383
in the Critical Review, and, as a natural result of his
warm and hasty temper, he often censured and ridiculed
without a proper cause. Hence he was perpetually
subject to counter-assaults from provoked authors,
and occasionally to legal prosecutions, the effect of
which was so severe that he is found, September 28,
1758, describing himself to Dr. Moore as sick both of
praise and blame, and praying to his God that cir-
cumstances might permit him to consign his pen to
oblivion! In the end of this year, in consequence of
some severe expressions he had used in the Review
regarding Admiral Knowles, a prosecution was raised
against the printer, chiefly for the purpose of ascer-
taining the author of the offensive article, from whom,
in the event of his proving a gentleman, the com-
plainant threatened to demand the usual satisfaction.
After every attempt to soften Admiral Knowles had
failed, Smollett came boldly forward and screened
the printer by avowing himself the author of the
article, and offering any satisfaction that might be
required. Knowles, who had sailed as a captain in
the expedition to Carthagena, probably thought it
beneath him to fight a man who had been a surgeon's
mate in the same fleet, even though that surgeon's
mate boasted of some good Caledonian blood, and
was besides booked for immortality in the scrolls of
fame. The penalty paid by Smollett for his rash-
ness was a fine of ,£100, and an imprisonment for
three months in the King's Bench prison. Yet, in
this misfortune, he was not without consolation. His
conduct was generally pronounced very magnani-
mous, and his friends continued to visit him in prison
the same as in his neat villa at Chelsea.
To beguile the tedium of confinement, he wrote a
fantastic novel, entitled the Adventures of Sir Launce-
lot Greaves, which appeared in detached portions
through the successive numbers of the British Maga-
zine for 1760 and 1761. This is deservedly ranked
among the least happy of Smollett's performances.
The drollery entirely lies in the adventures of a
crazy English gentleman, who sets out armed cap-a-
pie, in the character of a knight-errant, and roams
through modern England, to attack vice wherever it
can be found, to protect defenceless virtue, and
remedy the evils which the law cannot reach.
While some amusement is afforded by the contrast
of such a character with the modern commonplace
beings amongst whom he moves, it is only the im-
perfect amusement yielded by the exhibition of
natural madness: the adventures of an imaginary
sovereign broken loose from a mad-house could
hardly be less drearily entertaining. Smollett, in
the haste with which he wrote his novel, has evi-
dently proceeded upon the idea of an English Don
Quixote, without recollecting that the work of the
illustrious Cervantes had a rational aim, in proposing
to counteract the rage of the Spanish people for tales
of knightly adventure. His own work, having no
such object, labours under the imputation of being
an imitation, without any countervailing advantage.
Yet, strange to say, such was the prestige of Smollett's
name and example, that the work not only sold to a
great extent as a separate publication, but was fol-
lowed by many sub-imitations, such as the Spiritual
Quixote, the Amicable Quixote, the Female Quixote,
&c.
In 1760 Smollett became engaged, with other
literary adventurers, in a large and important work,
which was finished in 1764, in 42 volumes, under
the title of the Modern Part of an Universal His-
tory. He is supposed to have contributed the his-
tories of France, Italy, and Germany to this work,
and to have received altogether, for his share of the
labour, no less a sum than £1575. Throughout the
same period he was engaged in his Continuation of
the History of England, from 1748 to 1765, which
first appeared in five successive octavo volumes, and
finally in 2 vols. 4to, 1766. It has been already
mentioned that for this work he is supposed to have
received such a price as enabled the purchaser to sell
it to a bookseller at a profit of £1000.
Smollett had been originally a Whig, but he
gradually became something very like a Tory. A
diffusive philanthropy by which he was inspired,
with perhaps some impressions from early education,
had made him the first; a disgust at the conduct of
some of his party appears to have inclined him to
the second. The accession of a Scottish prime min-
ister in the Earl of Bute, as it excited much opposi-
tion among the English, so it attracted a proportion-
ate degree of support from the Scotch, who now
very generally became adherents of the government,
from a motive of nationality, without regard to their
former political sentiments. Smollett went into this
enthusiasm, and on the very day of the Earl of
Bute's elevation, May 29th, 1762, he started a news-
paper entitled the Briton, in which he laboured to
break down the prejudices of the English against a
Scottish premier, and undertook the defence of the
new administration upon its own merits. Within a
week after this event an opposition journal was
started by Wilkes, with whom Smollett had previ-
ously lived on the most intimate terms of friendship,
but who now became his political antagonist. The
North Briton (so was this paper called), supported by
the overpowering national feelings of England, very
soon proved too much for its rival; and on the 12th
February, 1763, Smollett abandoned the publication.
He did not shine as a party writer, wanting that
coolness which is necessary in forming replies and
repartees to all the paragraphs with which he was
assailed: like the most of professed satirists, he
could endure nothing so ill as satire. Lord Bute,
who resigned in the April following, is said to
have never sufficiently acknowledged the services of
Smollett.
Among the publications with which Smollett was
connected about this time were a translation of the
works of Voltaire in twenty-seven volumes, and a
work in eight volumes, entitled the Present State of
all Nations, In the first his name was associated
with that of the Rev. T. Francklin, translator of
Sophocles; but in neither is it probable that much
was written by his own hand.
He had now for many years prosecuted the seden-
tary and laborious employment of an author by pro-
fession. Though little more than forty years of age,
and possessed originally of a most robust frame, he
began to suffer from ill health. His life, which
ought to have been rendered comfortable by the
large sums he procured for his works, was embit-
tered by "the slings and arrows" which his own
satirical disposition had caused to be directed against
himself, and by the loss of friends, which he was
perpetually suffering, either from that cause, or from
political differences. To add to his other miseries,
he had the misfortune at this time to lose his
daughter and only child, Elizabeth, a girl of fifteen,
whose amiable disposition and elegant accomplish-
ments had become the solace of his life, and pro-
mised to be in future a still more precious blessing.
Under this accumulation of distresses he was pre-
vailed upon by his wife to seek consolation in travel;
and accordingly, in June, 1763, he went abroad, and
continued in France about two years.
In the course of his travels Smollett seems to have
laboured under a constant fit of ill-humour, the
result of morbid feelings and a distempered bodily