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turned the supposed insults; and no one who knew him doubted his generosity. The battle over,' says Mr. Thackeray, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. You see somehow that he is a gentleman through all his battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his defeats.' The same critic sees a symbol of his life in the shattered oak-tree with green leaves springing from it,' which is the family crest of the Smolletts. Moore's picture of him from actual knowledge is equally pleasing. In person, according to this friend, he was 'stout and well-proportioned, his countenance engaging,' but with an air that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers.' He was ' of a disposition so humane and generous, that he was ever ready to serve the unfortunate;' and, though few could penetrate with more acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook misconduct attended with misfortune.' He had no suppleness in his conduct,' and 'for himself,' says Moore, he never made an application to any great man in his life.' 'His passions were easily moved, and too impetuous when roused; he could not conceal his contempt of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain proclaiming his indignation against every instance of oppression.' Altogether, that is, he was a proud, irrascible, mettlesome, and kindly Scot!

The literary estimate of Smollett corresponds with the estimate we have of the man. As a critic and political writer he had many equals and some superiors; as a poet he had done barely enough to put his name on the list; as a comic dramatist he was neither a Foote nor a Murphy; as a metrical satirist he was not a Churchill; as a historian he was certainly not a Hume; but when we add what he was in all these departments to what he was as a novelist, the total impression is very considerable. Taken only as a novelist, he had made good his right to be mentioned in literary history along with Richardson and Fielding. Of these two it was with Fielding that he had most in common, though far inferior to the author of Tom Jones,' and in many respects very dissimilar also. Fielding had the characters he meant to introduce well in view from the first; he arranged all with consummate art, so as to bring them into one well-conceived history; he elaborated each character with care; and though he had a fine vein of satire or humour, he aimed at classic harmony in the combination. Smollett, on the other hand, seemed to start with only one or two characters, and with a vague idea of the direction in which he was to lead them; other characters suggested themselves as he went on; these encounter

comic

comic mishaps, or pass through situations, in the description of which the author drags in his reminiscences in the lump; the object seems to be to multiply these situations as much as possible; and it is only after there has been enough of travelling to and fro, that the characters, or a residue of them, are brought together to wind up the narrative and see the hero and heroine married. His notion of a story was rather that of the traveller than the historian; his chief characters are kept on the move through a succession of places, each full of things to be seen and of odd physiognomies to be quizzed.

The superiority, as regards literary art, is, therefore, indubitably Fielding's. His, as Mr. Thackeray says, is the greater hand,' the hand at once of more vigorous sinew and of finer tact and cunning. In style, too, Fielding is the more classical, clear, and finished. Smollett writes on rapidly and carelessly with a rough, robust, and rather hard fluency. There are passages, nevertheless, in Smollett which for rhetorical strength excel anything in Fielding; and there is a stronger constitutional tendency in Smollett to the sombre, the grand, and the poetical.

an

As regards the matter of his stories, we find such a bustle of coarse life, such swearing and rioting and squalor, and, above all, such incessant thumping and fighting and breaking each other's heads and kicking each other's shins as could never have taken place in any conceivable community or under any system of police, unless the human skeleton had been of much harder construction than it is at present. But as life wears aspect not altogether dissimilar in the works of Fielding, we begin to be aware that something of the sort must have gone on a century ago, and to see that to some extent Smollett may be considered as describing life and manners.' Here we have a description of a carrier's waggon and its passengers on a journey; here of a country inn; here of a London ordinary; here of a Parisian gambling-house; here of a company of wits; here of a Parliamentary election; here of the gun-room or deck of a ship; and so on through prisons, lunatic asylums, government boards, and every possible aggregation of human beings. Smollett's spirit in the course of these social descriptions is generally that of a satirist; sometimes, however, as in his description of abuses in the naval service, he writes with the zeal of a reformer. quently he is the pure humourist, having no satirical purpose at all, but revelling in his taste for comic fancies. Of this kind are the famous description of the Feast of the Ancients in 'Peregrine Pickle,' Pallet's agonies in the Bastile in the same novel, Pallet's horror on eating a rabbit and being told that it is

Fre

a cat,

a cat, and the description of the two old sailors tacking across the fields to church on horseback.

It is, however, by his characters, as such, that a novelist lives, and here, too, Smollett has accomplished not a little. The most graphic and original are certainly the sea-characters, Bowling, Trunnion, Hatchway, and Pipes; after whom in point of merit may be reckoned Morgan, who is half a seaman too, and Strap the faithful barber. I think Uncle Bowling in Roderick Random,' says Mr. Thackeray, is as good a character as Squire Western himself, and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleasant as Dr. Caius.' This is high praise; but, for our part, it is not to 'Roderick Random' but to grine Pickle' that we would go for the best specimen of Smollett's genius. The matter of the latter novel seems to us on the whole superior to that of the other; and Trunnion as a character is at least equal to Bowling. The description of the old Commodore's death is one of the finest things in Smollett.

Pere

'About four o'clock in the morning our hero arrived at the garrison, where he found his generous uncle in extremity, supported in bed by Julia on one side and Lieutenant Hatchway on the other, whilst Mr. Jolter administered spiritual consolation to his soul, and between whiles comforted Mrs. Trunnion, who, with her maid, sat by the fire, weeping with great decorum; the physician having just taken the last fee and retired after pronouncing the fatal prognostic.

Though the Commodore's speech was interrupted by a violent hiccup, he still retained the use of his senses; and when Peregrine approached, stretched out his hand with manifest signs of satisfaction. The young gentleman, whose heart overflowed with gratitude and affection, could not behold such a spectacle unmoved,

so that the Commodore, perceiving his disorder, made a last effort of strength, and consoled him in these words :-"Swab the spray from your bowsprit, my good lad, and coil up your spirits. You must not let the toplifts of your heart give way because you see me ready to go down at these years. Many a better man has foundered before he has made half my way; thof I trust, by the mercy of God, I shall be sure in port in a most blessed riding; for my good friend Jolter hath overhauled the journal of my sins, and by the observation he hath taken of the state of my soul, I hope I shall happily conclude my voyage and be brought up in the latitude of heaven. Here has been a doctor that wanted to

stow me chock full of physic; but, when a man's hour is come, what signifies his taking his departure with a 'pothecary's shop in his hold. These fellows come alongside of dying men, like the messengers of the Admiralty with sailing orders; but I told him as how I could slip my cable without his direction or assistance, and so he hauled off in dudgeon. This cursed hiccup makes such a ripple in the current of my speech that mayhap you don't understand what I say. Now, while the sucker of my wind-pump will go, I would willingly mention a few Vol. 103-No. 205. things

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things which I hope you will set down in the logbook of your remembrance, when I am stiff, d'ye see. There's your aunt sitting whimpering by the fire; I desire you will keep her tight, warm, and easy, in her old age; she's an honest heart in her own way, and, thof she goes a little crank and humoursome by being often overstowed with Nantz and religion, she has been a faithful shipmate to me. Jack Hatchway, you know the trim of her as well as e'er a man in England, and I believe she has a kindness for you, whereby, if you two grapple in the way of matrimony, when I am gone, I do suppose that my godson, for love of me, will allow you to live in the garrison all the days of your life. . . I need not talk of Pipes, because I know you'll do for him without any recommendation; the fellow has sailed with me in many a hard gale, and I'll warrant him as stout a seaman as ever sat face to the weather. But I hope you'll take care of the rest of my crew, and not disrate them, after I am dead, in favour of pew followers. As for that young woman, Ned Gauntlet's daughter, I'm informed as how she's an excellent wench and has a respect for you; whereby, if you run her on board in an unlawful way, I leave my curse upon you and trust you will never prosper in the voyage of life. . . . Shun going to law, as you would shun the devil; and look upon all attorneys as devouring sharks or ravenous fish of prey. As soon as the breath is out of my body, let minute guns be fired, till I am safe underground. I would also be buried in the red jacket I had on when I boarded and took the Renummy.' Let my pistols, cutlass, and pocket compass, be laid in the coffin along with me. Let me be carried to the grave by my own men, rigged in the black caps and white shirts which my barge's crew were wont to wear; and they must keep a good look out that none of your pilfering rascallions may come and heave me up again, for the lucre of what they can get, until the carcass is belayed by a tombstone. As for the motto, or what you call it, I leave that to you and Mr. Jolter, who are scholars; but I do desire that it may not be engraved in the Greek or Latin lingos, and much less in the French, which I abominate, but in plain English, that, when the angel comes to pipe all hands at the great day, he may know that I am a British man, and speak to me in my mother-tongue. And now I have no more to say, but God in heaven have mercy upon my soul, and send you all fair weather wheresoever you are bound."

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'His last moments, however, were not so near as they imagined. He began to doze, and enjoyed small intervals of ease till next day in the afternoon; during which remissions, he was heard to pour forth many pious ejaculations, expressing his hope that, for all the heavy cargo of his sins, he should be able to surmount the puttock-shrouds of despair, and get aloft to the cross-trees of God's good favour. At last his voice sank so low as not to be distinguished; and, having lain about an hour, almost without any perceptible signs of life, he gave up the ghost with a groan.'

It is but proper to add the epitaph prepared in accordance with the old Commodore's request:

'Here

Here lies, foundered in a fathom and a half, the shell of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., formerly commander of a squadron in his Majesty's service, who broached to at 5 P.M., Oct. X., in the year of his age threescore and nineteen. He kept his guns always loaded, and his tackle ready manned, and never showed his poop to the enemy, except when he took her in tow; but, his shot being expended, his match burnt out, and his upper works decayed, he was sunk by Death's superior weight of metal. Nevertheless, he will be weighed again at the Great Day, his rigging refitted, and his timbers repaired, and, with one broadside, make his adversary strike in his turn.'

Had Smollett died at Nice in 1764 or 1765, as some of his friends had anticipated, he would still have been remembered, in virtue of such passages, among our greater writers. 'Roderick Random,' according to e general taste, Peregrine Pickle,' according to ours, would then have been is masterpiece.

But Smollett was to live six years longer, and was to give to the world three additional books. He returned to England, as has been stated, in June, 1765; and in 1766 he published, as the fruit of his absence, two octavo volumes, entitled, Travels through France and Italy, containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts and Antiquities; with a particular description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a residence of eighteen months in that city.' This is really one of Smollett's best works; more readable, as we think, and better worth reading, than his minor novels. It is written in the form of letters sent home from Boulogne, Paris, Lyons, Montpellier, Nice, &c., to a friend in England. It is as substantial a book of travels of that day as we have seen; and there is more evidence of medical and other learning in it than in any other of Smollett's works. It is too clearly, however, the book of an invalid. Wherever he goes, the author, as a Briton, found food for his contempt in foreign manners and institutions; but his condition as an invalid rendered him susceptible of a thousand additional chagrins and inconveniences. The state of the weather, the quality of the cookery, the condition of the beds and remote inns, the conduct of landlords and postilions, are all registered with a minuteness which suggests that Dr. Smollett must have been a very testy tourist. Once or twice he is on the point of knocking a landlord down, and several times he causes a mob at the doors of an inn by his violence. Even the beauties

of foreign nature and art are seen through a medium of spleen; and though he admires and praises many things, it is generally where admiration and praise might be least expected. Sterne, whose 'Sentimental Journey,' published in 1768, seems to have

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been