THE END.Despite all his hastiness of temper and irritability, despite his wife’s lack of management, despite, too, the fact of the burden of debt weighing him down, the Chelsea home must have been a very happy one. At this time Smollett had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, to whom he was tenderly attached. Nothing rejoiced him more than a frolic with his little one. ‘Many a time,’ he remarks in one of his unpublished letters, now in the possession of Mr. Goring, ‘do I stop my task and betake me to a game of romps with Betty, while my wife looks on smiling and longing in her heart to join in the sport: then back to the cursed round of duty.’Mrs. Smollett appears to have been of a most affectionate and loving disposition, though, like himself, she was affected with a hasty temper. Though they had many quarrels, they were deeply and sincerely attached to each other. ‘My Nancy’ appears in many of his letters in conjunction with expressions of the tenderest and truest affection. The home was always bright and cheerful for the weary worker, hence, when absent from it, he is ever craving ‘to be back to Nancy and little Bet’ Yet these were feelings Smollett scrupulously concealed from his fellows, so that the worldmight suppose him the acidulous cynic he desired to be esteemed. What Smollett’s reason for so acting was, is now hard to divine. His Matthew Bramble inHumphrey Clinkeris the exact reproduction of his own character. His kindliness of nature only broke out like gleams of sunshine on a wintry day, while, like Jonathan Oldbuck, the very suggestion of gratitude seemed to irritate him. He was one who all his life preferred to do good by stealth.In 1758, Smollett published a work that had occupied his attention throughout the better part of eighteen months—The Complete History of England, deduced from the descent of Julius Cæsar to the Treaty of Aix–la–Chapelle in 1748. It was published by Messrs. Rivington & Fletcher, in four vols. 4to, and embellished by engraved allegorical frontispieces, designed by Messrs. Hayman & Miller. It has been stated, and never contradicted, says Anderson (substantiated also by Herbert), that the history was written in fourteen months, an effort to which nothing but the most distinguished abilities and the most vigorous application could have been equal. When one considers that he consulted three hundred books for information, that he had other literary work to prosecute in order to keep the pot boiling, and when one has regard also to the high literary character of the composition, this rapidity of production is simply marvellous. Of course none of the facts were new, but the method was novel, and the treatment fresh and brilliant. As Sir Walter Scott justly remarks, ‘All the novelty which Smollett’s history could present, must needs consist in the mode of stating facts, or in the reflections deduced from them.’ The success which attended the publication of the history surpassed the expectations of even Smollett himself. His political standpoint had been that of a Tory and an upholder of the monarchy. In writing to Dr. Moore earlyin 1758, Smollett says: ‘I deferred answering your kind letter until I should have finished my History, which is now completed. I was agreeably surprised to hear that my work had met with any approbation in Glasgow, for it is not at all calculated for that meridian. The last volume will, I doubt not, be severely censured by the West Country Whigs of Scotland. I desire you will divest yourself of prejudice before you begin to peruse it, and consider well the facts before you pass judgment. Whatever may be its defect, I profess before God I have, as far as in me lay, adhered to truth, without espousing any faction.’ Then in September of the same year he again writes to Dr. Moore: ‘You will not be sorry to hear that the weekly sale of the History has increased to above 10,000. A French gentleman of talents and erudition has undertaken to translate it into that language, and I have promised to supply him with corrections.’But sadder and still more sad grows the picture of distress. During the whole time he was writing his History he was pestered by duns, and could not leave his home without dodging bailiffs. When all was over, he found himself a man broken in health and spirits, and already ‘earmarked’ for the tomb. For fourteen years he was to live and labour, like the brave, honest, independent spirit he was, but the end was only a question of time. That he realised this fact about this period is almost certain. Henceforth his diligence was redoubled. Like the stranger from another world in the fable, when confronted with the fact of inevitable death, he cried, ‘I must die, I must die; trouble me not with trifles; I must die.’But his publication of the History was not suffered to pass without the formation of another party bent on injuring him. The extensive sale of Smollett’s work alarmed theproprietors of Rapin’s History, who caballed and encouraged his political adversaries to expose what they termed ‘the absurdities, inconsistencies, contradictions, and misrepresentations of the book,’ most of which existed solely in the minds of his malignant enemies. In the Whig periodicals of the time Smollett is vilified and abused, represented as a partisan and panegyrist of the House of Stuart, a Papist and a prostitute. The following pamphlet, written, however, by a man of some learning and discernment, would have been valuable and useful had it only been penned with more moderation and good sense. But party zeal is an enemy to good sense, and the truth of this remark has seldom been more clearly demonstrated than in ‘A Vindication of the Revolution in 1688, and of the character of King William and Queen Mary, together with a computation of the character of King Jamesii., as misrepresented by the author of the Complete History of England, by extracts from Dr. Smollett: to which are added some strictures on the said historian’s account of the punishment of the rebels inA.D.1715 and 1746, and on the eulogium given to the History of England by the critical reviewers, by Thomas Comber, B.A. 8vo, 1758.’ Comber was a clergyman, and a relative of the Duke of Leeds. He was, in fact, engaged by the Whig Ministry to undertake the duty, as none of the professedlitterateursof the day in the Whig ranks cared to cross swords with the Tory champion in his own field. The publication of his History did Smollett much good in the eyes of the learned and cultured. Henceforth to them he was no longer a mere ‘teller of tales,’ but one of the great historians of the epoch—an author deservedly honoured for his integrity and impartiality.In 1761 theBritish Magazine—a sixpenny monthly onwhose staff Oliver Goldsmith was one of the leading writers—publishedThe Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the fourth of Smollett’s novels, but the one which we could quite well have spared, provided something in the same vein asHumphrey Clinkerhad taken its place. It was written hastily, and to supply the demand forcopy. Scott relates that, while engaged on it, he was residing at Paxton in Berwickshire, on a visit to Mr. George Home. When post time drew near, he was wont to retire for half an hour or an hour, and then and there scribble off the necessary amount of matter for the press. But he never gave himself even the trouble to read over and correct what he had written. Work written under such circumstances did not deserve to succeed. And yet, singularly enough, in this novel are to be found some of Smollett’s most original creations and most felicitously conceived situations. The design of the work is far from happy. Obviously suggested by his recent study ofDon Quixote, Sir Launcelot is only a bad imitation of the immortal Knight of La Mancha. Of this, indeed, Smollett himself seems to have had a suspicion. In the course of the dialogue he makes Ferret express an opinion like that to Sir Launcelot, who sternly repudiates it. ‘What! you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous and well–timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago will make but a sorry jest when really acted from affectation at this time of day in England.’ The knight, eyeing the censor, whose character was none of the best, replied, ‘I am neither an affected imitation of Don Quixote, nor, as I trust in Heaven, visited by that spirit of lunacy so admirably displayed in the fictitious character exhibited by the inimitable Cervantes. I see and distinguish objects as they are seen and described by other men. I quarrel withnone but the foes of virtue and decorum, against whom I have declared perpetual war, and them I will everywhere attack as the natural enemies of mankind. I do purpose,’ added Sir Launcelot, eyeing Ferret with a look of ineffable contempt, ‘to act as a coadjutor to the law, and even to remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage slander, disgrace immodesty, stigmatise ingratitude.’The work was written in part during his imprisonment. Taking this into consideration, as well as the rapidity of production, the conception, amid the sordid surroundings of the King’s Bench Prison, of such cleverly drawn characters as Aurelia Darnel, Captain Crowe, and his nephew, Tom Clarke, the attorney of the amorous heart, is passing wonderful. Although the least popular of his works, and deservedly so, the book in some parts is redolent of ‘Flora and the country green.’Not a moment could his busy pen afford to rest. No sooner was one piece of work thrown off than another must be commenced. In 1761, Smollett lent his assistance to the furtherance of a great work. This was the publication, in 42 vols. 8vo, ofThe Modern Part of an Universal History, compiled from Original Writers. In this colossal undertaking we know that Smollett’s share was the Histories of France, Italy, and Germany. Not alone these, however, were the fruit of his industry. Other authors failed to produce their quota. There was one pen that never failed. The willing horse had to do the work. Though this additional labour brought in guineas, it still further exhausted his strength, and left him little better than a confirmed invalid. From this drudgery he passed on to something else that was a little more agreeable and congenial, namely, hisContinuation of the History of England.The first volume was published in the end of 1761, the second, third, and fourth in 1762, and a fifth some years after (1765), bringing the narrative down to that period. It is stated that Smollett cleared £2000 by his History and the Continuation. He sold the latter to his printer at a price which enabled the purchaser to sell it to Mr. Baldwin the bookseller at a profit of £1000. From these facts one can gather the extraordinary popularity of Smollett’s work at that period.Henceforward the story of his life is summed up in little more than the dates of the publication of his books. Of relaxation there was no interval for him. His expenses of living were considerable, though he never was a man who loved luxury or display. But he had been hampered by debts, by lawsuits, to pay the costs of which he had to borrow money at sixty per cent. Had Smollett’s feet been free from the outset, the £600 per annum, at which he reckoned his income, would have more than sufficed for all his wants. But the interest of borrowed money is like the rolling snowball of which we spoke before,—unless it be paid regularly, it constantly adds to the bulk of the original. Poor Smollett! A more pitiable picture can scarcely be conceived than this splendid genius yoked like a pug–mill horse to tasks the most ignoble, in order that he might keep his wife and daughter from feeling the pinch of want. A hero—yea, a hero indeed—one of those heroes in commonplace things, whose virtues are every whit as praiseworthy in their way as though he had led England’s armies to victory, or swept the seas of her enemies.In connection with Smollett’s historical work, it should be mentioned here, that although his History has not held its place as a standard work, his Continuation undoubtedly has. To this day it is printed along with Hume’s volumes, underthe title ofHume and Smollett’s History of England, and is justly held in esteem for its impartiality and accuracy. His other historical works have long since met the fate they deserved. They were hack–work, designed to supply a temporary need. When that need was met by something better, they were forgotten.We must note here, however, in disproof of that jealousy of contemporaries which has been laid to his charge, the following generous estimate of those who were hiscollaborateursin some respects, his rivals in others. In the Continuation he thus repairs the hasty judgments of immature years: ‘Akenside and Armstrong excelled in didactic poetry. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Coke, by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. There are also the learned and elegant Robertson, and, above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume, whom we rank among the first writers of the age, both as a historian and a philosopher. Johnson, inferior to none in philosophy, philology, poetry, and classical learning, stands foremost as an essayist, justly admired for the dignity, strength, and variety of his style, as well as for the agreeable manner in which he investigates the human heart, tracing every interesting emotion, and opening all the sources of morality!’ And this was the man whom his political opponents accused of never speaking of a man save to depreciate him.We reach now a period in Smollett’s career which must always give pain to those that are lovers of his genius. Hitherto, though dabbling in politics, and though editing, professedly on the Tory and High Church side, theCritical Review, his sympathies had been so predominatingly literarythat he was able to maintain the friendliest of relations with prominent politicians on the Whig side, notably with John Wilkes. Now, in an evil hour, he was prevailed upon to accept a brief on the Tory side by assuming the editorship of the new weekly paper,The Briton, founded for the express purpose of defending the Earl of Bute. That nobleman, who owed his advancement to the favour wherewith he was regarded by Georgeiii.(recently come to the throne), was, on the 29th May 1762, appointed First Lord of the Treasury, and assumed the management of public affairs. Although an able, honourable, and indefatigable Minister, he lacked experience in the discharge of public duties. Besides, the nation was still strongly Whig in its political inclinations. For the monarch, by an arbitrary exercise of his prerogative, thus to override the sentiments of his people and to dismiss their chosen representatives, was both a high–handed and a foolish action. More foolish still was Lord Bute that he permitted himself thus to be made a tool to gratify the king’s jealousy. The consequence was, that the appointment was received all over England with a storm of indignation, and no Ministry was ever more unpopular than that whereof the Earl of Bute was chief.To stem the tide of adverse criticism, and endeavour to win Englishmen to view more favourably the advent of Lord Bute to power,The Britonwas started, and Smollett was chosen as editor, inasmuch as his was the keenest pen on the Tory side. On hearing of the appointment of his friend to the post, John Wilkes, with a generosity that was quite in keeping with many of the actions of that strangely constituted man, remarked that ‘Lord Bute, after having distributed among his adherents all the places under Government, was determined to monopolise the wit also.’ A few days subsequent, the Whigs proposed that, to encounterThe Briton, which had gone off with a great flourish of trumpets, as well as with some very bitter political writing, Mr. Wilkes should publish a paper, to be called ‘The Englishman.’ He agreed to the proposal, except that he did not adopt the title recommended, but chose another, that ofThe North Briton—the first number of which appeared on the 5th June 1762, or exactly a week afterThe Briton.Wilkes exhibited great forbearance towards Smollett at the outset. The good–natured demagogue, it is believed, would have been content, like many another pair of friends, to fight strenuously for principles, and avoid personalities; or, if that were impossible, to confine their antagonism to the press alone, leaving the intercourse of friendship unimpaired. But Smollett was not of the stuff whereof great journalists are made. One of the prime qualities is that they should belong to the genus of literary pachydermata. Smollett was not so. He was sensitive to a degree. He imagined slights and insults where none were intended. Within a few days, therefore, of the issue ofThe North Briton, Smollett took umbrage at something said aboutThe Briton, and retorted angrily with some personalities on Wilkes. Even then the latter would have passed over the ill–natured jibes with a jest. This, however, maddened Smollett more than aught else. He believed Wilkes despised him as an assailant. From that day Smollett devoted himself to the most unsparing personal castigation of Wilkes. The demagogue replied, and presently the two that had been such warm friends could not find terms bitter enough to hurl at one another.But Smollett was not a match for Wilkes. The former was scrupulously careful in alleging nothing against hisopponent but what he could prove. The latter fought with characteristic unscrupulousness. A matter of no moment to him was it whether a charge were true or false, provided it served the purpose of galling his adversary. Wilkes was absolutely impervious to abuse and vilification. He gloried in his indifference to all social restrictions and customs. The publication to the world of his debaucheries and lack of principle only extorted a horse–laugh from him. With all his generosity and faithful devotion to the cause of popular freedom, Wilkes was a man of absolutely no principle. He sneered at his family relations, was one of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Medmenham ‘Cistercians,’ who sought to outbid the ‘Hellfire’ and ‘Devil’s Own’ Clubs in abandoned wickedness and impiety. And yet this was the man who was capable of the most splendid sacrifice in the cause of national liberty. His abilities would have carried him to fame in any career. M. Louis Blanc states that many of his sayings are still repeated and admired in France as are those of Sydney Smith among us. Mr. J. Bowles Daly[8]relates that his wit was so constantly at his command, that wagers have been gained that from the time he quitted his house till he reached Guildhall, no one could address him or leave him without a smile or a hearty laugh. His bright conversation charmed away the prejudice of such a Tory as Dr. Johnson, fascinated Hannah More, and won over the gloomy Lord Mansfield, who said, ‘Mr. Wilkes is the pleasantest companion, the politest gentleman, and the best scholar I know.’This, then, was the man who was selected to do battle with Smollett and to demolish the Ministry of Lord Bute. Certainly the latter had given Wilkes ample handle for assailing him by selecting as his Chancellor of the ExchequerLord Sandwich, one of the dissolute Medmenham monks, a man glaringly deficient in ability, and so utterly incompetent in finance as to cause the wits of the time to describe him as ‘a Chancellor of the Exchequer to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable mystery.’ The first sentence ofThe North Britonhas often been copied and adopted as the motto of succeeding journals: ‘The liberty of the press is the birthright of the Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country.’ The aim of Wilkes’ paper was to vilify Scotland, because Lord Bute, being a Scotsman, had wormed himself into the favour of the king. Not a very elevated principle, certainly, but quite characteristic of the lowmoraleof the period, when personal pique was elevated into the domain of principle. His abuse of Scotland was quite of a piece with his political profligacy on every other point than national liberty. ‘He would have sold his soul to the devil for £1000 could he have induced his Satanic majesty to have invested in so worthless a commodity,’ said one of his own friends. As a specimen of the journalism wherewith Wilkes fought the battle of popular liberties, take the following paragraph, to pen which nowadays not the neediest penny–a–liner of gutter–journalism would stoop, notwithstanding the jealousy of Scotland and the Scots which still exists. Playing on the popular jealousy of Scotland, Wilkes went on to say that ‘The river Tweed is the line of demarcation between all that is noble and all that is base; south of the river is all honour, virtue, patriotism—north of it is nothing but lying, malice, meanness, and slavery. Scotland is a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of creation; where famine has fixed her chosen throne; where a scantpopulation, gaunt with hunger and hideous with dirt, spend their wretched days in brooding over the fallen fortunes of their native dynasty, and in watching with mingled envy and hatred the mighty nation that subdued them.’This was the type of writing which Smollett strove to meet with pithy argument and epigrammatic smartness. No wonder it produced little effect, and less wonder is there that, after fighting the battle of the Ministry for nearly a year, he threw the task up in disgust (12th February 1763). Lord Bute had not given him the support he had a right to expect; and the Minister’s own fall followed hard upon the cessation ofThe Briton, namely, on the 8th April of the same year. Writing to Caleb Whiteford, a friend, some time after, he remarked: ‘The Ministry little deserve that any man of genius should draw his pen in their defence. They inherit the absurd stoicism of Lord Bute, who set himself up as a pillory to be pelted by all the blackguards of England, upon the supposition that they would grow tired and leave off.’Back once more to hack–work was our weary, brain–worn veteran. So pressing were his needs that he had to condescend to tasks beneath them. He translated and edited the works of Voltaire, and compiled a publication entitledThe Present State of all Nations, containing a geographical, natural, commercial, and political history of all the countries of the known world. Fancy Smollett engaged on such a task! Let us hope that only his name was given, not his labour. Next year we know his work became so great that he had to hire others to do portions of it for him. In a word, he became a literary ‘sweater.’Alas! in this same year, 1763, when his own health was failing so rapidly, one of the links binding him most strongly to earth was severed. His daughter Elizabeth, abeautiful girl of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and amiable and accomplished as well, was taken from him by death—the saddest of all deaths, consumption. Henceforth he was to tread the Valley of the Shadow alone. Even more than his wife, Elizabeth had been able to sympathise with her father’s feelings and to soothe his irritation. The light of his life had verily gone out!But still no rest! Sorrow, however deep, must not check the pen that is fighting for daily bread. ‘I am writing with a breaking heart,’ he says in one letter. ‘I would wish to be beside her, were the wish not cowardly so long as poor Nancy is unprovided for.’ Brave, suffering heart! The end is nearing for you, though you know it not. Seven more years of increasing labour, and also of increasing anguish and suffering, and then—‘He giveth His beloved sleep!’

CHAPTER VIIVISIT TO SCOTLAND—THE CRITICAL REVIEW—THE REPRISAL. 1755–1759.Smollett was from this time forward plunged into a sea of pecuniary troubles, wherein, with little mitigation, he remained as long as life lasted. The year 1754, wherein he had to meet the costs of the action for assault brought against him by Gordon, seems to have been the one wherein his distresses culminated. For some time he was in danger of arrest. He skulked about London like ‘a thief at large,’ ever afraid of feeling a hand on his shoulder, and of beholding a bailiff ready to conduct him to the ‘sponging–house.’ For some years his monetary difficulties, like a snowball, had been always increasing. In his Life of Smollett, Dr. Robert Chambers has drawn a painful picture of the great genius fretting like some noble steed condemned to pack–horse duty, at the unworthy tasks he was obliged to undertake. Yet five out of every six of his embarrassments were the result of his own folly and extravagance. A man has to cut his coat according to his cloth. Smollett would never consent to exercise present economy to avoid future embarrassment. In a letter dated 1752 he complains of lack of money through failure of his West India revenue. The income from his wife’s property was now greatly decreased, while what remained was frittered away on vexatious lawsuits. ‘Curse the law!’ he cried impatientlyon one occasion, ‘it has damned more honest men to lifelong drudgery than anything else.’ In another letter, in May 1753, addressed to his friend Dr. Macaulay, he acknowledges having received a previous loan of £15, but begs for the favour of another £50 to save him from serious difficulty. He promises payment from the proceeds of some work he then had in hand, probablyDon Quixote. By a bankruptcy he had lost £180, and was obliged to immediately discount a note of hand of Provost Drummond’s, at a sacrifice of sixty per cent., in place of waiting for the due–date. In December 1754 he again laments the failure of remittances from Jamaica and of actual extremities. So far down was he, that he was compelled to write to his brother–in–law, Mr. Telfer, begging the favour of a loan, which after some delay he received. All these accumulated distresses weighed upon his spirits. ‘My life is sheer slavery,’ he wrote to one of his friends; ‘my pen is at work from nine o’ the clock the one morning until one or two the next. I might as well be in Grub Street.’ Still he toiled on, though he realised that the work he was doing was far from being worthy of him. As Anderson says: ‘The booksellers were his principal resource for employment and subsistence; for them he held the pen of a ready writer in the walk of general literature, and towards him they were as liberal as the patronage of the public enabled them to be. They were almost his only patrons; and, indeed, a more generous set of men can hardly be pointed out in the trading world. By their liberality, wit and learning have perhaps received more ample and more substantial encouragement than from all their princely and noble patrons.’Darker and ever darker grows the picture. Whether or not Mrs. Smollett was a poor housewife, or whetherSmollett’s own extravagances were wholly to blame, certain it is that from the period we have now reached until his not unwelcome release from life came in 1771, there was no ease for the toiling hand, no rest for the weary brow of the great novelist. His daily ‘darg’ had to be accomplished whether in sickness or in health; his daily tale of bricks to be handed in, if the rod of poverty’s stern task–mistress was to be averted from his shoulders, or the wolf of want driven from the door. But, alas, at what an expenditure of brain tissue was it achieved! He knew he was unable to take time to produce his best work, and the saddening consciousness weighed ever more heavily upon him. In March 1755, accordingly, there appeared his translation of theHistory of the Renowned Don Quixote; from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, with some Account of the Author’s life, illustrated with 28 new copperplates, designed by Hayman and engraved by the best Artists. The volumes, which were in quarto, were two in number, and were issued by Rivington, being dedicated by permission to Don Ricardo Wall, Principal Secretary of State to His Most Catholic Majesty, who, while he was resident in London as Spanish Ambassador, had exhibited much interest in the work. Though accomplished Spanish scholars, according to Moore, have accused Smollett of not having had a sufficient knowledge of the language when he undertook the task, for to perform it perfectly it would be requisite that the translator had lived some years in Spain, that he had obtained not only a knowledge of the Court and of polite society, but an acquaintance also with the vulgar idioms, the proverbs in use among the populace, and the various customs of the country to which allusions are made; still the fact remains that Smollett’s translation has never been superseded, and that it at once threw into the shadethe previous renderings of Motteux and Jervis. Lord Woodhouselee, in hisEssay on the Principles of Translation, has endeavoured, with a strange perversity of taste, to depreciate Smollett’s version in favour of that of Motteux. But the verdict of time has proved how egregiously he was in the wrong. Smollett’s short ‘Advertisement’ to the work manifests the principles according to which he prosecuted his translation. He states that his ‘aim in this undertaking was to maintain that ludicrous solemnity and self–importance by which the inimitable Cervantes has distinguished the character of Don Quixote, without raising him to the insipid rank of a dry philosopher or debasing him to the melancholy circumstances and unentertaining caprice of an ordinary madman; to preserve the native humour of Sancho Panza from degenerating into mere proverbial phlegm or affected buffoonery; that the author has endeavoured to retain the spirit and ideas without servilely adhering to the literal expressions of the original, from which, however, he has not so far deviated as to destroy that formality of idiom so peculiar to the Spaniards, and so essential to the character of the work.’ It is not often that genius is brought to the service of translation. When it is, however, as in the case of Lord Berners’Froissartand Smollett’sDon Quixote, the result is memorable. Smollett, alas! reaped little immediate benefit from its publication. The work had been contracted and paid for five years before!No sooner did he get this portion of his stipulated labour off his hands, than he determined to visit his relatives in Scotland. His heart yearned to see his mother. Fifteen years had passed since the raw lad, with his tragedy in his pocket, had set out for London, as he fondly hoped, conquering and to conquer. He now returned to his nativecountry the pale, weary, toil–worn man, older–looking than his years by at least a decade. Dr. Moore relates the pathetic scene of the recognition of her celebrated son by the aged mother, then living with her daughter, Mrs. Telfer, at Scotston. Let us quote Dr. Moore’s words: ‘With the connivance of Mrs. Telfer, on his arrival, he was introduced to his mother as a gentleman from the West Indies who had been intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a very serious countenance, approaching a frown; but while the old lady’s eyes were riveted with a kind of wild and eager stare on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling. She immediately sprang from her chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed, “Ah, my son, my son, I have found you at last.” She afterwards told him that if he had kept his austere look, and continued togloom, as she called it, he might have escaped detection some time longer; “but your old roguish smile,” added she, “betrayed you at once.”’Smollett returned to his native country under very different circumstances from those under which he left it. Then, his family connections were anxious to get rid of him, rejoiced, in fact, to see him launched upon any profession that would remove him from their midst. He left, a poor, lonely, depressed, yet at the same time high–spirited lad, eating his heart out owing to the necessity for showing respect to those who lacked the one claim to it acknowledged by him—intellectual eminence. Now he returned, the most popular, perhaps, for the time being, of any of the three great masters of British fiction—a ‘lion,’ with whom to hold intercourse was an honour indeed. That Smollett was not wholly without feelings of this nature, his letters evince. ‘I have returned a little better thanwhen I set out,’ he is reported to have said to John Home as they walked together down the Canongate of Edinburgh.His reception in the Scots metropolis, from which Scotston is distant only some twenty–three miles, was gratifying in the extreme. Smollett had the advantage of seeing the town in all its antiquity before the migration of the better classes took place to George Square and to ‘the New Town’ across the Nor’ Loch. In 1756 it was still the quaint, formal, interesting, self–assertive place it had been before the Union in 1707. Here is a description of it by Gilbert Elliot, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and one of the few friends Smollett had who were connected with the Government. ‘I love the town tolerably well; there is one fine street, and the houses are extremely high. The gentry are a very sensible set of people, and some of them in their youth seem to have known the world; but by being too long in a place their notions are contracted and their faces are become solemn. The Faculty of Advocates is a very learned and a very worthy body. As for the ladies, they are unexceptionable, innocent, beautiful, and of an easy conversation. The staple vices of the place are censoriousness and hypocrisy. There is here no allowance for levity, none for dissipation. I am not a bit surprised I do not find here that unconstrained noble way of thinking and talking which one every day meets with among young fellows of plentiful fortunes and good spirits, who are constantly moving in a more enlarged circle of company.’With Dr. ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle of Inveresk he renewed that acquaintance begun some years before, when neither of them had attained the fame that came to them in the course of time. Carlyle introduced him to many of his influential friends, and, in consequence, Smollett’s visit to Edinburghproved an exceedingly happy one. ‘It was also in one of these days that Smollett visited Scotland for the first time,’ says Carlyle, ‘after having left Glasgow immediately after his education was finished, and his engaging as a surgeon’s mate on board a man–of–war, which gave him an opportunity of witnessing the siege of Carthagena, which he has so minutely described in hisRoderick Random. He came out to Musselburgh and passed a day and a night with me, and went to church and heard me preach. I introduced him to Cardonnel the Commissioner (of Customs), with whom he supped, and they were much pleased with each other. Smollett has reversed this in hisHumphrey Clinker, where he makes the Commissioner his old acquaintance. He went next to Glasgow and that neighbourhood to visit his friends, and returned again to Edinburgh in October, when I had frequent meetings with him, one in particular in a tavern, where there supped with him and Commissioner Cardonnel, Mr. Hepburn of Keith, John Home, and one or two more.... Cardonnel and I went with Smollett to Sir David Kinloch’s and passed the day, when John Home and Logan and I conducted him to Dunbar, where we stayed together all night.’Smollett’s picture of the Edinburgh of his time inHumphrey Clinkeris exceedingly graphic. ‘In the evening we arrived,’ writes Melford, ‘at this metropolis, of which I can say but very little. It is very romantic from its situation on the declivity of a hill, having a fortified castle at the top and a royal palace at the bottom. The first thing that strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless; but what first strikes the eye is the unconscionable height of the houses, which generally rise to five, six, seven, and eight storeys, and in some cases, as I am assured, to twelve. This manner of building, attended by numberless inconveniences,must have been originally owing to want of room. Certain it is the town seems to be full of people.’ In the next letter Matthew Bramble adds: ‘Every storey is a complete house occupied by a separate family, and the stair being common to them all is generally left in a very filthy condition; a man must tread with great circumspection to get safe housed with unpolluted shoes. Nothing, however, can form a stronger contrast between the outside and inside of the door, for the good women of this metropolis are very nice in the ornaments and propriety of their apartments, as if they were resolved to transfer the imputation from the individual to the public. You are no stranger to their method of discharging all their impurities from their windows at a certain hour of the night, as the custom is in Spain, Portugal, and other parts of France and Italy; a practice to which I can by no means be reconciled, for, notwithstanding all the care that is taken by their scavengers to remove this nuisance every morning by break of day, enough still remains to offend the eyes as well as the other organs of those whom use has not hardened against all delicacy of sensation.’ Nor can we omit what the inimitable Winnifred Jenkins—the prototype and model of all futuresoubrettesin fiction—says on the subject: ‘And now, dere Mary, we have got to Haddingborough (Edinburgh) among the Scots, who are cevel enuff for our money, thof I don’t speak their lingo. But they should not go for to impose on foreigners, for the bills on their houses say they have differenteasementsto let; but behold there is nurra geaks in the whole kingdom, nor anything for pore sarvants, but a barril with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs in the family are emptied into this here barril once a day, and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into somestreet or lane, and the Made cries “Gardyloo” to the passengers, which signerfies, “Lord have mercy upon you,” and this is done every night in every house in Haddingborough, so you may guess, Mary Jones, what a sweet savour comes from such a number of profuming pans. But they say it is wholesome; and truly I believe it is; for being in the vapours and thinking of Issabel (Jezabel) and Mr. Clinker, I was going into a fit of astericks when this fiff, saving your presence, took me by the nose so powerfully that I sneezed three times and found myself wonderfully refreshed; this, to be sure, is the raisin why there are no fits in Haddingborough.’From Edinburgh, Smollett, as we have seen, proceeded to Dumbartonshire, and then to Glasgow. His cousin was still laird of Bonhill, and welcomed him with much warmth back to the scene of his early years. In Glasgow he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Moore, who had succeeded him as apprentice with Mr. Gordon, and was now a physician of repute in the western metropolis. With the latter he remained two days, renewing old associations both at the College and elsewhere. Unfortunately, very little information can be gleaned regarding this visit of Smollett’s to Glasgow. Moore dismisses it in two or three lines, and every succeeding biographer, Anderson, Walter Scott, Chambers, Herbert, and Hannay, although mayhap spinning out a few more sentences, really do not add a tittle to our facts.On returning to Edinburgh in October, he was welcomed by all theliteratiof the capital, and was specially invited to a meeting of the famousSelect Society,[6]first mooted by Allan Ramsay the painter, as Mr. John Rae tells us in hisLife of Adam Smith; but the fifteen original members ofwhich had increased well–nigh to a hundred, comprising all the best–known names in literature, philosophy, science, and the arts. There he met or saw Kames and Monboddo (not yet ‘paper lords’ or lords of Session), Robertson and Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Dr. Blair, Wilkie of theEpigoniad, Wallace the statistician, Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller of the Court of Session, the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rosebery, Errol, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Gray, Garlies, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam the architect, Dr. Cullen, John Coutts the banker, and many others.[7]The Society met every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates’ Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Masonic Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers, men like Wedderburn and Robertson, took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland, as intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival.On returning to London, Smollett at once threw himself into the feverish excitement and worry of a journalistic life. In other words, he assumed the editorship of the newCritical Review, representative of High Church and Tory principles. This periodical, with its older rival, theMonthly Review(started by Griffiths in 1749 as the Whig organ), may be considered the prototypes of that plentiful crop of monthly magazines wherewith we are furnished to–day. TheCritical Reviewwas the property of a man named Hamilton, a Scotsman, whose enlightenment and liberality,remarks Herbert, had been proved by his listening to Chatterton’s request for a little money, by sending it to him and telling him he should have more if he wanted it. TheCritical Reviewfor its age was really a very creditable production, though there was little to choose between the rivals as to merit, for theMonthly, at the date of the founding of its antagonist, was edited by a young man of surpassing ability, who won for himself a name in English literature even more distinguished than Smollett’s—Oliver Goldsmith. Thus the authors of theVicar of Wakefieldand ofPeregrine Pickle—compositions wide as the poles apart in character—were thrown into rivalry with each other. That it was a rivalry embittered by any of the rancour and acrimony distinguishing Smollett’s future journalistic relations with John Wilkes, cannot be supposed, inasmuch as Goldsmith contributed several articles to theCritical Review, and as a return compliment Smollett four, at least, to theMonthly. The proprietors of the opposing periodicals may have had their squabbles and bespattered each other with foul names, but the editors seem to have been on the most amicable of terms and to have united in anathematising both parties.Much of Smollett’s time was frittered away on work for theReviewwhich would have been more remuneratively employed in other fields. But the pot had to be kept boiling, and there was but little fuel in reserve wherewith to feed the fire. He was far from making an ideal editor,—indeed, to tell the plain truth, he made an exceedingly bad one. He never kept his staff of contributors in hand. They were permitted to air their own grievances and to revenge their own quarrels in theReview. His criticisms, also, are very one–sided. The remarks on John Home’sDouglas, though true so far,are much too sweeping in their generalisations. The play has many merits, but theCritical Reviewwould fain persuade one it had next to none. The same remarks are true of Wilkie’sEpigoniad, by no means a work of great genius, but deserving better things said of it than theCriticalmeted out. With respect to the criticism on Dr. Grainger, the writer simply displayed the grossest and most culpable ignorance and impertinence towards the productions of a learned and refined Englishman. In a word, the injustice, the intemperance of language, and the inexcusable blunders which characterised Smollett’s occupancy of the editorial chair of theCritical Review, caused it to be deservedly reprobated by those who admired justice and fair play, to say nothing of cultured criticism.In one case, however, he was clearly in the right. A certain Admiral Knowles, who had so disgracefully failed in conducting to a successful issue the secret expedition to Rochelle in 1757, along with Sir John Mordaunt, wrote a pamphlet to justify his actions in the face of the storm of condemnation raised against him after a court–martial had acquitted Mordaunt. This pamphlet fell into Smollett’s hands, who characterised the writer as ‘an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity.’ Knowles entered an action against the printer, giving as his reason ‘his desire to find out the writer, in order to obtain the satisfaction of a gentleman, if the writer’s character would admit of it.’ On Smollett learning this, he at once came forward, acknowledged himself as the writer, and declared his willingness to meet the admiral with any weapons he chose. But the latter was a poltroon and a coward. He had obtained a judgment of the Court, and he sheltered himself under it. Smollett was mulcted in £100, and in 1759sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Knowles seems to have merited Sir Walter Scott’s severe terms of reprobation: ‘How the admiral reconciled his conduct to the rules usually observed by gentlemen we are not informed, but the proceedings seem to justify even Smollett’s strength of expressions.’But we have suffered our account of his relations to theCritical Reviewto run ahead of the narrative of his life. For several years the works he published were mostly hack–compilations for the booksellers. The most notable among these wasA Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, exhibiting a clear view of the Customs, Manners, Religion, Government, Commerce, and Natural History of most nations of the world, illustrated with a variety of Maps, Charts, etc., in 7 vols. 12mo. To this day Smollett’s collection is read with appreciation, and only two years ago another edition (abridged) was published of this most interesting and instructive work.Immense as was the reading and investigation required for such a compilation, Smollett cheerfully gave it, and really there are extraordinarily few errors in it notwithstanding the rapidity wherewith it had been produced. The publisher was Dodsley, and among the voyages recorded are those of Vasco da Gama, Pedro de Cabral, Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, Rowe, Monk, James, Nieuhoff, Wafer, Dampier, Gemelli, Rogers, Anson, etc., with the histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Also included therein was his own account of the expedition to Carthagena.Some time before this Smollett had inserted in theCritical Reviewthe following panegyric on Garrick, evidently intended to compensate for his bitter reflections on him inRoderick RandomandThe Regicide. Smollett’s eyeswere being opened to the more correct estimate of his own powers. Accordingly he wrote: ‘We often see this inimitable actor labouring through five tedious acts to support a lifeless piece, with a mixture of pity and indignation, and cannot help wishing there were in his age good poets to write for one who so well deserves them. He has the art, like the Lydian king, of turning all he touches into gold, and can ensure applause to every fortunate bard.’ Was the wish father to the deed? Be this as it may, within a short time Garrick accepted Smollett’s comedy ofThe Reprisal, orThe Tars of Old England, an afterpiece in two acts. The year 1757–58 had been a period of national disaster. Smollett, indignant at the timorous policy of the Government of the day, wrote the comedy in question to rouse the warlike spirit of the nation. The prologue begins—‘What eye will fail to glow, what eye to brighten,When Britain’s wrath aroused begins to lighten,Her thunders roll—her fearless sons advance,And her red ensigns wave o’er the pale flowers of France;Her ancient splendour England shall maintain,O’er distant realms extend her genial reign,And rise the unrivall’d empress of the main.’The Reprisalwas performed at Drury Lane with great success, and Garrick’s conduct on the occasion was generous in the extreme. It laid the foundations of a lifelong friendship between the two. The piece was afterwards published, and for some time held the stage as a ‘curtain–raiser’ or ‘curtain–dropper,’ but is now entirely forgotten.At this period Smollet was on terms of intimate friendship with the famous John Wilkes, who has been often called ‘the first Radical.’ With Samuel Johnson also he had some friendly intercourse, though they were tooalike to desire a great deal of intimate association with each other. Smollett, however, through his influence with Wilkes, was able to obtain the release of Dr. Johnson’s black servant, Francis Barber, who had been impressed and put on board theStagfrigate. On the occasion Smollett wrote to Wilkes in the following terms:—‘Chelsea,March 16, 1759.‘I am again your petitioner in behalf of that Great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board theStagfrigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in the throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty’s service. You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you, and I daresay you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation.’The application was successful, and Francis Barber returned to the lexicographer’s service. Dr. Johnson always spoke of Dr. Smollett thereafter with great respect:—‘A scholarly man, sir, although a Scot.’

VISIT TO SCOTLAND—THE CRITICAL REVIEW—THE REPRISAL. 1755–1759.

Smollett was from this time forward plunged into a sea of pecuniary troubles, wherein, with little mitigation, he remained as long as life lasted. The year 1754, wherein he had to meet the costs of the action for assault brought against him by Gordon, seems to have been the one wherein his distresses culminated. For some time he was in danger of arrest. He skulked about London like ‘a thief at large,’ ever afraid of feeling a hand on his shoulder, and of beholding a bailiff ready to conduct him to the ‘sponging–house.’ For some years his monetary difficulties, like a snowball, had been always increasing. In his Life of Smollett, Dr. Robert Chambers has drawn a painful picture of the great genius fretting like some noble steed condemned to pack–horse duty, at the unworthy tasks he was obliged to undertake. Yet five out of every six of his embarrassments were the result of his own folly and extravagance. A man has to cut his coat according to his cloth. Smollett would never consent to exercise present economy to avoid future embarrassment. In a letter dated 1752 he complains of lack of money through failure of his West India revenue. The income from his wife’s property was now greatly decreased, while what remained was frittered away on vexatious lawsuits. ‘Curse the law!’ he cried impatientlyon one occasion, ‘it has damned more honest men to lifelong drudgery than anything else.’ In another letter, in May 1753, addressed to his friend Dr. Macaulay, he acknowledges having received a previous loan of £15, but begs for the favour of another £50 to save him from serious difficulty. He promises payment from the proceeds of some work he then had in hand, probablyDon Quixote. By a bankruptcy he had lost £180, and was obliged to immediately discount a note of hand of Provost Drummond’s, at a sacrifice of sixty per cent., in place of waiting for the due–date. In December 1754 he again laments the failure of remittances from Jamaica and of actual extremities. So far down was he, that he was compelled to write to his brother–in–law, Mr. Telfer, begging the favour of a loan, which after some delay he received. All these accumulated distresses weighed upon his spirits. ‘My life is sheer slavery,’ he wrote to one of his friends; ‘my pen is at work from nine o’ the clock the one morning until one or two the next. I might as well be in Grub Street.’ Still he toiled on, though he realised that the work he was doing was far from being worthy of him. As Anderson says: ‘The booksellers were his principal resource for employment and subsistence; for them he held the pen of a ready writer in the walk of general literature, and towards him they were as liberal as the patronage of the public enabled them to be. They were almost his only patrons; and, indeed, a more generous set of men can hardly be pointed out in the trading world. By their liberality, wit and learning have perhaps received more ample and more substantial encouragement than from all their princely and noble patrons.’

Darker and ever darker grows the picture. Whether or not Mrs. Smollett was a poor housewife, or whetherSmollett’s own extravagances were wholly to blame, certain it is that from the period we have now reached until his not unwelcome release from life came in 1771, there was no ease for the toiling hand, no rest for the weary brow of the great novelist. His daily ‘darg’ had to be accomplished whether in sickness or in health; his daily tale of bricks to be handed in, if the rod of poverty’s stern task–mistress was to be averted from his shoulders, or the wolf of want driven from the door. But, alas, at what an expenditure of brain tissue was it achieved! He knew he was unable to take time to produce his best work, and the saddening consciousness weighed ever more heavily upon him. In March 1755, accordingly, there appeared his translation of theHistory of the Renowned Don Quixote; from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, with some Account of the Author’s life, illustrated with 28 new copperplates, designed by Hayman and engraved by the best Artists. The volumes, which were in quarto, were two in number, and were issued by Rivington, being dedicated by permission to Don Ricardo Wall, Principal Secretary of State to His Most Catholic Majesty, who, while he was resident in London as Spanish Ambassador, had exhibited much interest in the work. Though accomplished Spanish scholars, according to Moore, have accused Smollett of not having had a sufficient knowledge of the language when he undertook the task, for to perform it perfectly it would be requisite that the translator had lived some years in Spain, that he had obtained not only a knowledge of the Court and of polite society, but an acquaintance also with the vulgar idioms, the proverbs in use among the populace, and the various customs of the country to which allusions are made; still the fact remains that Smollett’s translation has never been superseded, and that it at once threw into the shadethe previous renderings of Motteux and Jervis. Lord Woodhouselee, in hisEssay on the Principles of Translation, has endeavoured, with a strange perversity of taste, to depreciate Smollett’s version in favour of that of Motteux. But the verdict of time has proved how egregiously he was in the wrong. Smollett’s short ‘Advertisement’ to the work manifests the principles according to which he prosecuted his translation. He states that his ‘aim in this undertaking was to maintain that ludicrous solemnity and self–importance by which the inimitable Cervantes has distinguished the character of Don Quixote, without raising him to the insipid rank of a dry philosopher or debasing him to the melancholy circumstances and unentertaining caprice of an ordinary madman; to preserve the native humour of Sancho Panza from degenerating into mere proverbial phlegm or affected buffoonery; that the author has endeavoured to retain the spirit and ideas without servilely adhering to the literal expressions of the original, from which, however, he has not so far deviated as to destroy that formality of idiom so peculiar to the Spaniards, and so essential to the character of the work.’ It is not often that genius is brought to the service of translation. When it is, however, as in the case of Lord Berners’Froissartand Smollett’sDon Quixote, the result is memorable. Smollett, alas! reaped little immediate benefit from its publication. The work had been contracted and paid for five years before!

No sooner did he get this portion of his stipulated labour off his hands, than he determined to visit his relatives in Scotland. His heart yearned to see his mother. Fifteen years had passed since the raw lad, with his tragedy in his pocket, had set out for London, as he fondly hoped, conquering and to conquer. He now returned to his nativecountry the pale, weary, toil–worn man, older–looking than his years by at least a decade. Dr. Moore relates the pathetic scene of the recognition of her celebrated son by the aged mother, then living with her daughter, Mrs. Telfer, at Scotston. Let us quote Dr. Moore’s words: ‘With the connivance of Mrs. Telfer, on his arrival, he was introduced to his mother as a gentleman from the West Indies who had been intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a very serious countenance, approaching a frown; but while the old lady’s eyes were riveted with a kind of wild and eager stare on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling. She immediately sprang from her chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed, “Ah, my son, my son, I have found you at last.” She afterwards told him that if he had kept his austere look, and continued togloom, as she called it, he might have escaped detection some time longer; “but your old roguish smile,” added she, “betrayed you at once.”’

Smollett returned to his native country under very different circumstances from those under which he left it. Then, his family connections were anxious to get rid of him, rejoiced, in fact, to see him launched upon any profession that would remove him from their midst. He left, a poor, lonely, depressed, yet at the same time high–spirited lad, eating his heart out owing to the necessity for showing respect to those who lacked the one claim to it acknowledged by him—intellectual eminence. Now he returned, the most popular, perhaps, for the time being, of any of the three great masters of British fiction—a ‘lion,’ with whom to hold intercourse was an honour indeed. That Smollett was not wholly without feelings of this nature, his letters evince. ‘I have returned a little better thanwhen I set out,’ he is reported to have said to John Home as they walked together down the Canongate of Edinburgh.

His reception in the Scots metropolis, from which Scotston is distant only some twenty–three miles, was gratifying in the extreme. Smollett had the advantage of seeing the town in all its antiquity before the migration of the better classes took place to George Square and to ‘the New Town’ across the Nor’ Loch. In 1756 it was still the quaint, formal, interesting, self–assertive place it had been before the Union in 1707. Here is a description of it by Gilbert Elliot, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and one of the few friends Smollett had who were connected with the Government. ‘I love the town tolerably well; there is one fine street, and the houses are extremely high. The gentry are a very sensible set of people, and some of them in their youth seem to have known the world; but by being too long in a place their notions are contracted and their faces are become solemn. The Faculty of Advocates is a very learned and a very worthy body. As for the ladies, they are unexceptionable, innocent, beautiful, and of an easy conversation. The staple vices of the place are censoriousness and hypocrisy. There is here no allowance for levity, none for dissipation. I am not a bit surprised I do not find here that unconstrained noble way of thinking and talking which one every day meets with among young fellows of plentiful fortunes and good spirits, who are constantly moving in a more enlarged circle of company.’

With Dr. ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle of Inveresk he renewed that acquaintance begun some years before, when neither of them had attained the fame that came to them in the course of time. Carlyle introduced him to many of his influential friends, and, in consequence, Smollett’s visit to Edinburghproved an exceedingly happy one. ‘It was also in one of these days that Smollett visited Scotland for the first time,’ says Carlyle, ‘after having left Glasgow immediately after his education was finished, and his engaging as a surgeon’s mate on board a man–of–war, which gave him an opportunity of witnessing the siege of Carthagena, which he has so minutely described in hisRoderick Random. He came out to Musselburgh and passed a day and a night with me, and went to church and heard me preach. I introduced him to Cardonnel the Commissioner (of Customs), with whom he supped, and they were much pleased with each other. Smollett has reversed this in hisHumphrey Clinker, where he makes the Commissioner his old acquaintance. He went next to Glasgow and that neighbourhood to visit his friends, and returned again to Edinburgh in October, when I had frequent meetings with him, one in particular in a tavern, where there supped with him and Commissioner Cardonnel, Mr. Hepburn of Keith, John Home, and one or two more.... Cardonnel and I went with Smollett to Sir David Kinloch’s and passed the day, when John Home and Logan and I conducted him to Dunbar, where we stayed together all night.’

Smollett’s picture of the Edinburgh of his time inHumphrey Clinkeris exceedingly graphic. ‘In the evening we arrived,’ writes Melford, ‘at this metropolis, of which I can say but very little. It is very romantic from its situation on the declivity of a hill, having a fortified castle at the top and a royal palace at the bottom. The first thing that strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless; but what first strikes the eye is the unconscionable height of the houses, which generally rise to five, six, seven, and eight storeys, and in some cases, as I am assured, to twelve. This manner of building, attended by numberless inconveniences,must have been originally owing to want of room. Certain it is the town seems to be full of people.’ In the next letter Matthew Bramble adds: ‘Every storey is a complete house occupied by a separate family, and the stair being common to them all is generally left in a very filthy condition; a man must tread with great circumspection to get safe housed with unpolluted shoes. Nothing, however, can form a stronger contrast between the outside and inside of the door, for the good women of this metropolis are very nice in the ornaments and propriety of their apartments, as if they were resolved to transfer the imputation from the individual to the public. You are no stranger to their method of discharging all their impurities from their windows at a certain hour of the night, as the custom is in Spain, Portugal, and other parts of France and Italy; a practice to which I can by no means be reconciled, for, notwithstanding all the care that is taken by their scavengers to remove this nuisance every morning by break of day, enough still remains to offend the eyes as well as the other organs of those whom use has not hardened against all delicacy of sensation.’ Nor can we omit what the inimitable Winnifred Jenkins—the prototype and model of all futuresoubrettesin fiction—says on the subject: ‘And now, dere Mary, we have got to Haddingborough (Edinburgh) among the Scots, who are cevel enuff for our money, thof I don’t speak their lingo. But they should not go for to impose on foreigners, for the bills on their houses say they have differenteasementsto let; but behold there is nurra geaks in the whole kingdom, nor anything for pore sarvants, but a barril with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs in the family are emptied into this here barril once a day, and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into somestreet or lane, and the Made cries “Gardyloo” to the passengers, which signerfies, “Lord have mercy upon you,” and this is done every night in every house in Haddingborough, so you may guess, Mary Jones, what a sweet savour comes from such a number of profuming pans. But they say it is wholesome; and truly I believe it is; for being in the vapours and thinking of Issabel (Jezabel) and Mr. Clinker, I was going into a fit of astericks when this fiff, saving your presence, took me by the nose so powerfully that I sneezed three times and found myself wonderfully refreshed; this, to be sure, is the raisin why there are no fits in Haddingborough.’

From Edinburgh, Smollett, as we have seen, proceeded to Dumbartonshire, and then to Glasgow. His cousin was still laird of Bonhill, and welcomed him with much warmth back to the scene of his early years. In Glasgow he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Moore, who had succeeded him as apprentice with Mr. Gordon, and was now a physician of repute in the western metropolis. With the latter he remained two days, renewing old associations both at the College and elsewhere. Unfortunately, very little information can be gleaned regarding this visit of Smollett’s to Glasgow. Moore dismisses it in two or three lines, and every succeeding biographer, Anderson, Walter Scott, Chambers, Herbert, and Hannay, although mayhap spinning out a few more sentences, really do not add a tittle to our facts.

On returning to Edinburgh in October, he was welcomed by all theliteratiof the capital, and was specially invited to a meeting of the famousSelect Society,[6]first mooted by Allan Ramsay the painter, as Mr. John Rae tells us in hisLife of Adam Smith; but the fifteen original members ofwhich had increased well–nigh to a hundred, comprising all the best–known names in literature, philosophy, science, and the arts. There he met or saw Kames and Monboddo (not yet ‘paper lords’ or lords of Session), Robertson and Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Dr. Blair, Wilkie of theEpigoniad, Wallace the statistician, Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller of the Court of Session, the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rosebery, Errol, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Gray, Garlies, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam the architect, Dr. Cullen, John Coutts the banker, and many others.[7]The Society met every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates’ Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Masonic Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers, men like Wedderburn and Robertson, took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland, as intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival.

On returning to London, Smollett at once threw himself into the feverish excitement and worry of a journalistic life. In other words, he assumed the editorship of the newCritical Review, representative of High Church and Tory principles. This periodical, with its older rival, theMonthly Review(started by Griffiths in 1749 as the Whig organ), may be considered the prototypes of that plentiful crop of monthly magazines wherewith we are furnished to–day. TheCritical Reviewwas the property of a man named Hamilton, a Scotsman, whose enlightenment and liberality,remarks Herbert, had been proved by his listening to Chatterton’s request for a little money, by sending it to him and telling him he should have more if he wanted it. TheCritical Reviewfor its age was really a very creditable production, though there was little to choose between the rivals as to merit, for theMonthly, at the date of the founding of its antagonist, was edited by a young man of surpassing ability, who won for himself a name in English literature even more distinguished than Smollett’s—Oliver Goldsmith. Thus the authors of theVicar of Wakefieldand ofPeregrine Pickle—compositions wide as the poles apart in character—were thrown into rivalry with each other. That it was a rivalry embittered by any of the rancour and acrimony distinguishing Smollett’s future journalistic relations with John Wilkes, cannot be supposed, inasmuch as Goldsmith contributed several articles to theCritical Review, and as a return compliment Smollett four, at least, to theMonthly. The proprietors of the opposing periodicals may have had their squabbles and bespattered each other with foul names, but the editors seem to have been on the most amicable of terms and to have united in anathematising both parties.

Much of Smollett’s time was frittered away on work for theReviewwhich would have been more remuneratively employed in other fields. But the pot had to be kept boiling, and there was but little fuel in reserve wherewith to feed the fire. He was far from making an ideal editor,—indeed, to tell the plain truth, he made an exceedingly bad one. He never kept his staff of contributors in hand. They were permitted to air their own grievances and to revenge their own quarrels in theReview. His criticisms, also, are very one–sided. The remarks on John Home’sDouglas, though true so far,are much too sweeping in their generalisations. The play has many merits, but theCritical Reviewwould fain persuade one it had next to none. The same remarks are true of Wilkie’sEpigoniad, by no means a work of great genius, but deserving better things said of it than theCriticalmeted out. With respect to the criticism on Dr. Grainger, the writer simply displayed the grossest and most culpable ignorance and impertinence towards the productions of a learned and refined Englishman. In a word, the injustice, the intemperance of language, and the inexcusable blunders which characterised Smollett’s occupancy of the editorial chair of theCritical Review, caused it to be deservedly reprobated by those who admired justice and fair play, to say nothing of cultured criticism.

In one case, however, he was clearly in the right. A certain Admiral Knowles, who had so disgracefully failed in conducting to a successful issue the secret expedition to Rochelle in 1757, along with Sir John Mordaunt, wrote a pamphlet to justify his actions in the face of the storm of condemnation raised against him after a court–martial had acquitted Mordaunt. This pamphlet fell into Smollett’s hands, who characterised the writer as ‘an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity.’ Knowles entered an action against the printer, giving as his reason ‘his desire to find out the writer, in order to obtain the satisfaction of a gentleman, if the writer’s character would admit of it.’ On Smollett learning this, he at once came forward, acknowledged himself as the writer, and declared his willingness to meet the admiral with any weapons he chose. But the latter was a poltroon and a coward. He had obtained a judgment of the Court, and he sheltered himself under it. Smollett was mulcted in £100, and in 1759sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Knowles seems to have merited Sir Walter Scott’s severe terms of reprobation: ‘How the admiral reconciled his conduct to the rules usually observed by gentlemen we are not informed, but the proceedings seem to justify even Smollett’s strength of expressions.’

But we have suffered our account of his relations to theCritical Reviewto run ahead of the narrative of his life. For several years the works he published were mostly hack–compilations for the booksellers. The most notable among these wasA Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, exhibiting a clear view of the Customs, Manners, Religion, Government, Commerce, and Natural History of most nations of the world, illustrated with a variety of Maps, Charts, etc., in 7 vols. 12mo. To this day Smollett’s collection is read with appreciation, and only two years ago another edition (abridged) was published of this most interesting and instructive work.

Immense as was the reading and investigation required for such a compilation, Smollett cheerfully gave it, and really there are extraordinarily few errors in it notwithstanding the rapidity wherewith it had been produced. The publisher was Dodsley, and among the voyages recorded are those of Vasco da Gama, Pedro de Cabral, Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, Rowe, Monk, James, Nieuhoff, Wafer, Dampier, Gemelli, Rogers, Anson, etc., with the histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Also included therein was his own account of the expedition to Carthagena.

Some time before this Smollett had inserted in theCritical Reviewthe following panegyric on Garrick, evidently intended to compensate for his bitter reflections on him inRoderick RandomandThe Regicide. Smollett’s eyeswere being opened to the more correct estimate of his own powers. Accordingly he wrote: ‘We often see this inimitable actor labouring through five tedious acts to support a lifeless piece, with a mixture of pity and indignation, and cannot help wishing there were in his age good poets to write for one who so well deserves them. He has the art, like the Lydian king, of turning all he touches into gold, and can ensure applause to every fortunate bard.’ Was the wish father to the deed? Be this as it may, within a short time Garrick accepted Smollett’s comedy ofThe Reprisal, orThe Tars of Old England, an afterpiece in two acts. The year 1757–58 had been a period of national disaster. Smollett, indignant at the timorous policy of the Government of the day, wrote the comedy in question to rouse the warlike spirit of the nation. The prologue begins—

‘What eye will fail to glow, what eye to brighten,When Britain’s wrath aroused begins to lighten,Her thunders roll—her fearless sons advance,And her red ensigns wave o’er the pale flowers of France;Her ancient splendour England shall maintain,O’er distant realms extend her genial reign,And rise the unrivall’d empress of the main.’

The Reprisalwas performed at Drury Lane with great success, and Garrick’s conduct on the occasion was generous in the extreme. It laid the foundations of a lifelong friendship between the two. The piece was afterwards published, and for some time held the stage as a ‘curtain–raiser’ or ‘curtain–dropper,’ but is now entirely forgotten.

At this period Smollet was on terms of intimate friendship with the famous John Wilkes, who has been often called ‘the first Radical.’ With Samuel Johnson also he had some friendly intercourse, though they were tooalike to desire a great deal of intimate association with each other. Smollett, however, through his influence with Wilkes, was able to obtain the release of Dr. Johnson’s black servant, Francis Barber, who had been impressed and put on board theStagfrigate. On the occasion Smollett wrote to Wilkes in the following terms:—

‘Chelsea,March 16, 1759.

‘I am again your petitioner in behalf of that Great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board theStagfrigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in the throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty’s service. You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you, and I daresay you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation.’

The application was successful, and Francis Barber returned to the lexicographer’s service. Dr. Johnson always spoke of Dr. Smollett thereafter with great respect:—‘A scholarly man, sir, although a Scot.’

CHAPTER VIIIHISTORY OF ENGLAND—SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES—THE NORTH BRITON—HACK HISTORICAL WORK—THE BEGINNING OF THE END.Despite all his hastiness of temper and irritability, despite his wife’s lack of management, despite, too, the fact of the burden of debt weighing him down, the Chelsea home must have been a very happy one. At this time Smollett had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, to whom he was tenderly attached. Nothing rejoiced him more than a frolic with his little one. ‘Many a time,’ he remarks in one of his unpublished letters, now in the possession of Mr. Goring, ‘do I stop my task and betake me to a game of romps with Betty, while my wife looks on smiling and longing in her heart to join in the sport: then back to the cursed round of duty.’Mrs. Smollett appears to have been of a most affectionate and loving disposition, though, like himself, she was affected with a hasty temper. Though they had many quarrels, they were deeply and sincerely attached to each other. ‘My Nancy’ appears in many of his letters in conjunction with expressions of the tenderest and truest affection. The home was always bright and cheerful for the weary worker, hence, when absent from it, he is ever craving ‘to be back to Nancy and little Bet’ Yet these were feelings Smollett scrupulously concealed from his fellows, so that the worldmight suppose him the acidulous cynic he desired to be esteemed. What Smollett’s reason for so acting was, is now hard to divine. His Matthew Bramble inHumphrey Clinkeris the exact reproduction of his own character. His kindliness of nature only broke out like gleams of sunshine on a wintry day, while, like Jonathan Oldbuck, the very suggestion of gratitude seemed to irritate him. He was one who all his life preferred to do good by stealth.In 1758, Smollett published a work that had occupied his attention throughout the better part of eighteen months—The Complete History of England, deduced from the descent of Julius Cæsar to the Treaty of Aix–la–Chapelle in 1748. It was published by Messrs. Rivington & Fletcher, in four vols. 4to, and embellished by engraved allegorical frontispieces, designed by Messrs. Hayman & Miller. It has been stated, and never contradicted, says Anderson (substantiated also by Herbert), that the history was written in fourteen months, an effort to which nothing but the most distinguished abilities and the most vigorous application could have been equal. When one considers that he consulted three hundred books for information, that he had other literary work to prosecute in order to keep the pot boiling, and when one has regard also to the high literary character of the composition, this rapidity of production is simply marvellous. Of course none of the facts were new, but the method was novel, and the treatment fresh and brilliant. As Sir Walter Scott justly remarks, ‘All the novelty which Smollett’s history could present, must needs consist in the mode of stating facts, or in the reflections deduced from them.’ The success which attended the publication of the history surpassed the expectations of even Smollett himself. His political standpoint had been that of a Tory and an upholder of the monarchy. In writing to Dr. Moore earlyin 1758, Smollett says: ‘I deferred answering your kind letter until I should have finished my History, which is now completed. I was agreeably surprised to hear that my work had met with any approbation in Glasgow, for it is not at all calculated for that meridian. The last volume will, I doubt not, be severely censured by the West Country Whigs of Scotland. I desire you will divest yourself of prejudice before you begin to peruse it, and consider well the facts before you pass judgment. Whatever may be its defect, I profess before God I have, as far as in me lay, adhered to truth, without espousing any faction.’ Then in September of the same year he again writes to Dr. Moore: ‘You will not be sorry to hear that the weekly sale of the History has increased to above 10,000. A French gentleman of talents and erudition has undertaken to translate it into that language, and I have promised to supply him with corrections.’But sadder and still more sad grows the picture of distress. During the whole time he was writing his History he was pestered by duns, and could not leave his home without dodging bailiffs. When all was over, he found himself a man broken in health and spirits, and already ‘earmarked’ for the tomb. For fourteen years he was to live and labour, like the brave, honest, independent spirit he was, but the end was only a question of time. That he realised this fact about this period is almost certain. Henceforth his diligence was redoubled. Like the stranger from another world in the fable, when confronted with the fact of inevitable death, he cried, ‘I must die, I must die; trouble me not with trifles; I must die.’But his publication of the History was not suffered to pass without the formation of another party bent on injuring him. The extensive sale of Smollett’s work alarmed theproprietors of Rapin’s History, who caballed and encouraged his political adversaries to expose what they termed ‘the absurdities, inconsistencies, contradictions, and misrepresentations of the book,’ most of which existed solely in the minds of his malignant enemies. In the Whig periodicals of the time Smollett is vilified and abused, represented as a partisan and panegyrist of the House of Stuart, a Papist and a prostitute. The following pamphlet, written, however, by a man of some learning and discernment, would have been valuable and useful had it only been penned with more moderation and good sense. But party zeal is an enemy to good sense, and the truth of this remark has seldom been more clearly demonstrated than in ‘A Vindication of the Revolution in 1688, and of the character of King William and Queen Mary, together with a computation of the character of King Jamesii., as misrepresented by the author of the Complete History of England, by extracts from Dr. Smollett: to which are added some strictures on the said historian’s account of the punishment of the rebels inA.D.1715 and 1746, and on the eulogium given to the History of England by the critical reviewers, by Thomas Comber, B.A. 8vo, 1758.’ Comber was a clergyman, and a relative of the Duke of Leeds. He was, in fact, engaged by the Whig Ministry to undertake the duty, as none of the professedlitterateursof the day in the Whig ranks cared to cross swords with the Tory champion in his own field. The publication of his History did Smollett much good in the eyes of the learned and cultured. Henceforth to them he was no longer a mere ‘teller of tales,’ but one of the great historians of the epoch—an author deservedly honoured for his integrity and impartiality.In 1761 theBritish Magazine—a sixpenny monthly onwhose staff Oliver Goldsmith was one of the leading writers—publishedThe Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the fourth of Smollett’s novels, but the one which we could quite well have spared, provided something in the same vein asHumphrey Clinkerhad taken its place. It was written hastily, and to supply the demand forcopy. Scott relates that, while engaged on it, he was residing at Paxton in Berwickshire, on a visit to Mr. George Home. When post time drew near, he was wont to retire for half an hour or an hour, and then and there scribble off the necessary amount of matter for the press. But he never gave himself even the trouble to read over and correct what he had written. Work written under such circumstances did not deserve to succeed. And yet, singularly enough, in this novel are to be found some of Smollett’s most original creations and most felicitously conceived situations. The design of the work is far from happy. Obviously suggested by his recent study ofDon Quixote, Sir Launcelot is only a bad imitation of the immortal Knight of La Mancha. Of this, indeed, Smollett himself seems to have had a suspicion. In the course of the dialogue he makes Ferret express an opinion like that to Sir Launcelot, who sternly repudiates it. ‘What! you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous and well–timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago will make but a sorry jest when really acted from affectation at this time of day in England.’ The knight, eyeing the censor, whose character was none of the best, replied, ‘I am neither an affected imitation of Don Quixote, nor, as I trust in Heaven, visited by that spirit of lunacy so admirably displayed in the fictitious character exhibited by the inimitable Cervantes. I see and distinguish objects as they are seen and described by other men. I quarrel withnone but the foes of virtue and decorum, against whom I have declared perpetual war, and them I will everywhere attack as the natural enemies of mankind. I do purpose,’ added Sir Launcelot, eyeing Ferret with a look of ineffable contempt, ‘to act as a coadjutor to the law, and even to remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage slander, disgrace immodesty, stigmatise ingratitude.’The work was written in part during his imprisonment. Taking this into consideration, as well as the rapidity of production, the conception, amid the sordid surroundings of the King’s Bench Prison, of such cleverly drawn characters as Aurelia Darnel, Captain Crowe, and his nephew, Tom Clarke, the attorney of the amorous heart, is passing wonderful. Although the least popular of his works, and deservedly so, the book in some parts is redolent of ‘Flora and the country green.’Not a moment could his busy pen afford to rest. No sooner was one piece of work thrown off than another must be commenced. In 1761, Smollett lent his assistance to the furtherance of a great work. This was the publication, in 42 vols. 8vo, ofThe Modern Part of an Universal History, compiled from Original Writers. In this colossal undertaking we know that Smollett’s share was the Histories of France, Italy, and Germany. Not alone these, however, were the fruit of his industry. Other authors failed to produce their quota. There was one pen that never failed. The willing horse had to do the work. Though this additional labour brought in guineas, it still further exhausted his strength, and left him little better than a confirmed invalid. From this drudgery he passed on to something else that was a little more agreeable and congenial, namely, hisContinuation of the History of England.The first volume was published in the end of 1761, the second, third, and fourth in 1762, and a fifth some years after (1765), bringing the narrative down to that period. It is stated that Smollett cleared £2000 by his History and the Continuation. He sold the latter to his printer at a price which enabled the purchaser to sell it to Mr. Baldwin the bookseller at a profit of £1000. From these facts one can gather the extraordinary popularity of Smollett’s work at that period.Henceforward the story of his life is summed up in little more than the dates of the publication of his books. Of relaxation there was no interval for him. His expenses of living were considerable, though he never was a man who loved luxury or display. But he had been hampered by debts, by lawsuits, to pay the costs of which he had to borrow money at sixty per cent. Had Smollett’s feet been free from the outset, the £600 per annum, at which he reckoned his income, would have more than sufficed for all his wants. But the interest of borrowed money is like the rolling snowball of which we spoke before,—unless it be paid regularly, it constantly adds to the bulk of the original. Poor Smollett! A more pitiable picture can scarcely be conceived than this splendid genius yoked like a pug–mill horse to tasks the most ignoble, in order that he might keep his wife and daughter from feeling the pinch of want. A hero—yea, a hero indeed—one of those heroes in commonplace things, whose virtues are every whit as praiseworthy in their way as though he had led England’s armies to victory, or swept the seas of her enemies.In connection with Smollett’s historical work, it should be mentioned here, that although his History has not held its place as a standard work, his Continuation undoubtedly has. To this day it is printed along with Hume’s volumes, underthe title ofHume and Smollett’s History of England, and is justly held in esteem for its impartiality and accuracy. His other historical works have long since met the fate they deserved. They were hack–work, designed to supply a temporary need. When that need was met by something better, they were forgotten.We must note here, however, in disproof of that jealousy of contemporaries which has been laid to his charge, the following generous estimate of those who were hiscollaborateursin some respects, his rivals in others. In the Continuation he thus repairs the hasty judgments of immature years: ‘Akenside and Armstrong excelled in didactic poetry. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Coke, by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. There are also the learned and elegant Robertson, and, above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume, whom we rank among the first writers of the age, both as a historian and a philosopher. Johnson, inferior to none in philosophy, philology, poetry, and classical learning, stands foremost as an essayist, justly admired for the dignity, strength, and variety of his style, as well as for the agreeable manner in which he investigates the human heart, tracing every interesting emotion, and opening all the sources of morality!’ And this was the man whom his political opponents accused of never speaking of a man save to depreciate him.We reach now a period in Smollett’s career which must always give pain to those that are lovers of his genius. Hitherto, though dabbling in politics, and though editing, professedly on the Tory and High Church side, theCritical Review, his sympathies had been so predominatingly literarythat he was able to maintain the friendliest of relations with prominent politicians on the Whig side, notably with John Wilkes. Now, in an evil hour, he was prevailed upon to accept a brief on the Tory side by assuming the editorship of the new weekly paper,The Briton, founded for the express purpose of defending the Earl of Bute. That nobleman, who owed his advancement to the favour wherewith he was regarded by Georgeiii.(recently come to the throne), was, on the 29th May 1762, appointed First Lord of the Treasury, and assumed the management of public affairs. Although an able, honourable, and indefatigable Minister, he lacked experience in the discharge of public duties. Besides, the nation was still strongly Whig in its political inclinations. For the monarch, by an arbitrary exercise of his prerogative, thus to override the sentiments of his people and to dismiss their chosen representatives, was both a high–handed and a foolish action. More foolish still was Lord Bute that he permitted himself thus to be made a tool to gratify the king’s jealousy. The consequence was, that the appointment was received all over England with a storm of indignation, and no Ministry was ever more unpopular than that whereof the Earl of Bute was chief.To stem the tide of adverse criticism, and endeavour to win Englishmen to view more favourably the advent of Lord Bute to power,The Britonwas started, and Smollett was chosen as editor, inasmuch as his was the keenest pen on the Tory side. On hearing of the appointment of his friend to the post, John Wilkes, with a generosity that was quite in keeping with many of the actions of that strangely constituted man, remarked that ‘Lord Bute, after having distributed among his adherents all the places under Government, was determined to monopolise the wit also.’ A few days subsequent, the Whigs proposed that, to encounterThe Briton, which had gone off with a great flourish of trumpets, as well as with some very bitter political writing, Mr. Wilkes should publish a paper, to be called ‘The Englishman.’ He agreed to the proposal, except that he did not adopt the title recommended, but chose another, that ofThe North Briton—the first number of which appeared on the 5th June 1762, or exactly a week afterThe Briton.Wilkes exhibited great forbearance towards Smollett at the outset. The good–natured demagogue, it is believed, would have been content, like many another pair of friends, to fight strenuously for principles, and avoid personalities; or, if that were impossible, to confine their antagonism to the press alone, leaving the intercourse of friendship unimpaired. But Smollett was not of the stuff whereof great journalists are made. One of the prime qualities is that they should belong to the genus of literary pachydermata. Smollett was not so. He was sensitive to a degree. He imagined slights and insults where none were intended. Within a few days, therefore, of the issue ofThe North Briton, Smollett took umbrage at something said aboutThe Briton, and retorted angrily with some personalities on Wilkes. Even then the latter would have passed over the ill–natured jibes with a jest. This, however, maddened Smollett more than aught else. He believed Wilkes despised him as an assailant. From that day Smollett devoted himself to the most unsparing personal castigation of Wilkes. The demagogue replied, and presently the two that had been such warm friends could not find terms bitter enough to hurl at one another.But Smollett was not a match for Wilkes. The former was scrupulously careful in alleging nothing against hisopponent but what he could prove. The latter fought with characteristic unscrupulousness. A matter of no moment to him was it whether a charge were true or false, provided it served the purpose of galling his adversary. Wilkes was absolutely impervious to abuse and vilification. He gloried in his indifference to all social restrictions and customs. The publication to the world of his debaucheries and lack of principle only extorted a horse–laugh from him. With all his generosity and faithful devotion to the cause of popular freedom, Wilkes was a man of absolutely no principle. He sneered at his family relations, was one of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Medmenham ‘Cistercians,’ who sought to outbid the ‘Hellfire’ and ‘Devil’s Own’ Clubs in abandoned wickedness and impiety. And yet this was the man who was capable of the most splendid sacrifice in the cause of national liberty. His abilities would have carried him to fame in any career. M. Louis Blanc states that many of his sayings are still repeated and admired in France as are those of Sydney Smith among us. Mr. J. Bowles Daly[8]relates that his wit was so constantly at his command, that wagers have been gained that from the time he quitted his house till he reached Guildhall, no one could address him or leave him without a smile or a hearty laugh. His bright conversation charmed away the prejudice of such a Tory as Dr. Johnson, fascinated Hannah More, and won over the gloomy Lord Mansfield, who said, ‘Mr. Wilkes is the pleasantest companion, the politest gentleman, and the best scholar I know.’This, then, was the man who was selected to do battle with Smollett and to demolish the Ministry of Lord Bute. Certainly the latter had given Wilkes ample handle for assailing him by selecting as his Chancellor of the ExchequerLord Sandwich, one of the dissolute Medmenham monks, a man glaringly deficient in ability, and so utterly incompetent in finance as to cause the wits of the time to describe him as ‘a Chancellor of the Exchequer to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable mystery.’ The first sentence ofThe North Britonhas often been copied and adopted as the motto of succeeding journals: ‘The liberty of the press is the birthright of the Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country.’ The aim of Wilkes’ paper was to vilify Scotland, because Lord Bute, being a Scotsman, had wormed himself into the favour of the king. Not a very elevated principle, certainly, but quite characteristic of the lowmoraleof the period, when personal pique was elevated into the domain of principle. His abuse of Scotland was quite of a piece with his political profligacy on every other point than national liberty. ‘He would have sold his soul to the devil for £1000 could he have induced his Satanic majesty to have invested in so worthless a commodity,’ said one of his own friends. As a specimen of the journalism wherewith Wilkes fought the battle of popular liberties, take the following paragraph, to pen which nowadays not the neediest penny–a–liner of gutter–journalism would stoop, notwithstanding the jealousy of Scotland and the Scots which still exists. Playing on the popular jealousy of Scotland, Wilkes went on to say that ‘The river Tweed is the line of demarcation between all that is noble and all that is base; south of the river is all honour, virtue, patriotism—north of it is nothing but lying, malice, meanness, and slavery. Scotland is a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of creation; where famine has fixed her chosen throne; where a scantpopulation, gaunt with hunger and hideous with dirt, spend their wretched days in brooding over the fallen fortunes of their native dynasty, and in watching with mingled envy and hatred the mighty nation that subdued them.’This was the type of writing which Smollett strove to meet with pithy argument and epigrammatic smartness. No wonder it produced little effect, and less wonder is there that, after fighting the battle of the Ministry for nearly a year, he threw the task up in disgust (12th February 1763). Lord Bute had not given him the support he had a right to expect; and the Minister’s own fall followed hard upon the cessation ofThe Briton, namely, on the 8th April of the same year. Writing to Caleb Whiteford, a friend, some time after, he remarked: ‘The Ministry little deserve that any man of genius should draw his pen in their defence. They inherit the absurd stoicism of Lord Bute, who set himself up as a pillory to be pelted by all the blackguards of England, upon the supposition that they would grow tired and leave off.’Back once more to hack–work was our weary, brain–worn veteran. So pressing were his needs that he had to condescend to tasks beneath them. He translated and edited the works of Voltaire, and compiled a publication entitledThe Present State of all Nations, containing a geographical, natural, commercial, and political history of all the countries of the known world. Fancy Smollett engaged on such a task! Let us hope that only his name was given, not his labour. Next year we know his work became so great that he had to hire others to do portions of it for him. In a word, he became a literary ‘sweater.’Alas! in this same year, 1763, when his own health was failing so rapidly, one of the links binding him most strongly to earth was severed. His daughter Elizabeth, abeautiful girl of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and amiable and accomplished as well, was taken from him by death—the saddest of all deaths, consumption. Henceforth he was to tread the Valley of the Shadow alone. Even more than his wife, Elizabeth had been able to sympathise with her father’s feelings and to soothe his irritation. The light of his life had verily gone out!But still no rest! Sorrow, however deep, must not check the pen that is fighting for daily bread. ‘I am writing with a breaking heart,’ he says in one letter. ‘I would wish to be beside her, were the wish not cowardly so long as poor Nancy is unprovided for.’ Brave, suffering heart! The end is nearing for you, though you know it not. Seven more years of increasing labour, and also of increasing anguish and suffering, and then—‘He giveth His beloved sleep!’

HISTORY OF ENGLAND—SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES—THE NORTH BRITON—HACK HISTORICAL WORK—THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

Despite all his hastiness of temper and irritability, despite his wife’s lack of management, despite, too, the fact of the burden of debt weighing him down, the Chelsea home must have been a very happy one. At this time Smollett had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, to whom he was tenderly attached. Nothing rejoiced him more than a frolic with his little one. ‘Many a time,’ he remarks in one of his unpublished letters, now in the possession of Mr. Goring, ‘do I stop my task and betake me to a game of romps with Betty, while my wife looks on smiling and longing in her heart to join in the sport: then back to the cursed round of duty.’

Mrs. Smollett appears to have been of a most affectionate and loving disposition, though, like himself, she was affected with a hasty temper. Though they had many quarrels, they were deeply and sincerely attached to each other. ‘My Nancy’ appears in many of his letters in conjunction with expressions of the tenderest and truest affection. The home was always bright and cheerful for the weary worker, hence, when absent from it, he is ever craving ‘to be back to Nancy and little Bet’ Yet these were feelings Smollett scrupulously concealed from his fellows, so that the worldmight suppose him the acidulous cynic he desired to be esteemed. What Smollett’s reason for so acting was, is now hard to divine. His Matthew Bramble inHumphrey Clinkeris the exact reproduction of his own character. His kindliness of nature only broke out like gleams of sunshine on a wintry day, while, like Jonathan Oldbuck, the very suggestion of gratitude seemed to irritate him. He was one who all his life preferred to do good by stealth.

In 1758, Smollett published a work that had occupied his attention throughout the better part of eighteen months—The Complete History of England, deduced from the descent of Julius Cæsar to the Treaty of Aix–la–Chapelle in 1748. It was published by Messrs. Rivington & Fletcher, in four vols. 4to, and embellished by engraved allegorical frontispieces, designed by Messrs. Hayman & Miller. It has been stated, and never contradicted, says Anderson (substantiated also by Herbert), that the history was written in fourteen months, an effort to which nothing but the most distinguished abilities and the most vigorous application could have been equal. When one considers that he consulted three hundred books for information, that he had other literary work to prosecute in order to keep the pot boiling, and when one has regard also to the high literary character of the composition, this rapidity of production is simply marvellous. Of course none of the facts were new, but the method was novel, and the treatment fresh and brilliant. As Sir Walter Scott justly remarks, ‘All the novelty which Smollett’s history could present, must needs consist in the mode of stating facts, or in the reflections deduced from them.’ The success which attended the publication of the history surpassed the expectations of even Smollett himself. His political standpoint had been that of a Tory and an upholder of the monarchy. In writing to Dr. Moore earlyin 1758, Smollett says: ‘I deferred answering your kind letter until I should have finished my History, which is now completed. I was agreeably surprised to hear that my work had met with any approbation in Glasgow, for it is not at all calculated for that meridian. The last volume will, I doubt not, be severely censured by the West Country Whigs of Scotland. I desire you will divest yourself of prejudice before you begin to peruse it, and consider well the facts before you pass judgment. Whatever may be its defect, I profess before God I have, as far as in me lay, adhered to truth, without espousing any faction.’ Then in September of the same year he again writes to Dr. Moore: ‘You will not be sorry to hear that the weekly sale of the History has increased to above 10,000. A French gentleman of talents and erudition has undertaken to translate it into that language, and I have promised to supply him with corrections.’

But sadder and still more sad grows the picture of distress. During the whole time he was writing his History he was pestered by duns, and could not leave his home without dodging bailiffs. When all was over, he found himself a man broken in health and spirits, and already ‘earmarked’ for the tomb. For fourteen years he was to live and labour, like the brave, honest, independent spirit he was, but the end was only a question of time. That he realised this fact about this period is almost certain. Henceforth his diligence was redoubled. Like the stranger from another world in the fable, when confronted with the fact of inevitable death, he cried, ‘I must die, I must die; trouble me not with trifles; I must die.’

But his publication of the History was not suffered to pass without the formation of another party bent on injuring him. The extensive sale of Smollett’s work alarmed theproprietors of Rapin’s History, who caballed and encouraged his political adversaries to expose what they termed ‘the absurdities, inconsistencies, contradictions, and misrepresentations of the book,’ most of which existed solely in the minds of his malignant enemies. In the Whig periodicals of the time Smollett is vilified and abused, represented as a partisan and panegyrist of the House of Stuart, a Papist and a prostitute. The following pamphlet, written, however, by a man of some learning and discernment, would have been valuable and useful had it only been penned with more moderation and good sense. But party zeal is an enemy to good sense, and the truth of this remark has seldom been more clearly demonstrated than in ‘A Vindication of the Revolution in 1688, and of the character of King William and Queen Mary, together with a computation of the character of King Jamesii., as misrepresented by the author of the Complete History of England, by extracts from Dr. Smollett: to which are added some strictures on the said historian’s account of the punishment of the rebels inA.D.1715 and 1746, and on the eulogium given to the History of England by the critical reviewers, by Thomas Comber, B.A. 8vo, 1758.’ Comber was a clergyman, and a relative of the Duke of Leeds. He was, in fact, engaged by the Whig Ministry to undertake the duty, as none of the professedlitterateursof the day in the Whig ranks cared to cross swords with the Tory champion in his own field. The publication of his History did Smollett much good in the eyes of the learned and cultured. Henceforth to them he was no longer a mere ‘teller of tales,’ but one of the great historians of the epoch—an author deservedly honoured for his integrity and impartiality.

In 1761 theBritish Magazine—a sixpenny monthly onwhose staff Oliver Goldsmith was one of the leading writers—publishedThe Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the fourth of Smollett’s novels, but the one which we could quite well have spared, provided something in the same vein asHumphrey Clinkerhad taken its place. It was written hastily, and to supply the demand forcopy. Scott relates that, while engaged on it, he was residing at Paxton in Berwickshire, on a visit to Mr. George Home. When post time drew near, he was wont to retire for half an hour or an hour, and then and there scribble off the necessary amount of matter for the press. But he never gave himself even the trouble to read over and correct what he had written. Work written under such circumstances did not deserve to succeed. And yet, singularly enough, in this novel are to be found some of Smollett’s most original creations and most felicitously conceived situations. The design of the work is far from happy. Obviously suggested by his recent study ofDon Quixote, Sir Launcelot is only a bad imitation of the immortal Knight of La Mancha. Of this, indeed, Smollett himself seems to have had a suspicion. In the course of the dialogue he makes Ferret express an opinion like that to Sir Launcelot, who sternly repudiates it. ‘What! you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous and well–timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago will make but a sorry jest when really acted from affectation at this time of day in England.’ The knight, eyeing the censor, whose character was none of the best, replied, ‘I am neither an affected imitation of Don Quixote, nor, as I trust in Heaven, visited by that spirit of lunacy so admirably displayed in the fictitious character exhibited by the inimitable Cervantes. I see and distinguish objects as they are seen and described by other men. I quarrel withnone but the foes of virtue and decorum, against whom I have declared perpetual war, and them I will everywhere attack as the natural enemies of mankind. I do purpose,’ added Sir Launcelot, eyeing Ferret with a look of ineffable contempt, ‘to act as a coadjutor to the law, and even to remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage slander, disgrace immodesty, stigmatise ingratitude.’

The work was written in part during his imprisonment. Taking this into consideration, as well as the rapidity of production, the conception, amid the sordid surroundings of the King’s Bench Prison, of such cleverly drawn characters as Aurelia Darnel, Captain Crowe, and his nephew, Tom Clarke, the attorney of the amorous heart, is passing wonderful. Although the least popular of his works, and deservedly so, the book in some parts is redolent of ‘Flora and the country green.’

Not a moment could his busy pen afford to rest. No sooner was one piece of work thrown off than another must be commenced. In 1761, Smollett lent his assistance to the furtherance of a great work. This was the publication, in 42 vols. 8vo, ofThe Modern Part of an Universal History, compiled from Original Writers. In this colossal undertaking we know that Smollett’s share was the Histories of France, Italy, and Germany. Not alone these, however, were the fruit of his industry. Other authors failed to produce their quota. There was one pen that never failed. The willing horse had to do the work. Though this additional labour brought in guineas, it still further exhausted his strength, and left him little better than a confirmed invalid. From this drudgery he passed on to something else that was a little more agreeable and congenial, namely, hisContinuation of the History of England.The first volume was published in the end of 1761, the second, third, and fourth in 1762, and a fifth some years after (1765), bringing the narrative down to that period. It is stated that Smollett cleared £2000 by his History and the Continuation. He sold the latter to his printer at a price which enabled the purchaser to sell it to Mr. Baldwin the bookseller at a profit of £1000. From these facts one can gather the extraordinary popularity of Smollett’s work at that period.

Henceforward the story of his life is summed up in little more than the dates of the publication of his books. Of relaxation there was no interval for him. His expenses of living were considerable, though he never was a man who loved luxury or display. But he had been hampered by debts, by lawsuits, to pay the costs of which he had to borrow money at sixty per cent. Had Smollett’s feet been free from the outset, the £600 per annum, at which he reckoned his income, would have more than sufficed for all his wants. But the interest of borrowed money is like the rolling snowball of which we spoke before,—unless it be paid regularly, it constantly adds to the bulk of the original. Poor Smollett! A more pitiable picture can scarcely be conceived than this splendid genius yoked like a pug–mill horse to tasks the most ignoble, in order that he might keep his wife and daughter from feeling the pinch of want. A hero—yea, a hero indeed—one of those heroes in commonplace things, whose virtues are every whit as praiseworthy in their way as though he had led England’s armies to victory, or swept the seas of her enemies.

In connection with Smollett’s historical work, it should be mentioned here, that although his History has not held its place as a standard work, his Continuation undoubtedly has. To this day it is printed along with Hume’s volumes, underthe title ofHume and Smollett’s History of England, and is justly held in esteem for its impartiality and accuracy. His other historical works have long since met the fate they deserved. They were hack–work, designed to supply a temporary need. When that need was met by something better, they were forgotten.

We must note here, however, in disproof of that jealousy of contemporaries which has been laid to his charge, the following generous estimate of those who were hiscollaborateursin some respects, his rivals in others. In the Continuation he thus repairs the hasty judgments of immature years: ‘Akenside and Armstrong excelled in didactic poetry. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Coke, by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. There are also the learned and elegant Robertson, and, above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume, whom we rank among the first writers of the age, both as a historian and a philosopher. Johnson, inferior to none in philosophy, philology, poetry, and classical learning, stands foremost as an essayist, justly admired for the dignity, strength, and variety of his style, as well as for the agreeable manner in which he investigates the human heart, tracing every interesting emotion, and opening all the sources of morality!’ And this was the man whom his political opponents accused of never speaking of a man save to depreciate him.

We reach now a period in Smollett’s career which must always give pain to those that are lovers of his genius. Hitherto, though dabbling in politics, and though editing, professedly on the Tory and High Church side, theCritical Review, his sympathies had been so predominatingly literarythat he was able to maintain the friendliest of relations with prominent politicians on the Whig side, notably with John Wilkes. Now, in an evil hour, he was prevailed upon to accept a brief on the Tory side by assuming the editorship of the new weekly paper,The Briton, founded for the express purpose of defending the Earl of Bute. That nobleman, who owed his advancement to the favour wherewith he was regarded by Georgeiii.(recently come to the throne), was, on the 29th May 1762, appointed First Lord of the Treasury, and assumed the management of public affairs. Although an able, honourable, and indefatigable Minister, he lacked experience in the discharge of public duties. Besides, the nation was still strongly Whig in its political inclinations. For the monarch, by an arbitrary exercise of his prerogative, thus to override the sentiments of his people and to dismiss their chosen representatives, was both a high–handed and a foolish action. More foolish still was Lord Bute that he permitted himself thus to be made a tool to gratify the king’s jealousy. The consequence was, that the appointment was received all over England with a storm of indignation, and no Ministry was ever more unpopular than that whereof the Earl of Bute was chief.

To stem the tide of adverse criticism, and endeavour to win Englishmen to view more favourably the advent of Lord Bute to power,The Britonwas started, and Smollett was chosen as editor, inasmuch as his was the keenest pen on the Tory side. On hearing of the appointment of his friend to the post, John Wilkes, with a generosity that was quite in keeping with many of the actions of that strangely constituted man, remarked that ‘Lord Bute, after having distributed among his adherents all the places under Government, was determined to monopolise the wit also.’ A few days subsequent, the Whigs proposed that, to encounterThe Briton, which had gone off with a great flourish of trumpets, as well as with some very bitter political writing, Mr. Wilkes should publish a paper, to be called ‘The Englishman.’ He agreed to the proposal, except that he did not adopt the title recommended, but chose another, that ofThe North Briton—the first number of which appeared on the 5th June 1762, or exactly a week afterThe Briton.

Wilkes exhibited great forbearance towards Smollett at the outset. The good–natured demagogue, it is believed, would have been content, like many another pair of friends, to fight strenuously for principles, and avoid personalities; or, if that were impossible, to confine their antagonism to the press alone, leaving the intercourse of friendship unimpaired. But Smollett was not of the stuff whereof great journalists are made. One of the prime qualities is that they should belong to the genus of literary pachydermata. Smollett was not so. He was sensitive to a degree. He imagined slights and insults where none were intended. Within a few days, therefore, of the issue ofThe North Briton, Smollett took umbrage at something said aboutThe Briton, and retorted angrily with some personalities on Wilkes. Even then the latter would have passed over the ill–natured jibes with a jest. This, however, maddened Smollett more than aught else. He believed Wilkes despised him as an assailant. From that day Smollett devoted himself to the most unsparing personal castigation of Wilkes. The demagogue replied, and presently the two that had been such warm friends could not find terms bitter enough to hurl at one another.

But Smollett was not a match for Wilkes. The former was scrupulously careful in alleging nothing against hisopponent but what he could prove. The latter fought with characteristic unscrupulousness. A matter of no moment to him was it whether a charge were true or false, provided it served the purpose of galling his adversary. Wilkes was absolutely impervious to abuse and vilification. He gloried in his indifference to all social restrictions and customs. The publication to the world of his debaucheries and lack of principle only extorted a horse–laugh from him. With all his generosity and faithful devotion to the cause of popular freedom, Wilkes was a man of absolutely no principle. He sneered at his family relations, was one of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Medmenham ‘Cistercians,’ who sought to outbid the ‘Hellfire’ and ‘Devil’s Own’ Clubs in abandoned wickedness and impiety. And yet this was the man who was capable of the most splendid sacrifice in the cause of national liberty. His abilities would have carried him to fame in any career. M. Louis Blanc states that many of his sayings are still repeated and admired in France as are those of Sydney Smith among us. Mr. J. Bowles Daly[8]relates that his wit was so constantly at his command, that wagers have been gained that from the time he quitted his house till he reached Guildhall, no one could address him or leave him without a smile or a hearty laugh. His bright conversation charmed away the prejudice of such a Tory as Dr. Johnson, fascinated Hannah More, and won over the gloomy Lord Mansfield, who said, ‘Mr. Wilkes is the pleasantest companion, the politest gentleman, and the best scholar I know.’

This, then, was the man who was selected to do battle with Smollett and to demolish the Ministry of Lord Bute. Certainly the latter had given Wilkes ample handle for assailing him by selecting as his Chancellor of the ExchequerLord Sandwich, one of the dissolute Medmenham monks, a man glaringly deficient in ability, and so utterly incompetent in finance as to cause the wits of the time to describe him as ‘a Chancellor of the Exchequer to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable mystery.’ The first sentence ofThe North Britonhas often been copied and adopted as the motto of succeeding journals: ‘The liberty of the press is the birthright of the Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country.’ The aim of Wilkes’ paper was to vilify Scotland, because Lord Bute, being a Scotsman, had wormed himself into the favour of the king. Not a very elevated principle, certainly, but quite characteristic of the lowmoraleof the period, when personal pique was elevated into the domain of principle. His abuse of Scotland was quite of a piece with his political profligacy on every other point than national liberty. ‘He would have sold his soul to the devil for £1000 could he have induced his Satanic majesty to have invested in so worthless a commodity,’ said one of his own friends. As a specimen of the journalism wherewith Wilkes fought the battle of popular liberties, take the following paragraph, to pen which nowadays not the neediest penny–a–liner of gutter–journalism would stoop, notwithstanding the jealousy of Scotland and the Scots which still exists. Playing on the popular jealousy of Scotland, Wilkes went on to say that ‘The river Tweed is the line of demarcation between all that is noble and all that is base; south of the river is all honour, virtue, patriotism—north of it is nothing but lying, malice, meanness, and slavery. Scotland is a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of creation; where famine has fixed her chosen throne; where a scantpopulation, gaunt with hunger and hideous with dirt, spend their wretched days in brooding over the fallen fortunes of their native dynasty, and in watching with mingled envy and hatred the mighty nation that subdued them.’

This was the type of writing which Smollett strove to meet with pithy argument and epigrammatic smartness. No wonder it produced little effect, and less wonder is there that, after fighting the battle of the Ministry for nearly a year, he threw the task up in disgust (12th February 1763). Lord Bute had not given him the support he had a right to expect; and the Minister’s own fall followed hard upon the cessation ofThe Briton, namely, on the 8th April of the same year. Writing to Caleb Whiteford, a friend, some time after, he remarked: ‘The Ministry little deserve that any man of genius should draw his pen in their defence. They inherit the absurd stoicism of Lord Bute, who set himself up as a pillory to be pelted by all the blackguards of England, upon the supposition that they would grow tired and leave off.’

Back once more to hack–work was our weary, brain–worn veteran. So pressing were his needs that he had to condescend to tasks beneath them. He translated and edited the works of Voltaire, and compiled a publication entitledThe Present State of all Nations, containing a geographical, natural, commercial, and political history of all the countries of the known world. Fancy Smollett engaged on such a task! Let us hope that only his name was given, not his labour. Next year we know his work became so great that he had to hire others to do portions of it for him. In a word, he became a literary ‘sweater.’

Alas! in this same year, 1763, when his own health was failing so rapidly, one of the links binding him most strongly to earth was severed. His daughter Elizabeth, abeautiful girl of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and amiable and accomplished as well, was taken from him by death—the saddest of all deaths, consumption. Henceforth he was to tread the Valley of the Shadow alone. Even more than his wife, Elizabeth had been able to sympathise with her father’s feelings and to soothe his irritation. The light of his life had verily gone out!

But still no rest! Sorrow, however deep, must not check the pen that is fighting for daily bread. ‘I am writing with a breaking heart,’ he says in one letter. ‘I would wish to be beside her, were the wish not cowardly so long as poor Nancy is unprovided for.’ Brave, suffering heart! The end is nearing for you, though you know it not. Seven more years of increasing labour, and also of increasing anguish and suffering, and then—‘He giveth His beloved sleep!’

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