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 chirur geon. 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 prospect 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 Blas, 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 seafaring 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

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, 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 1," said Gray, în a letter to Mason, " am something a better judge than all the manmidwives 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.

a

In the same year was published Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, in seven volumes, which was said to have been made under his superintendence. We have his own word,† that he had written a very small part of it. In 1757, his Reprisal, or the Tars of Old Eng, land, 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 Cæsar 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 may be 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 any where, 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 Lu

cian, 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 politics, 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.

Ταύτη, γέγηθα, καπιλήθομαι κακῶν· "Ηδ ̓ ἀντὶ πολλῶν ἐστί μοι παραψυχή, Πόλις, τιθήνη, βάκτρον, ἡγεμὼν ὁδοῦ. 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.

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, shows 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, superstition loses ground; ancient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascend ant. 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 se duced by evil counsellors, or misled by his own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step that may be extremely disagreeable 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