Alexander Smollett

“ Putting aside the question as to whether such people could be conjured out of his inner consciousness without some basis of fact, we must consider that Smollett, writing of his own time, would not for his own sake be likely to draw a picture which would seem a forced or unnatural representation of the wayfaring life of the period. ”

“ The house and premises were extensive, and well suited for the residence of a person of rank. There are few men of real genius who have written more voluminously than Dr. Smollett. His entertaining novels are so well known that it seems almost unnecessary to mention Roderick Random, the Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand Count Fathom, and Sir Launcelot Greaves, the Expedition of Humphry Clinker, &c.
He was bred to the medical profession, and in the early part of his life served as a surgeon in the navy. ”

“ Pungent observation allied to a vigorous prose, emancipated to a rare degree from provincialism or archaism, were perhaps the first of Smollett's qualifications as a novelist. Such coherence as his novels have owes more to accidental accumulation than to constructive design. The wealth of amusing incident, the rapidly moving crowd of amusing and eccentric figures, atones for a good many defects. Smollett's peculiar coarseness and ferocity were gradually eliminated from English fiction, but from Tom Jones right down to Great Expectations his work was regularly ransacked for humour. ”

“ This lady thought that Fielding did not know what sorry fellows his Tom Jones and Captain Booth were. Not near so sorry as Peregine Pickle were they, for this gentleman is a far more atrocious ruffian than Roderick Random.
None the less “Peregrine” is Smollett’s greatest work. Nothing is so rich in variety of character, scene, and adventure. We are carried along by the swift and copious volume of the current, carried into very queer places, and into the oddest miscellaneous company, but we cannot escape from Smollett’s vigorous grasp. ”

“ Smollett, perhaps one of the most popular authors by profession that ever wrote, furnishes a sad instance of the insufficiency of even the greatest literary favour, in the times in which he wrote, to procure those temporal comforts on which the happiness of life so much depends. ”

“ Hence some great characters have come down to us spotted with the taints of indelible wit; and a satirist of this class, sporting with distant resemblances and fanciful analogies, has made the fictitious accompany for ever the real character. Piqued with Akenside for some reflections against Scotland, Smollett has exhibited a man of great genius and virtue as a most ludicrous personage; and who can discriminate, in the ridiculous physician in “Peregrine Pickle,” what is real from what is fictitious? ”

“ The handsome terms in which he alludes in the last volume to some of his old enemies and rivals—such as Akenside and Fielding, Lyttelton, Robertson, and Hume—may be taken as a sign that some at least of his animosities had been softened by the lapse of years. The work as a whole ‘is not more confused and inaccurate than such hasty productions unavoidably must be’ (Robert Anderson) . Meanwhile, in 1762, Smollett undertook the editorship of the ‘Briton,’ which was called into existence by the need of defending the tory minister, Lord Bute. ”

“ They are fierce, foul-mouthed, and pointless. But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; he had the examples of Pope and Swift before him; which, as far as truculence went, he could imitate. Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men of letters that some peer or other ought to aid and support them; and, as no peer did support Smollett, obviously they were “varnished ruffians.” He erred as he would not err now, for times, and ways of going wrong, are changed. But, at best, how different are his angry couplets from the lofty melancholy of Johnson’s satires! ”

“ But look into his life and enter into his feelings, and you will be shocked at the disparity of his situation with the genius of the man. His life was a succession of struggles, vexations, and disappointments, yet of success in his writings. Smollett, who is a great poet, though he has written little in verse, and whose rich genius composed the most original pictures of human life, was compelled by his wants to debase his name by selling it to voyages and translations, which he never could have read. ”

“ At this period, John Home, author of Douglas, was paying a visit to London in order to try to induce Garrick to accept his tragedy of Agis. He met Smollett, introduced to him by their mutual friend ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle, and had much pleasant intercourse with him. From the Life [5] of Home by Henry Mackenzie, I extract the following details, as they throw a curious side–light on Smollett’s character. ”

“ From Nice he sailed in a felucca to Genoa, and thence visited Rome and other Italian cities, returning to England through France in June 1765. Early next year he published his ‘Travels’ in the form of letters sent home from Boulogne, Paris, Nice, and other places along his route. The book is replete with learning and with sound and often very acute observation, but Smollett, who in England saw in Durham and York minsters ‘gloomy and depressing piles,’ took an even more jaundiced view of what he saw abroad. ”

“ Once run to earth someone whom George had failed to trace, and his reputation was secure.
To outshine one of the best men then at work was a high game to try for, but Smollett was trying no less.
Not long after, I met Miles again in Oxford-street. He told me that Smollett had scored again, and that George had missed a find he had made pretty sure of.
I pooh-poohed the whole thing.
"Chance, all chance. Fine thing for Smollett, more luck than good management, no doubt," I said, feeling rather nettled, I own. "Wait a bit; you will see which is the best man of the two." ”

“ Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’ In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. ”

“ A period of adverse fortune followed, broken, however, in 1748 by the publication of "The Adventures of Roderick Random." Two years later Smollett obtained his M.D. degree, and for a number of years combined medical work with literature. In 1756 he was made editor of the "Critical Review," a post which resulted in a fine of £100 and three months' imprisonment for a libel on Admiral Knowles. He died on October 21, 1771. Smollett wrote altogether five novels and a number of historical works and records of travel. It is impossible to overestimate his influence on novel-writing. ”

“ His imagination, it must be owned, was at all times too chaste to admit those overweening hopes, which often mislead the mind of the projector. He had studied mankind with incredible diligence, and knew perfectly well how far he could depend on the passions and foibles of human nature. That he might now act consistent with his former sagacity, he resolved to pass himself upon his fellow-travellers for a French gentleman, equally a stranger to the language and country of England, in order to glean from their discourse such intelligence as might avail him in his future operations ”

“ He lashes out on all sides without fear or favour. The king, Chatham, Bute and North are bespattered with filth, the acridity of which owes something to Gulliver, with aid as to local colour from the Jesuit and other accounts of Japan which had come under his ken as a compiler of travels. After its publication in 1769, without other serious consequences, Smollett's health completely relapsed, and in December (a consulate in the Mediterranean having been refused him) he left England finally, and settled first at Pisa and then near Antignano, a few miles out of Leghorn. ”

“ This term is more applicable to Smollett, whose poems discover only in part those keen, vigorous, and original powers which enabled him to indite "Roderick Random" and "Humphrey Clinker." Yet the author of "Independence," and "The Tears of Scotland," must not be excluded from the list of British poets—an honour to which much even of his prose has richly entitled him. ”

“ Even as Thomas de Quincey, sixty years after, was to find Oxford Street a stony–hearted stepmother, so Smollett, alone in the mighty metropolis, was made to realise, with an insistence that burned itself into his inmost heart, that no solitary in the Sahara is more isolated than he who is, unknowing and unknown, an atom in a vast London crowd. Men in after years talked glibly of the irritability of the great novelist. ”

“ Certainly it is inferior to “Roderick Random” and to “Peregrine Pickle,” but it cannot be so utterly unreal as “The Adventures of an Atom.” I, for one, venture to prefer “Sir Launcelot” to “Ferdinand, Count Fathom.” Smollett was really trying an experiment in the fantastic. Just as Mr. Anstey Guthrie transfers the mediæval myth of Venus and the Ring, or the Arabian tale of the bottled-up geni (or djinn) into modern life, so Smollett transferred Don Quixote. His hero, a young baronet of wealth, and of a benevolent and generous temper, is crossed in love. ”

“ But Smollett owed less to these models than to his studies in Cervantes, Swift, Defoe and above all Le Sage. His hero, who gives his first novel its capital name, Roderick Random, recounts like Gil Bias a life of varied adventure in the company of a servant, in which he enters the service of a physician and meets with old schoolfellows, thieves, notes of the bank of engraving, prison, semi-starvation and in the end an unexpected fortune. The author draws on his adventures on the English highway and in the cockpit of a king's ship. ”

“ Actions and utterances that might be and were mistaken for irritation and shortness of temper, were in reality due to the impatience of genius, chafing under the restrictions laid upon it by the mental torpor or intellectual sluggishness of others. The eagle eye of his genius perceived intuitively what other men generally attain only as the result of ratiocinative process. Smollett has unjustly been characterised as bad–tempered, choleric, supercilious, and the like, simply because the key was lacking to his character. ”

“ I’m a gentleman, and bear the king’s commission. ’Sblood! some people deserve to have their noses pulled for their impertinence.” I thought to have checked these ejaculations by a frown; because he had talked so much of his valour that I had long ago rated him as an ass in a lion’s skin; but this expedient did not answer my expectation, he took umbrage at the contraction of my brow, swore he did not value my sulky looks a fig’s end, and protested he feared no man breathing. ”

“ Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or more unjustly cruel. Smollett had not here even the excuse of patriotism. Sir John Cope was no Butcher Cumberland. In fact the poet’s friend is not wrong, when, in “Reproof,” he calls Smollett “a flagrant misanthrope.” The world was out of joint for the cadet of Bonhill: both before and after his very trying experiences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept “The Regicide.” This was reason good why Smollett should try to make a little money and notoriety by penning satires. ”

“ It is questionable, however, if any of those exhibited so much insight into the human heart as that of Lieutenant Bowling in Roderick Random, a noble–spirited man if ever one was created. Smollett has since had many imitators, such as Captain Marryat, Mr. Clark Russell, and others, but none of them have excelled the inimitable wit and humour which invest the sayings and doings of these personages. They have become part and parcel of ourselves. We know them and love them, and they live with us, so to speak, in our daily life. ”

“ He was declared a lieutenant-general in the emperor’s army, and came over to London, after having settled a correspondence with the malcontents in the southern parts of France. He insinuated himself into the friendship of Henry St. John, secretary of war, and other persons of distinction. His scheme of invading France was approved by the British ministry, and he was promoted to the command of a regiment of dragoons destined for that service. About eleven thousand men were embarked under the conduct of Earl Rivers, with a large train of artillery ”

“ His sincere admiration of classic literature and art and manners was regarded by the coarse herd of rich and stupid Londoners as so perfectly ridiculous, that when Smollett had the bad taste to introduce him into Peregrine Pickle, as the physician who gives a dinner after the manner of the ancients, the applause was general, and every city tradesman, with scholarship enough to read the novel, had a laugh at the expense of a man who has some claims to be regarded as the greatest literary genius of his time. ”

“ 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. ”