Chapter 8

In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his intention is "to shew the vanity and uselessness of many studies, reduce them to a less formidable appearance, and invite our youth to application, by letting them see that a less degree of it than they apprehend, judiciously directed, and a very few books indeed, well recommended, will give them all the real information which they are to expect from human science." The design was a laudable one. In the poem itself we feel the want of some principal event, on the development and issue of which the interest of the whole may turn; as in those patterns of the mock-heroic, the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the Lock; an advantage, which these poems in some measure derive from having been founded in fact; for however trifling the incident by which the imagination of the poet may have been first excited, when once known or believed to be true, it communicates something of its own reality to all the fictions that grow out of it. The hero too is one of the [Greek: amenaena karaena]; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of passages from writers, ancient and modern, to the purposes of a grave burlesque; and for the application of these, by a contrivance not very artificial, it is sometimes necessary to recur to the notes. The style, if it be not distinguished by any remarkable strength or elegance, is at least free and unaffected.

The imitations of Horace are often happy: that addressed to Lord Bathurst, particularly towards the latter part, is perhaps the best. Of the original jeux d'esprits, the verses occasioned by the Marriage and Game Acts, both passed the same session, have, I think, most merit. The Fable of Jotham, or the Borough Hunters, does not make up by ingenuity for what it wants in reverence. In the Fakeer, a tale professedly borrowed from Voltaire, the story takes a less humorous turn than as it is told in the extracts from Pere Le Comte's memoirs in the preface.

FOOTNOTE [1] In 1752 appeared his Dialogue between a Member and his Servant. The Intruder in 1754; and the Fakeer in 1756.--_MS. addition_. ED.

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TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

Tobias Smollett was born in the parish of Cardross, in Dumbartonshire, in the year 1721. His father, Archibald, a Scotch gentleman of small fortune, was the youngest son of Sir James Smollett, who was knighted on King William's accession, represented the borough of Dumbarton in the last Scotch Parliament, and was of weight enough to be chosen one of the commissioners for framing the treaty of union between the two countries. On his return from Leyden, where it was then the custom for young Scotchmen to complete their education, Archibald married Barbara, the daughter of Mr. Cunningham, of Gilbertfield, near Glasgow; and died soon after the birth of our poet, leaving him, with another son and a daughter, dependent on the bounty of their grandfather. The place of Smollett's nativity was endeared to him by its natural beauties; insomuch that, when he had an opportunity of comparing it with foreign countries, he preferred the neighbouring lake of Loch Lomond to those most celebrated in Switzerland and Italy. Being placed at the school of Dumbarton, which was conducted by John Love, a man of some distinction as a scholar, he is said to have exercised his poetical talents in writing satires on the other boys, and in panegyrising his heroic countryman Wallace. From hence, at the usual age, he was removed to Glasgow; and there making choice of the study of medicine, was apprenticed to Mr. John Gordon, a chirurgeon, who afterwards took out a diploma, and practised as a physician. His irresistible propensity to burlesque did not suffer the peculiarities of this man, whom he has represented under the character of Potion, in Roderick Random, to escape him. He made some amends for the indignity, by introducing honourable mention of the name of Dr. Gordon in the last of his novels. A more overt act of contumacy to his superiors, into which his vivacity hurried him, trifling as it may appear, is so characteristic, that I cannot leave it untold. A lad, who was apprenticed to a neighbouring chirurgeon, and with whom he had been engaged in frolic on a winter's evening, was receiving a severe reprimand from his master for quitting the shop; and having alleged in his excuse, that he had been hit by a snow-ball, and had gone out in pursuit of the person who had thrown it, was listening to the taunts of his master, on the improbability of such a story. "How long," said the son of Aesculapius, with the confident air of one fearless of contradiction, "might I stand here, and such a thing not happen to me?" when Smollett, who stood behind the pillar of the shop-door, and heard what passed, snatching up a snow-ball, quickly delivered his playmate from the dilemma in which this question had placed him, by an answer equally prompt and conclusive. Not content with this attack, he afterwards made the offender sit for his whole-length portrait, in the person, as it is supposed, of Crab, in the same novel.

In the midst of these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and discovering that he must thenceforth rely on his own exertions for a maintenance, he set forth with his juvenile production for London. On his arrival there, failing as might be expected, to persuade the managers to bring his tragedy on the stage, he solicited and obtained the place of a chirurgeon's mate, on board the fleet destined for the attack of Carthagena. Of this ill-conducted and unfortunate expedition, he not only made a sketch in his Roderick Random, but afterwards inserted a more detailed account of it in the Compendium of Voyages. After a short time, he was so little pleased with his employment, that he determined to relinquish it, and remain in the West Indies. During his residence in Jamaica, he met with Miss Anne Lascelles, to whom, after a few years, he was married, and with whom he expected to receive a fortune of three thousand pounds. In the islands he probably depended for a subsistence on the exercise of his skill as a chirurgeon. He returned to London in the year 1746; and though his family had distinguished themselves by their revolutionary principles, testified his sympathy with the late sufferings of his countrymen, in their expiring struggle for the house of Stuart, by some lines, entitled the Tears of Scotland. When warned of his indiscretion, he added that concluding stanza of reproof to his timid counsellors:--

While the warm blood bedews my veins, And unimpair'd remembrance reigns, Resentment of my country's fate Within my filial breast shall beat; And spite of her insulting foe, My sympathizing verse shall flow: Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn!

His first separate publication was, Advice, a satire, in the autumn of this year. At the beginning of the next it was followed by a second part, called Reproof, in which he took an occasion of venting his resentment against Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, with whom he had quarrelled concerning an opera, written by him for that theatre, on the story of Alcestis. In consequence of their dispute the piece was not acted; nor did he take the poet's usual revenge by printing it.

The fallacious prospects of his wife's possessions now encouraged him to settle himself in a better house, and to live with more hospitality than his circumstances would allow him to maintain. These difficulties were in some measure obviated by the sale of a new translation which he made of Gil Bias, and still more by the success of Roderick Random, which appeared in 1748. In none of his succeeding novels has he equalled the liveliness, force, and nature of this his first essay. So just a picture of a sea-faring life especially had never before met the public eye. Many of our naval heroes may probably trace the preference which has decided them in their choice of a profession to an early acquaintance with the pages of Roderick Random. He has not, indeed, decorated his scenes with any seductive colours; yet such is the charm of a highly wrought description, that it often induces us to overlook what is disgusting in the objects themselves, and transfer the pleasure arising from the mere imitation to the reality.

Strap was a man named Lewis, a book-binder, who came from Scotland with Smollett, and who usually dined with him at Chelsea on Sundays. In this book he also found a niche for the exhibition of his own distresses in the character of Melopoyn the dramatic poet. His applications to the directors of the theatre, indeed, continued so unavailing, that he at length resolved to publish his unfortunate tragedy by subscription; and in 1749 the Regicide appeared with a preface, in which he complained grievously of their neglect, and of the faithlessness of his patrons, among whom Lord Lyttelton particularly excited his indignation. In the summer of this year his view of men and manners was extended by a journey to Paris. Here he met with an acquaintance and countryman in Doctor Moore, the author of Zeluco, who a few years after him had been also an apprentice to Gordon, at Glasgow. In his company Smollett visited the principal objects of curiosity in the neighbourhood of the French metropolis.

The canvas was soon stretched for a display of fresh follies: and the result was, his Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, in 1751. The success he had attained in exhibiting the characters of seamen led him to a repetition of similar delineations. But though drawn in the same broad style of humour, and, if possible, discriminated by a yet stronger hand, the actors do not excite so keen an interest on shore as in their proper element. The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, the substance of which was communicated by the woman herself, whose story they relate, quickened the curiosity of his readers at the time, and a considerable sum which he received for the insertion of them augmented the profits which he derived from a large impression of the work. But they form a very disagreeable interruption in the main business of the narrative. The pedantic physician was intended for a representation of Akenside, who had probably too much dignity to notice the affront, for which some reparation was made by a compliment to his talents for didactic poetry, in our author's History of England.

On his return (in 1749) he took his degree of Doctor in Medicine, and settled himself at Chelsea[1], where he resided till 1763. The next effort of his pen, an Essay on the External Use of Water, in a letter to Dr.----, with particular remarks upon the present method of using the mineral waters at Bath, in Somersetshire, &c. (in 1752) was directed to views of professional advancement. In his profession, however, he did not succeed; and meeting with no encouragement in any other quarter, he devoted himself henceforward to the service of the booksellers. More novels, translation, historical compilation, ephemeral criticism, were the multifarious employments which they laid on him. Nothing that he afterwards produced quite came up to the raciness of his first performances. In 1753, he published the Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. In the dedication of this novel he left a blank after the word Doctor, which may probably be supplied with the name of Armstrong. From certain phrases that occur in the more serious parts, I should conjecture them to be hastily translated from another language. Some of these shall be laid before the reader, that he may judge for himself. "A solemn profession, on which she _reposed herself with_ the most implicit confidence and faith;" ch. xii. (v. 4. p. 54, of Dr. Anderson's edition.)--"Our hero would have made his retreat through the _port_, by which he had entered;" instead of the _door_; ch. xiii. p. 55.--"His own penetration pointed out the _canal_, through which his misfortune had flowed upon him;" instead of the _channel_; ch. xx. p. 94.--"Public ordinaries, walks, and _spectacles_;" instead of _places of entertainment_; ch. xxv. p. 125.--"The Tyrolese, by the _canal_ of Ferdinand's finger, and recommendation, sold a pebble for a real brilliant;" ch. xxxvii. p. 204.--"A young gentleman whose pride was _indomitable_;" ch. xlvi. p. 242. In one chapter we find ourselves in a stage-coach, with such a company as Smollett loved to introduce to his readers.

He was about this time prosecuted in the King's Bench, on a charge of having intended to assassinate one of his countrymen, whose name was Peter Gordon. A few blows of the cane, which, after being provoked by repeated insolence, he had laid across the shoulders of this man, appeared to be the sole grounds for the accusation, and he was, therefore, honourably acquitted by the jury. A letter, addressed to the prosecutor's counsel, who, in Smollett's opinion, by the intemperance of his invective had abused the freedom of speech allowed on such occasions, remains to attest the irritability and vehemence of his own temper. The letter was either not sent, or the lawyer had too much moderation to make it the subject of another action, the consequences of which he could have ill borne; for the expense, incurred by the former suit, was already more than he was able to defray, at a time when pecuniary losses and disappointments in other quarters were pressing heavily upon him. A person, for whom he had given security in the sum of one hundred and eighty pounds, had become a bankrupt, and one remittance which he looked for from the East Indies, and another of more than a thousand pounds from Jamaica, failed him. From the extremity to which these accidents reduced him, he was extricated by the kindness of his friend, Doctor Macaulay, to which he had been before indebted; and by the liberality of Provost Drummond, who paid him a hundred pounds for revising the manuscript of his brother Alexander Drummond's travels through Germany, Italy, Greece, &c. which were printed in a folio volume in 1754. He had long anticipated the profits of his next work. This was a translation of Don Quixote, published at the beginning of 1755. Lord Woodhouselee, in his Essay on Translation, has observed, that it is little else than an improvement of the version by Jarvis. On comparing a few passages with the original, I perceive that he fails alike in representing the dignity of Cervantes in the mock-heroic, and the familiarity of his lighter manner. These are faults that might have been easily avoided by many a writer of much less natural abilities than Smollett, who wanted both the leisure and the command of style that were requisite for such an undertaking. The time, however, which he gave to that great master, was not thrown away. He must have come back from the study with his mind refreshed, and its powers invigorated by contemplating so nearly the most skilful delineation that had ever been made of human nature, according to that view in which it most suited his own genius to look at it.

On his return from a visit to Scotland, where a pleasant story is told of his being introduced to his mother as a stranger, and of her discovery of him after some time, with a burst of maternal affection, in consequence of his smiling, he engaged (1756) in an occupation that was not likely to make him a wiser, and certainly did not make him a happier man. The celebrity obtained by the Monthly Review had raised up a rival publication, under the name of the Critical. The share which Smollett had in the latter is left in some uncertainty. Doctor Anderson tells us, that he undertook the chief direction; and Mr. Nichols,[2] that he assisted Archibald Hamilton the printer. Whatever his part might be, the performance of it was enough to waste his strength with ignoble labour, to embitter his temper by useless altercation, and to draw on him contempt and insult from those who, however they surpassed him in learning, could scarcely be regarded as his superiors in native vigour and fertility of mind. "Sure I," said Gray, in a letter to Mason, "am something a better judge than all the man-midwives and presbyterian parsons that ever were born. Pray give me leave to ask you, do you find yourself tickled with the commendations of such people? (for you have your share of these too) I dare say not; your vanity has certainly a better taste. And can then the censure of such critics move you?" And Warburton, who had probably been exasperated in the same way, called his History of England the nonsense of a vagabond Scot.

In the same year was published a Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, in seven volumes, which was said to have been made under his superintendence. We have his own word [3], that he had written a very small part of it. In 1757, his Reprisal, or the Tars of Old England, an entertainment in two acts, in which the scene throughout is laid on board ship, and which describes seamen in his usual happy vein, was acted at Drury-lane with tolerable success. In 1758, he published his History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, four volumes. Of this work, hasty as it was, having been compiled in fourteen months, ten thousand copies were speedily sold.

Some strictures in the Critical Review, which, in order to screen the printer of it, he generously avowed himself to have written, once more exposed him to a legal prosecution. The offensive passages were occasioned by a pamphlet, in which Admiral Knowles had vindicated himself from some reflections that were incidentally cast on him in the course of Sir John Mordaunt's trial for the failure of a secret expedition on the coast of France, near Rochefort. In his comments on the pamphlet, Smollett had stigmatized Knowles, the author of it, as "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity." It can scarcely be wondered, if, after such provocation, the party injured was not deterred by menaces, or diverted by proposals of agreement, from seeking such reparation as the law would afford him. This reparation the law did not fail to give; and Smollett was sentenced to pay a penalty of one hundred pounds, and to be confined for three months in the prison of the King's Bench. Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote in a gaol; and Smollett resolved, since he was now in one, that he would write a Don Quixote too. It maybe said of the Spaniard, according to Falstaff's boast, "that he is not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men;" and among the many attempts at imitation, to which the admirable original has given rise, Sir Launcelot Greaves is not one of the worst. That a young man, whose brain had been slightly affected by a disappointment in love, should turn knight-errant, at a time when books of chivalry were no longer in vogue, is not, indeed, in the first instance, very probable. But we are contented to overlook this defect in favour of the many original touches of character, and striking views of life, particularly in the mad-house, and the prison into which he leads his hero, and which he has depicted with the force of Hogarth. If my recollection does not mislead me, he will be found in some parts of this novel to have had before him the Pharsamond of Marivaux, another copy of Cervantes. But it does not anywhere like Count Fathom, betray symptoms of being a mere translation. Sir Launcelot Greaves was first printed piecemeal in the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository, a miscellany to which Goldsmith was also a contributor. It has the recommendation of being much less gross and indelicate than any other of his novels.

During the same period, 1761 and 1762, he published, in numbers, four volumes of a Continuation of his History of England; and in 1765, a fifth, which brought it down to that time.

Not contented with occupation under which an ordinary man would have sunk, he undertook, on the 29th of May, 1762, to publish the Briton, a weekly paper, in defence of the Earl of Bute, on that day appointed first commissioner of the treasury; and continued it till the 12th of February in the ensuing year, about two months before the retirement of that nobleman from office. By his patron he complained that he was not properly supported; and he incurred the hostility of Wilkes, who had before been his staunch friend, but who espoused the party in opposition to the Minister, by an attack, the malignance of which no provocation could have justified.

In 1763, his name was prefixed, in conjunction with that of Francklin, the Greek professor at Cambridge, and translator of Sophocles and Lucian, to a version of the works of Voltaire, in twenty-seven volumes. To this he contributed, according to his own account, a small part, including all the notes historical and critical. To the Modern Universal History, which was published about the same time, he also acknowledged himself to be a contributor, though of no very large portion.

His life had hitherto been subjected to the toil and anxiety of one doomed to earn a precarious subsistence by his pen. Though designed by nature for the light and pleasant task of painting the humours and follies of men, he had been compelled to undergo the work of a literary drudge. Though formed to enjoy the endearments of friendship, his criticisms had made those who were before indifferent to him his enemies; and his polities, those whom he had loved, the objects of his hatred. The smile, which the presence of his mother for a moment recalled, had almost deserted his features. Still we may suppose it to have lightened them up occasionally, in those hours of leisure when he was allowed to unbend himself in the society of a wife, with whom he seems always to have lived happily, and of an only daughter, who was growing up to share with her his caresses, and to whom both looked as the future support of their age.

[Greek: Tautae, gegaetha, kapilaethomai kakon' Haed anti pollon esti moi parapsychae, Aeolis, tithaenae, baktron, haegemon hodou]

In her, rejoicing, I forgot mine ills. I have lost much; but she remains, my comfort, My city and my nurse, my staff and guide.