strongly and vigorously told with a laudable regard to truth and impartiality, the Continuation may vie with our best historical works. The author was incapable of being swayed by fear or favour; and where his judgment is influenced, we can see that he was only misled by an honest belief in the truth of his own arguments. -SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1821, Tobias Smollett.

Warburton heard of its swift sale while his own "Divine Legation" lay heavy and quiet at his publisher's; and "the Vagabond Scot who writes nonsense, was the character vouchsafed to Smollett by the vehement proud priest. But Goldsmith keeps his temper, notwithstanding Smollett's great and somewhat easily-earned good fortune; and, in this as in former instances, there is no disposition to carp at a good success or quarrel with a celebrated name. His notice has evident marks of the interpolation of Griffiths, though that worthy's more deadly hostility to Smollett had not yet begun; but even as it stands, in the "Review" which had so many points of personal and political opposition to the subject of it, it is manly and kind. The weak places were pointed out with gentleness, while Goldsmith strongly seized on what he felt to be the strength of Smollett.-FORSTER, JOHN, 1848-71, The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, vol. 1, p. 109.

But such a work written in fourteen months could hardly compete in manner, and still less in matter, with the eight years' careful labour of Hume. The style is fluent and loose, possessing a careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting, but composed too hastily to rise above dulness in the record of dry transactions. As regards matter, the historian can make no pretension to original research. He executed the book as a piece of hack-work for a London bookseller, availing himself freely of previous publications, and taking no pains to bring new facts to light.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 432.

The versatility of genius was never more fully proved than when Smollett turned historian. Put to the trade of book-making he became the ideal bookmaker. The language cannot show a more complete example of the dismal art than the history compiled by a prince of the

domain of fiction, a master of fancy as fertile, and of a pen as vivid as English literature has ever produced. To Smollett's "Continuation of Hume," and the book trade which tyrannically forced it upon several much-enduring generations of readers, must be imputed not a little of the extraordinary superstition that the eighteenth century is the most tedious portion of English history.-STEBBING, WILLIAM, 1887, Some Verdicts of History Reviewed, p. 7.

It is superficial, inaccurate, and a dull and wearisome record.-AUBREY, W. H. S., 1896, The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, vol. III, p. 250.

Some critics have urged that Smollett might have taken a broader view of the sources and progress of national expansion and development. Minto rather off-handedly designates his style as "fluent and loose, possessing a careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting," and concluded with the words, "the history is said to be full of errors and inconsistencies." Now, this last clause is taken word for word from Chambers "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," who took it from Angus's "English Literature," who borrowed it from Macaulay, who annexed it from the Edinburgh Review, which journal had originally adopted it with alterations from Smollett's own prefatory remarks in the first edition of the book. How many

of these authors had read the history for themselves, to see if it really contained such errors and inconsistencies? Criticism conducted on that mutual-trust principle is very convenient for the critic; is it quite fair to the author? Now, anyone who faithfully reads Smollett's "History of England" and its "Continuation" will not discover a larger percentage of either errors or inconsistencies than appear in the works of his contemporary historians, Tytler, Hume, and Robertson. Smollett is as distinguishingly fair and impartial as it was possible for one to be, influenced so profoundly by his environment as were all the historians of the eighteenth century. The mind of literary Europe was already tinged by that spiritual unrest and moral callousness that was to induce the new birth of the French Revolution. SMEATON, OLIPHANT, 1897, Tobias Smollett (Famous Scots Series), p. 143.

Another expedient for the rapid sale of

books was their issue in numbers. Smollett's "History of England" was published in sixpenny numbers, and had an immediate sale of 20,000 copies. This immense success is said to have been due to an artifice practised by the publisher. He sent down a packet of prospectuses carriage free (with half-a-crown enclosed) to every parish clerk in the kingdom, to be distributed by him through the pews of the church. This being generally carried out, a valuable advertisement was obtained, which resulted in an extensive demand for the work. WHEATLEY, HENRY B., 1898, Prices of Books, p. 102.

SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES

1762

In the first number of the British Magazine was the opening of the tale which contained his most feminine heroine (Aurelia Darnel), and the most amiable and gentlemanly of his heroes (Sir Launcelot Greaves); for, though Sir Launcelot is mad, wise thoughts made him so; and in the hope to "remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, to a base insolence, to mortify pride, to discourage slander, to disgrace immodesty, and to stigmatise ingratitude," he stumbles through his odd adventures. is a pleasure in connecting this alliance of Smollett and Goldsmith, with the first approach of our great humorist to that milder humanity and more genial wisdom which shed their mellow rays on Matthew Bramble.-FORSTER, JOHN, 1848-71, The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, vol. I, p. 246.

There

It is only in externals that this work bears any resemblance to "Don Quixote." The author seems to have hesitated between making Sir Lancelot a mere madman and making him a pattern of perfectly sane generosity. The fun and the seriousness do not harmonize. The young knight's craze for riding about the country to redress wrongs armed cap-a-pie is too harshly out of tune with the rightness of his sympathies and the grave character of the real abuses against which his indignation is directed. In execution the work is very unequal and irregular, but the opening chapters are very powerful, and have been imitated by hundreds of novelists since Smollett's time.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1887, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. XXII.

An absurd and exaggerated satire which added nothing to his fame.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 261.

Of "Sir Launcelot Greaves," originally contributed as a serial to "The British Review," the scheme, as one of the characters remarks, "is somewhat too stale and extravagant." The plot is the merest excuse for variety of scene, and the characters do not live. What he borrowed from Cervantes is as little put to its proper use by Smollett as what he borrowed from Fielding. His work loses its chief merit when he attempts to exchange his own method of reminiscence for a wider imaginative scheme.-RALEIGH, Walter, 1894, The English Novel, p. 188.

TRAVELS THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY

Distinguished by acuteness of remark, and shrewdness of expression,-by strong sense and pointed humour.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1821, Life of Tobias Smollett.

That Smollett, in recording the incidents of such a journey, should have put a good deal of gall into his ink, is not a matter of surprise; but it is rather remarkable that his journal should be so devoid of literary merit. The author of "Humphrey Clinker" seems to have packed his genius away at the bottom of his trunk, and not taken it out during his whole tour. His spirit is all put forth in vituperation; but otherwise he is tame and commonplace.-HILLARD, GEORGE STILLMAN, 1853, Six Months in Italy p. 512.

To see his selfwill, in its last soured and savage state, let us consult his "Travels," He was the "Smelfungus" of Sterne, who travelled from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren. We are among the very few who have read the book. It is a succession of asthmatic gasps and groans. GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1855, A Third Gallery of Portraits, p. 230.

Wherever I have been able to test Smollett's accuracy, I have found him so invariably exact and truthful, that I should be inclined to take a good deal for granted on his mere assertion. It is beside my purpose-which is simply that of recalling attention to a book that has been extravagantly abused by some, and unreasonably neglected or forgotten by others to follow the author through all his various wanderings by sea and land.PROWSE, W. J., 1870, Smollett at Nice, Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 21, p. 533.

Concerning Smollett's "Letters from Abroad" much need not be said. They are far from being without glimpses of the man in his best style, and they light up objects and places to the untravelled man with many vivid touches and references; but they occupy small ground towards forming an estimate of the value of the novelist's intellectual labours.SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1875, Tobias Smollett, Gentleman's Magazine, n. s., vol. 14, p. 735.

HUMPHREY CLINKER

1771

A party novel written by that profligate hireling Smollett to vindicate the Scots and cry down juries.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1797-1845, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third.

In this novel the author most successively executes, what had scarcely ever been before attempted-a representation of the different effects which the same scenes, and persons, and transactions, have on different dispositions and tempers. He exhibits through the whole work a most lively and humorous delineation, confirming strongly the great moral truth, that happiness and all our feelings are the result, less of external circumstances, than the constitution of the mind.-DUNLOP, JOHN, 1814-45, The History of Fiction, p. 413.

The very ingenious scheme of describing the various effects produced upon different members of the same family by the same objects, was not original, though it has been supposed to be so. Anstey, the facetious author of the "New Bath Guide," had employed it six or seven years before "Humphrey Clinker" appeared. But Anstey's diverting satire was but a light sketch compared to the finished and elaborate manner in which Smollett has, in the

first place, identified his characters, and then fitted them with language, sentiments, and powers of observation, in exact correspondence with their talents, temper, condition, and disposition.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1821, Tobias Smollett.

The novel of "Humphrey Clinker" is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come; and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud's well.-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1853, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

The poor peevish author was hastening to his end; but before he sank beneath this life's horizon, his genius shot forth its brightest beam. Disappointed in his last earthly hope-that of obtaining a consulship on some shore of the Mediterranean, where his last hours might be prolonged in a milder air-he travelled to the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and, settling in a cottage there, finished "Humphrey Clinker," which is undoubtedly his finest work. Lismahago is the best character in this picture of English life; Bath is the principal scene, upon which the actors play their various parts. Scarcely was this brilliant work completed, when Smollett died, an invalided exile, worn out long before the alloted seventy years. His pictures of the navy-men who trod English decks a century ago, are unsurpassed and imperishable. Trunnion, the one-eyed commodore; Hatchway and Bowling, the lieutenants; Ap-Morgan, the kind but fiery Welsh surgeon; Tom Pipes, the silent boatswain, remain as types of a race of men long extinct, who manned our ships when they were, in literal earnest, wooden walls, and when the language and the discipline, to which officers of the royal navy were accustomed, were somewhat of the roughest and the hardest.COLLIER, WILLIAM FRANCIS, 1861, A History of English Literature, p. 319.

"Humphrey Clinker" is the best of his novels. It is pervaded by a manly tone of feeling, natural, caustic, and humorous observation, and fine discrimination of character. character. The descriptions of rural scenery, society, and manners are clear

and fascinating. Smollett was gifted with a keen sense of the comic and ludicrous, which he deftly used, while touches of pathos also occur in his writings. MACKINTOSH, JOHN, 1878-83-96, The History of Civilisation in Scotland, vol. IV, p.

199.

It is worth while noticing that in "Humphrey Clinker" the veritable British poorly-educated and poor-spelling woman begins to express herself in the actual dialect of the species, and in the letters of Mrs. Winifred Jenkins to her fellow maid-servant Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall, during a journey made by the family to the North, we have some very worthy and strongly-marked originals not only of Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Partington, but of the immortal Sairey Gamp and of scores of other descendants in Thackeray and Dickens, here and there.-LANIER, SIDNEY, 1881, The English Novel, p. 185.

At Pisa he was visited by Sir Horace Mann, who did what he could for him; and among other work he wrote his charming novel of "Humphrey Clinker," in which he has evidently figured himself figured_himself under the character of Matthew Bramble, whom Hannay calls "the most credible specimen of the bourru bienfaisant in literature." The charm of the book lies in its sweetness, which is the ripe product of Southern influence combined with ill health. SCHUYLER, EUGENE, 1889-1901, Smollett in Search of Health, Italian Influences, p. 242.

Matthew Bramble and Obadiah Lismahago, the 'squire's sister and her Methodist maid, have passed permanently into literature, and their places are as secure as those of Partridge and Parson Adams, of Corporal Trim and "my Uncle Toby. Not even the Malapropoism of Sheridan or Dickens is quite as riotously diverting, as rich in its unexpected turns, as that of Tabitha Bramble and Winifred Jenkins, especially Winifred, who remains delightful even when deduction is made of the poor and very mechanical fun extracted from the parody of her pietistic phraseology. That it could ever have been considered witty to spell "grace" "grease, "Bible" "byebill, "can only be explained by the indiscriminate hostility of the earlier assailants of Enthusiasm. Upon this, as well as upon a particularly evilsmelling taint of coarseness which, to the

and

honour of the author's contemporaries was fully recognized in his own day as offensive, it is needless now to dwell.DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1894, Eighteenth Century Vignettes, Second Series, p. 140.

This charming work, with its multitudinous lights and shadows, its variety of incident and character, and its easy and picturesque style of narrative, besides being one of the most mirth-provoking stories in the language, is a vivid portraiture of the times. Fielding's coarse

ness belongs to his own time, and is incidental; Smollett's is ingrained and inherent. AUBREY, W. H. S., 1896, The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, vol. III, p. 250.

POETRY AND DRAMAS

This ode ["Tears of Scotland."] by Dr. Smollett does rather more honour to the author's feelings than his taste. The mechanical part, with regard to numbers and language, is not so perfect as so short a work as this requires; but the pathetic it contains, particularly in the last stanza but one, is exquisitely fine.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1767, The Beauties of English Poetry.

The few poems which he has left have a portion of delicacy which is not to be found in his novels: but they have not, like those prose fictions, the strength of a master's hand. Were he to live over again, we might wish him to write more poetry, in the belief that his poetical talent would improve by exercise; but we should be glad to have more of his novels just as they are.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

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 commonplace, 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, deserves to be particularly noticed. -CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of English Poets, ed. Cary, p. 145.

As a poet, though he takes not a very high rank, yet the few poems which he has left have a delicacy which is not to be found in his novels. CLEVELAND, CHARLES D., 1848, A Compendium of English Literature, p. 607.

The

The "Reprisal," which appeared in 1757, stands alone in two respects in Smollett's life. It was his only successful attempt to reach the stage, and it led to the soldering up of an old quarrel. The plot of this two-act comedy may have given Marryat the first idea of "The Three Cutters," and is worked up with no small liveliness. Its characters have a distinct comic vis of a rather broad kind. sailors Lyon, Haulyard, and Block, are good as Smollett's sailors always were; Oclabber and Maclaymore, the exiled Jacobites in the French service, are first drafts of the immortal Lismahago. Like most of Smollett's work in those years, this comedy has its touch of journalism. -HANNAY, DAVID, 1887, Life of Tobias George Smollett, p. 144.

Except for some fiery passages, Smollett's "Regicide" is not of much account. Smollett was constitutionally able to express anger, and there are indignant explosions in almost every scene, often very forcible, but without real feeling. The persistent writing of irate lines made. a fire in the author's ears, but his heart remained untouched.-DAVIDSON, JOHN, 1895, Sentences and Paragraphs, p. 46.

GENERAL

-Next Smollett came. What author dare resist

Historian, critic, bard, and novelist?
"To reach thy temple, honour'd Fame," he
cried,

"Where, where's an avenue I have not tried?
But since the glorious present of to-day
Is meant to grace alone the poet's lay,
My claim I wave to every art beside,
And rest my plea upon the Regicide.

But if, to crown the labours of my Muse, Thou, inauspicious, should'st the wreath refuse,

Whoe'er attempts it in this scribbling age
Shall feel the Scotish pow'rs of Critic rage.
Thus spurn'd, thus disappointed of my aim,
I'll stand a bugbear in the road to Fame;
Each future minion's infant hopes undo,
And blast the budding honours of his brow.”
-SHAW, CUTHBERT, 1766, The Race.

There was a third, somewhat posterior in time, not in talents, who was indeed a rough driver, and rather too severe to his cattle; but in faith he carried us at a merry pace, over land or sea; nothing came amiss to him, for he was up to both elements, and a match for nature in every shape, character, and degree; he was not very courteous, it must be owned, for he had a capacity for higher things, and was above his business; he wanted only a little more suavity and discretion to have figured with the best.- CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, 1795, Henry, bk. iii.

He has published more volumes, upon more subjects, than perhaps any other author of modern date; and, in all, he has left marks of his genius. The greater part of his novels are peculiarly excellent. He is nevertheless a hasty writer; when he affects us most, we are aware that he might have done more. In all his works of invention, we find the stamp of a mighty mind. In his lightest sketches, there is nothing frivolous, trifling and effeminate. In his most glowing portraits, we acknowledge a mind at ease, rather essaying its powers, than tasking them. We applauded his works; but it is with profounder sentiment that we meditate his capacity. The style of Smollett has never been greatly admired, and it is brought forward here merely to show in what manner men of the highest talents, and of great eminence in the belles letres, could write forty or fifty years ago.GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, Of English Style, The Enquirer, p. 467.

Smollett had much penetration, though he is frequently too vulgar to please; but his knowledge of men and manners is unquestionable.-MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES, 1798, The Pursuits of Literature, Eighth ed., p. 59.

There is a vein in Smollett-a Scotch vein-which is always disgusting to people with delicacy; but it is enough to