And in fact it could not be otherwise: because, as has been pointed out, while Fielding had no inconsiderable command of the Book of Literature, he turned over by day and night the larger, the more difficult, but still the greater Book of Life. Not merely quicquid agunt homines, but quicquid sentiunt, quicquid cogitant, whatever they love and hate, whatever they desire or decline—all these things are the subjects of his own books: and the range of subject which they suggest to others is thus of necessity inexhaustible.
If there have been some who denied or failed to recognise his greatness, it must be because he has played on these unwary ones the same trick that Garrick, in an immortal scene, played on his own Partridge. There is so little parade about Fielding (for even the opening addresses are not parade to these good people: they may disconcert or even disgust, but they do not dazzle them), that his characters and his scenes look commonplace. They feel sure that "if they had seen a ghost they would have looked in the very same manner and done just as he does." They are sure that, in the scene with Gertrude, "Lord, help them! any man—that is any good man—that had such a mother would have done exactly the same."
Well! in a way no doubt they are right; and one may imitate the wisdom of Mr. Jones on the original occasion in not saying much more to them. To others, of course, this is the very miracle of art—a miracle, as far as the art of prose fiction is concerned, achieved in its fullness for practically the first time. This is the true mimesis—the re-creation or fresh creation of fictitious reality. There were in Fielding's time, and probably ever since have been, those who thought him "low;" there were, even in his own time, and have been in varying, but on the whole rather increased, degree since, those who thought him immoral: there appear to be some who think (or would like it to be thought that they think) him commonplace and obvious. Now, as it happens, all these charges have been brought against Nature too. To embellish, and correct, and heighten, and extra-decorate her was not Fielding's way: but to follow, and to interpret, and to take up her own processes with results uncommonly like her own. That is his immense glory to all those who can realise and understand it: and as for the others we must let them alone, joined to their own idols.
In passing to the third of this great quartette, we make a little descent, but not much of one, while the new peak to which we come is well defined and separated, with characters and outlines all its own. It may be doubted whether any competent critic not, like Scott, bribed by compatriotism, ever put Smollett above Fielding, or even on a level with him. Thackeray, in one of the most inspired moments of his rather irregularly-inspired criticism, remarks, "I fancy he did not invent much," and this of itself would refer him to a lower class. The writer of fiction is not to refuse suggestion from his experience; on the contrary, he will do so at his peril, and will hardly by any possibility escape shipwreck unless his line is the purely fantastic. But if he relies solely, or too much, on such experience, though he may be quite successful, his success will be subject to discount, bound to pay royalty to experience itself. It is pretty certain that most of Smollett's most successful things, from Roderick Random to Humphry Clinker, and in those two capital books, perhaps, most of all, kept very close to actual experience, and sometimes merely reported it.
This, however, is only a comparative drawback; it is in a sense a positive merit; and it is connected, in a very intimate way, with the general character of Smollett's novel-method. This is, to a great extent, a reaction or relapse towards the picaresque style. Smollett may have translated both Cervantes and Le Sage; he certainly translated the latter: and it was Le Sage who in any case had the greatest influence over him. Now the picaresque method is not exactly untrue to ordinary life: on the contrary, as we have seen, it was a powerful schoolmaster to bring the novel thereto. But it subjects the scenes of ordinary life to a peculiar process of sifting: and when it has got what it wants, it proceeds to heighten them and "touch them up" in its own peculiar manner of decoration. This is Smollett's method throughout, even in that singular pastiche of Don Quixote itself, Sir Launcelot Greaves, which certainly was not his happiest conception, but which has had rather hard measure.
As used by him it has singular merits, and communicates to at least three of his five books (The Adventures of an Atom is deliberately excluded as not really a novel at all) a certain "liveliness" which, though it is not the lifelikeness of Fielding, is a great attraction. He showed it first in Roderick Random (1748), which appeared a little before Tom Jones, and was actually taken by some as the work of the same author. It would be not much more just to take Roderick as Smollett's deliberate presentment of himself than to apply the same construction to Marryat's not very dissimilar, but more unlucky, coup d'essai of Frank Mildmay. But it is certain that there was something, though exactly how much has never been determined, of the author's family history in the earliest part, a great deal of his experiences on board ship in the middle, and probably not a little, though less, of his fortunes in Bath and London towards the end. As a single source of interest and popularity, no doubt, the principal place must be given to the naval part of the book. Important as the English navy had been, for nearly two centuries if not for much longer, it had never played any great part in literature, though it had furnished some caricatured and rather conventional sketches. There is something more in a play, The Fair Quaker of Deal, by Charles Shadwell, nephew or son of Dryden's victim, but this was only of third or fourth rate literary value, and an isolated example to boot. The causes of the neglect have been set forth by many writers from Macaulay downwards, and need not be discussed here; the fact is certain. Smollett's employment of "the service" as a subject may have been, consciously and intentionally, only one of those utilisings of personal experience of which we have spoken. But really it was an instance of the great fact that the novelist, on the instigation mainly of Fielding himself, was beginning to take all actual life to be his province.
Smollett brought to his work peculiar powers, the chief of which was a very remarkable one, and almost as much "improved on" Fielding as Fielding's exercise of it was improved on Richardson—that of providing his characters and scenes with accessories. Roderick is not only a much more disagreeable person than Tom, but he is much less of a person: and Strap, though (vice versâ) rather a better fellow than Partridge, is a much fainter and more washed-out character. But in mere interest of story and accessories the journey of Roderick and Strap to London is quite the equal, and perhaps the superior, of that of Tom and his hanger-on after we once leave Upton, where the interest is of a kind that Smollett could not reach. It is probable that Fielding might, if he had chosen, have made the prison in Amelia as horribly and disgustingly realistic (to use a horrible and disgusting word) as the ship in Roderick, but he at any rate did not choose. Moreover Smollett, himself a member of one of the less predominant partners of the British and Irish partnership, perhaps for that reason hit on utilising the difference of these partners (after a fashion which had never been seen since Shakespeare) in the Welshman Morgan. As far as mere plot goes, he enters into no competition whatever with either Fielding or Richardson: the picaresque model did not require that he should. When Roderick has made use of his friends, knocked down his enemies, and generally elbowed and shoved his way through the crowd of adventures long enough, Narcissa and her fortune are not so much the reward of his exertions as a stock and convenient method of putting an end to the account of them. The customer has been served with a sufficient amount of the commodity he demands: and the scissors are applied, the canister shut up, the tap turned off. It almost results—it certainly coincides—that some of the minor characters, and some of the minor scenes, are much more vivid than the hero (the heroine is almost an absolute nonentity) and the whole story. The curate and the exciseman in the ninth chapter are, by common consent, among Smollett's greatest triumphs; but the curate might be excommunicated and the exciseman excised without anybody who read the book perceiving the slightest gap or missing link, as far as the story is concerned.
Smollett's second venture, Peregrine Pickle (1751), was more ambitious, perhaps rose higher in parts, but undoubtedly contained even more doubtful and inferior matter. No one can justly blame him, though any one may most justly refrain from praising, from the general point of view, as regards the "insets" of Miss Williams's story in Roderick and of that of Lady Vane here. From that point of view they range with the "Man of the Hill" in Tom Jones, and in the first case at least, though most certainly not in the second, have more justification of connection with the central story. He may so far underlie the charge of error of judgment, but nothing worse. Unluckily the "Lady Vane" insertion was, to a practical certainty, a commercial not an artistic transaction: and both here and elsewhere Smollett carried his already large licence to the extent of something like positive pornography. He is in fact one of the few writers of real eminence who have been forced to Bowdlerise themselves. Further, there would be more excuse for the most offensive part of Peregrine if it were not half plagiarism of the main situations of Pamela and Clarissa: if Smollett had not deprived his hero of all the excuses which, even in the view of some of the most respectable characters of Pamela, attached to the conduct of Mr. B.; and if he had not vulgarised Lovelace out of any possible attribution of "regality," except of being what the time would have called King of the Black Guard. As for Tom Jones, he does not come into comparison with "Perry" at all, and he would doubtless have been most willing and able—competent physically as well as morally—to administer the proper punishment to that young ruffian by drubbing him within an inch of his life.
These, no doubt, are grave drawbacks: but the racy fun of the book almost atones for them: and the exaltation of the naval element of Roderick which one finds here in Trunnion and Hatchway and Pipes carries the balance quite to the other side. This is the case even without, but much more with, the taking into account of Smollett's usual irregular and almost irrelevant bonuses, such as the dinner after the fashion of the ancients and the rest. No: Peregrine Pickle can never be thrown to the wolves, even to the most respectable and moral of these animals in the most imposing as well as ravening of attitudes. English Literature cannot do without it.
Without Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) many people have thought that English Literature could do perfectly well: and without going quite so far, one may acknowledge that perhaps a shift could be made. The idea of re-transferring the method (in the first place at any rate) to foreign parts was not a bad one, and it may be observed that by far the best portion of Fathom is thus occupied. Not a few of these opening passages are excellent: and Fathom's mother, if not a person, is an excellent type: it is probable that the writer knew the kind well. But his unhappy tendency to enter for the same stakes as his great forerunners makes it almost impossible not to compare Ferdinand Fathom with Jonathan Wild: and the effect is very damaging to the Count. Much of the book is dull: and Fathom's conversation is (to adopt a cant word) extremely unconvincing. The fact seems to be that Smollett had run his picaresque vein dry, as far as it connected itself with mere rascality of various kinds, and he did well to close it. He had published three novels in five years: he waited seven before his next, and then eleven more before his last.