Chapter 9

He had bemoaned his distresses as an author; but was now to feel calamity of a different kind. This only daughter was taken from him by death, in her fifteenth year. Henceforward he was, with some short intervals, a prey to querulousness and disease. Soon after this loss (in June, 1763,) being resolved to try what change of climate would do for him, he set out with his disconsolate partner on a journey through France and Italy. On quitting his own country, he describes himself "traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a private calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair." The account which he published of this expedition on his return, shews that he did not derive from it the relief which he had expected. The spleen with which he contemplated every object that presented itself to him, was ridiculed by Sterne, who gave him the name of Smelfungus. With this abatement, the narration has much to interest and amuse, and conveys some information by which a traveller might perhaps still profit. When he brings before us the driver pointing to the gibbeted criminal whom he had himself betrayed, and unconsciously discovering his own infamy to Smollett, we might suppose ourselves to be reading a highly wrought incident in one of his own fictions. His prognostics of the approaching Revolution in France are so remarkable, that I am tempted to transcribe them. "The King of France, in order to give strength and stability to his administration, ought to have sense to adopt a sage plan of economy, and vigour of mind sufficient to execute it in all its parts with the most rigorous exactness. He ought to have courage enough to find fault, and even to punish the delinquents, of what quality soever they may be; and the first act of reformation ought to be a total abolition of all the farms. There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the reins of the French government; and in all probability, the subjects of France will be the first to take the advantage of it. There is at present a violent fermentation of different principles among them, which under the reign of a very weak prince, or during a long minority, may produce a great change in the constitution. In proportion to the progress of reason and philosophy, which have made great advances in this kingdom [**kingfrom in original], superstition loses ground; ancient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascendant. All the learned laity of France, detest the hierarchy as a plan of despotism, founded on imposture and usurpation. The protestants, who are very numerous in the southern parts, abhor it with all the rancour of religious fanaticism. Many of the Commons, enriched by commerce and manufacture, grow impatient of those odious distinctions, which exclude them from the honours and privileges due to their importance in the commonwealth; and all the parliaments or tribunals of justice in the kingdom seem bent upon asserting their rights and independence in the face of the king's prerogative, and even at the expense of his power and authority. Should any prince, therefore, be seduced, by evil counsellors, or misled by his own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step that may be extremely disagreable to all those communities, without having spirit to exert the violence of his power for the support of his measures, he will become equally detested and despised, and the influence of the Commons will insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown." (Travels through France and Italy, c. xxxvi. Smollett's Works, vol. v. p. 536.) This presentiment deserves to be classed with that prophecy of Harrington in his Oceana, of which some were fond enough to hope the speedy fulfilment at the beginning of the revolution. Smollett passed the greater part of his time abroad at Nice, but proceeded also to Rome and Florence.

About a year after he had returned from the continent (in June, 1766,) he again visited his native country, where he had the satisfaction to find his mother and sister still living. At Edinburgh he met with the two Humes, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson; but the bodily ailments, under which he was labouring, left him little power of enjoying the society of men who had newly raised their country to so much eminence in literature. To his friend, Dr. Moore, then a chirurgeon at Glasgow, who accompanied him from that place, to the banks of Loch Lomond, he wrote, in the February following, that his expedition into Scotland had been productive of nothing but misery and disgust, adding, that he was convinced his brain had been in some measure affected; for that he had had a kind of _coma vigil_ upon him from April to November, without intermission. He was at this time at Bath, where two chirurgeons, whom he calls the most eminent in England, and whose names were Middleton and Sharp, had so far relieved him from some of the most painful symptoms of his malady, particularly an inveterate ulcer in the arm, that he pronounced himself to be better in health and spirits than during any part of the seven preceding years. But the flattering appearance which his disorder assumed was not of long continuance. A letter written to him by David Hume, on the 18th of July following, shews that either the state of his health, or the narrowness of his means, or perhaps both these causes together, made him desirous of obtaining the consulship of Nice or Leghorn. But neither the solicitations of Hume, nor those of the Duchess of Hamilton, could prevail on the Minister, Lord Shelburne, to confer on him either of these appointments. In the next year, September 21, 1768, the following paragraph in a letter from Hume convinced him that he had nothing to expect from any consideration for his necessities in that quarter. "What is this you tell me of your perpetual exile and of your never returning to this country? I hope that, as this idea arose from the bad state of your health, it will vanish on your recovery, which, from your past experience, you may expect from those happier climates to which you are retiring; after which, the desire of revisiting your native country will probably return upon you, unless the superior cheapness of foreign countries prove an obstacle, and detain you there. I could wish that means had been fallen on to remove this objection, and that at least it might be equal to you to live anywhere, except when the consideration of your health gave the preference to one climate above another. But the indifference of ministers towards literature, which has been long, and indeed almost always is the case in England, gives little prospect of any alteration in this particular."

If ministers would in no other way conduce to his support, he was determined to levy on them at least an involuntary contribution, and accordingly (in 1769,) he published the Adventures of an Atom, in which he laid about him to right and left, and with a random humour, somewhat resembling that of Rabelais and Swift, made those whom he had defended and those whom he had attacked, alike the subject of very gross merriment.

But his sport and his suffering were now coming to a close. The increased debility under which he felt himself sinking, induced him again to try the influence of a more genial sky. Early in 1770, he set out with his wife for Italy; and after staying a short time at Leghorn, settled himself at Monte Nero, near that port. In a letter to Caleb Whitefoord, dated the 18th of May, he describes himself rusticated on the side of a mountain that overlooks the sea, a most romantic and salutary situation. One other flash broke from him in this retirement. His novel, called the Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which he sent to England to be printed in 1770, though abounding in portraitures of exquisite drollery, and in situations highly comical, has not the full zest and flavour of his earlier works. The story does not move on with the same impetuosity. The characters have more the appearance of being broad caricatures from real life, than the creatures of a rich and teeming invention. They seem rather the representation of individuals grotesquely designed and extravagantly coloured, than of classes of men.

His bodily strength now giving way by degrees, while that of his mind remained unimpaired, he expired at his residence near Leghorn, on the 21st of October, 1771, in the 51st year of his age.

His mother died a little before him. His widow lived twelve years longer, which she passed at Leghorn in a state of unhappy dependence on the bounty of the merchants at that place, and of a few friends in England. Out of her slender means she contrived to erect a monument to her deceased husband, on which the following inscription from the pen of his friend Armstrong was inscribed:

Hic ossa conduntur TOBIAE SMOLLETT, Scoti; Qui prosapia generosa et antiqua natus, Priscae virtutis exemplar emicuit; Aspectu ingenue, Corpore valido, Pectore animoso, Indole apprime benigna, Et fere supra facultates munifica Insignis. Ingenio feraci, faceto, versatili, Omnigenae fere doctrinae mire capaci, Varia fabularum dulcedine Vitam moresque hominum, Ubertate summa ludens depinxit. Adverso, interim, nefas! tali tantoque alumno, Nisi quo satyrae opipare supplebat, Seculo impio, ignavo, fatuo, Quo Musse vix nisi nothae Maerenatulis Britannicis Fovebantur. In memoriam Optimi et amabilis omnino viri, Permultis amicis desiderati, Hocce marmor, Dilectissima simul et amantissima conjunx L. M. Sacravit.

A column with a Latin inscription was also placed to commemorate him on the banks of his favourite Leven, near the house in which he was born, by his kinsman Mr. Smollett of Bonhill.

The person of Smollett is described by his friend Dr. Moore as stout and well-proportioned, his countenance engaging, and his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate a consciousness of his own powers.

In his disposition, he appears to have been careless, improvident, and sanguine; easily swayed both in his commendation and censures of others, by the reigning humour of the moment, yet warm, and (when not influenced by the baneful spirit of faction) steady in his attachments. On his independence he particularly prided himself. But that this was sometimes in danger from slight causes is apparent, from an anecdote related by Dr. Wooll, in his Life of Joseph Warton. When Huggins [4] had finished his translation of Ariosto, he sent a fat buck to Smollett, who at that time managed the Critical Review; consequently the work was highly applauded; but the history of the venison becoming public, Smollett was much abused, and in a future number of the Review retracted his applause. Perpetual employment of his pen left him little time for reflection or study. Hence, though he acquired a greater readiness in the use of words, his judgment was not proportionably improved; nor did his manhood bear fruits that fully answered to the vigorous promise of his youth. Yet it may he questioned whether any other writer of English prose had before his time produced so great a number of works of invention. When, in addition to his novels, we consider his various productions, his histories, his travels, his two dramatic pieces, his poems, his translations, his critical labours, and other occasional publications, we are surprised that so much should have been done in a life of no longer continuance.

Excepting Congreve, I do not remember that any of the poets, whose lives have been written by Johnson, is said to have produced anything in the shape of a novel. Of the Incognita of Congreve, that biographer observes, not very satisfactorily, that he would rather praise it than read it. In the present series, Goldsmith, Smollett, and Johnson himself, if his Rasselas entitle him to rank in the number, are among the most distinguished in this species of writing, of whom modern Europe can boast. To these, if there be added the names of De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne, not to mention living authors, we may produce such a phalanx as scarcely any other nation can equal. Indeed no other could afford a writer so wide a field for the exercise of this talent as ours, where the fullest scope and encouragement are given to the human mind to expand itself in every direction, and assume every shape and hue, by the freedom of the government, and by the complexity of civil and commercial interests. No one has portrayed the whimsical varieties of character, particularly in lower life, with a happier vein of burlesque than Smollett. He delights, indeed, chiefly by his strong delineation of ludicrous incidents and grotesque manners derived from this source. He does not hold our curiosity entangled by the involution of his story, nor suspend it by any artful protraction of the main event. He turns aside for no digression that may serve to display his own ingenuity or learning. From the beginning to the end, one adventure commonly rises up and follows upon another, like so many waves of the sea, which cease only because they have reached the shore.

The billows float in order to the shore, The wave behind rolls on the wave before.

Admirable as the art of the novelist is, we ought not to confound it with that of the poet; nor to conclude, because the characters of Parson Adams, Colonel Bath, and Squire Western in Fielding; and of Strap, Morgan, and Pipes, in Smollett, impress themselves as strongly on the memory, and seem to be as really individuals whom we have seen and conversed with, as many of those which are the most decidedly marked in Shakspeare himself; that therefore the powers requisite for producing such descriptions are as rare and extraordinary in one instance as in the other. For the poet has this peculiar to himself; that he communicates something from his own mind, which, at the same time that it does not prevent his personages from being kept equally distinct from one another, raises them all above the level of our common nature. Shakspeare, whom we appear not only to know, personally, but to admire and love as one superior to the cast of his kind,--

Sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,

has left some trick of his own lineaments and features discoverable in the whole brood.

Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo Seminibus.

It is this which makes us willing to have our remembrance of his characters refreshed by constant repetition, which gives us such a pleasure in summoning them before us, as "age cannot wither, nor custom stale." This is a quality which we do not find in Fielding, with all that consummate skill which he employs in developing his story; nor in Smollett, with all that vivacity and heartiness of purpose with which he carries on his narrative.

Of Smollett's poems much does not remain to be said. The Regicide is such a tragedy as might be expected from a clever youth of eighteen. The language is declamatory, the thoughts inflated, and the limits of nature and verisimilitude transgressed in describing the characters and passions. Yet there are passages not wanting in poetical vigour.

His two satires have so much of the rough flavour of Juvenal, as to retain some relish, now that the occasion which produced them has passed away.

The Ode to Independence, which was not published till after his decease, amid much of common place, has some very nervous lines. The personification itself is but an awkward one. The term is scarcely abstract and general enough to be invested with the attributes of an ideal being.

In the Tears of Scotland, patriotism has made him eloquent and pathetic; and the Ode to Leven Water is sweet and natural. None of the other pieces, except the Ode to Mirth, which has some sprightliness of fancy, deserve to be particularly noticed.

FOOTNOTES [1] He first settled at Bath.--_MS. addition_. ED. [2] Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 398. [3] In a Letter in Dr. Anderson's Edition of his Works, vol. i. p. 179. [4] From a letter of Granger's (the author of the Biographical History of England,) to Dr. Ducarel (see Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 601,) it appears that Huggins made also a translation of Dante, which was never printed. He was son of that cruel keeper of the Fleet prison who was punished for the ill treatment of his prisoners.--(Ibid.)

* * * * *

THOMAS WARTON.

The life of Thomas Warton, by Dr. Mant, now Bishop of Killaloe, prefixed to the edition of his poems published at Oxford, is drawn from sources so authentic, and detailed with so much exactness, that little remains to be added to the circumstances which it relates.

Thomas Warton was descended from a very respectable family in Yorkshire. His grandfather, Anthony Warton, was rector of a village in Hampshire; and his father was a fellow of Magdalen College, and Poetry Professor in the University of Oxford. His mother, daughter of Joseph Richardson, who was also a clergyman, gave birth to three children:--Joseph, of whom some account will hereafter be given, Thomas, and Jane. Thomas was born at Basingstoke, in 1728; and very early in life afforded promise of his future excellence. A letter, addressed to his sister from school when he was about nine years of age, containing an epigram on Leander, was preserved with affectionate regard by their brother, Dr. Warton. What school it was, that may claim the honour of contributing to the instruction of one who was afterwards so distinguished as a scholar, has not been recorded.

On the 16th of March, 1743, he was admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford; and about two years after lost his father,--a volume of whose poems was, soon after his death, printed by subscription, by his eldest son Joseph, with two elegiac poems to his memory, one by the editor, the other by his daughter above-mentioned. The latter of these tributes is termed by Mr. Crowe, in a note to one of his eloquent Crewian Orations,--"Ode tenera, simplex, venusta,"--"tender, simple, and beautiful."

In 1745 he published his Pastoral Eclogues, which Mr. Chalmers has added to the collection of his poems; and in the same year he published, without his name, the Pleasures of Melancholy; having, perhaps, been influenced in the choice of a subject, thus sombre, by the loss of his parent. In this poem, his imitations of Milton are so frequent and palpable, as to discover the timid flight of a young writer not daring to quit the track of his guide. Yet by some (as appears from the letters between Mrs. Carter and Miss Talbot) it was ascribed to Akenside. In 1746 was produced his Progress of Discontent,--paraphrase on one of his own exercises, made at the desire of Dr. Huddesford, the head of his college.

His next effort attracted more general notice. In consequence of some disgrace which the University had incurred with Government, by its supposed attachment to the Stuart family, Mason had written his Isis, an Elegy; and in 1749, Warton was encouraged by Dr. Huddesford to publish an answer to it, with the title of the Triumph of Isis. It may naturally be supposed, that so spirited a defence of Oxford against the aspersions of her antagonist would be welcomed with ardour; and among other testimonies of approbation which it received, Dr. King, whose character is eulogized in the poem, coming into the bookseller's shop, and inquiring whether five guineas would be acceptable to the author, left for him an order for that sum. After an interval of twenty-eight years, his rival, Mason, was probably sincere in the opinion he gave,--that Warton had much excelled him both "in poetical imagery, and in the correct flow of his versification."

He now became a contributor to a monthly miscellany called The Student; in which, besides his Progress of Discontent, were inserted A Panegyric on Oxford Ale, a professed imitation of the Splendid Shilling; The Author confined to College; and A Version of the twenty-ninth chapter of Job.

His two degrees having been taken at about the usual intervals, in 1751 he succeeded to a fellowship of his college, where he found a peaceful and unenvied retreat for the remainder of his days, without betraying any ambition of those dignities,--which, to the indignation of Bishop Warburton, were not conferred upon him.

At this time appeared his Newmarket, a Satire; An Ode written for Music, performed in the University Theatre; and two copies of verses, one in Latin, the other in English, on the Death of Frederic, Prince of Wales.

In 1753, his Ode on the approach of Summer,--The Pastoral, in the Manner of Spenser--(which has not much resemblance to that writer), and Verses inscribed on a beautiful Grotto,--were printed in the Union, a poetical miscellany, selected by him, and edited at Edinburgh.

The next year we find him employed in drawing up a body of statutes for the Radcliffe Library, by the desire of Dr. Huddesford, then Vice Chancellor; in assisting Colman and Thornton in the Connoisseur; and in publishing his Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, which he afterwards enlarged from one to two volumes. Johnson complimented him "for having shewn to all, who should hereafter attempt the study of our ancient authors, the way to success, by directing them to the perusal of the books which their author had read;" a method of illustration which since, certainly, has not wanted imitators. Much of his time must have been now diverted from his favourite pursuits, by his engagement in the instruction of college pupils. During his excursions in the summer vacations, to different parts of England, he appears to have occupied himself in making remarks on such specimens of Gothic and Saxon architecture as came in his way. His manuscript on this subject was in the possession of his brother, since whose decease, unfortunately, it has not been discovered. Some incidental observations on our ancient buildings, introduced into his book on the Faerie Queene, are enough to make us regret the loss. The poetical reader would have been better pleased if he had fulfilled an intention he had of translating the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.

Though it was not the lot of Warton to attain distinction in his clerical profession, yet literary honours, more congenial to his taste and habits, awaited him. In 1756, he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and faithfully performed the duties of his office, by recommending the purest models of antiquity in lectures which are said to have been "remarkable for elegance of diction, and justness of observation," and interspersed with translations from the Greek epigrammatists.

To Johnson he had already rendered a material service by his exertions to procure him the degree of Master of Arts, by diploma; and he increased the obligation, by contributing some notes to his edition of Shakspeare, and three papers to The Idler. The imputation cast on one, from whom such kindness had been received, of his "being the only man of genius without a heart," must have been rather the effect of spleen in Johnson, than the result of just observation; and if either these words, or the verses in ridicule of his poems--

Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet;

had been officiously repeated to Warton, we cannot much wonder at what is told, of his passing Johnson in a bookseller's shop without speaking, or at the tears which Johnson is related to have shed at that mark of alienation in his former friend.

A Description of Winchester, and a Burlesque on the Oxford Guides, or books professing to give an account of the University, both anonymous, are among the next publications attributed to his pen.