If ministers would in no other way conduce to his support, he was determined to levy on them at least an involuntary contribution, and accordingly (in 1769,) he published the Adventures of an Atom, in which he laid about him to right and left, and with a random humour, somewhat resembling that of Rabelais and Swift, made those whom he had defended and those whom he had attacked, alike the subject of very gross merriment.
But his sport and his suffering were now coming to a close. The increased debility under which he felt himself sinking, induced him again to try the influence of a more genial sky. Early in 1770, he set out with his wife for Italy; and after staying a short time at Leghorn, settled himself at Monte Nero, near that port. In a letter to Caleb Whitefoord, dated the 18th of May, he describes himself rusticated on the side of a mountain that overlooks the sea, a most romantic and salutary situation. One other flash broke from him in this retirement. His novel, called the Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which he sent to England to be printed in 1770, though abounding in portraitures of exquisite drollery, and in situations highly comical, has not the full zest and flavour of his earlier works. The story does not move on with the same impetuosity. The characters have more the appearance of being broad caricatures from real life, than the creatures of a rich and teeming invention. They seem rather the representation of individuals grotesquely designed and extravagantly coloured, than of classes of men.
His bodily strength now giving way by degrees, while that of his mind remained unimpaired, he expired at his residence near Leghorn, on the 21st of October, 1771, in the 51st year of his age.
His mother died a little before him. His widow lived twelve years longer, which she passed at Leghorn in a state of unhappy dependence on the bounty of the merchants at that place, and of a few friends in England. Out of her slender means she contrived to erect a monument to her deceased husband, on which the following inscription from the pen of his friend Armstrong was inscribed:
Hic ossa conduntur
TOBIAE SMOLLETT, Scoti;
Qui prosapia generosa et antiqua natus,
Priscae virtutis exemplar emicuit;
Aspectu ingenue,
Corpore valido,
Pectore animoso,
Indole apprime benigna,
Et fere supra facultates munifica
Insignis.
Ingenio feraci, faceto, versatili,
Omnigenae fere doctrinae mire capaci,
Varia fabularum dulcedine
Vitam moresque hominum,
Ubertate summa ludens depinxit.
Adverso, interim, nefas! tali tantoque alumno,
Nisi quo satyrae opipare supplebat,
Seculo impio, ignavo, fatuo,
Quo Musse vix nisi nothae
Maerenatulis Britannicis
Fovebantur.
In memoriam
Optimi et amabilis omnino viri,
Permultis amicis desiderati,
Hocce marmor,
Dilectissima simul et amantissima conjunx
L. M.
Sacravit.
A column with a Latin inscription was also placed to commemorate him on the banks of his favourite Leven, near the house in which he was born, by his kinsman Mr. Smollett of Bonhill.
The person of Smollett is described by his friend Dr. Moore as stout and well-proportioned, his countenance engaging, and his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate a consciousness of his own powers.
In his disposition, he appears to have been careless, improvident, and sanguine; easily swayed both in his commendation and censures of others, by the reigning humour of the moment, yet warm, and (when not influenced by the baneful spirit of faction) steady in his attachments. On his independence he particularly prided himself. But that this was sometimes in danger from slight causes is apparent, from an anecdote related by Dr. Wooll, in his Life of Joseph Warton. When Huggins [4] had finished his translation of Ariosto, he sent a fat buck to Smollett, who at that time managed the Critical Review; consequently the work was highly applauded; but the history of the venison becoming public, Smollett was much abused, and in a future number of the Review retracted his applause. Perpetual employment of his pen left him little time for reflection or study. Hence, though he acquired a greater readiness in the use of words, his judgment was not proportionably improved; nor did his manhood bear fruits that fully answered to the vigorous promise of his youth. Yet it may he questioned whether any other writer of English prose had before his time produced so great a number of works of invention. When, in addition to his novels, we consider his various productions, his histories, his travels, his two dramatic pieces, his poems, his translations, his critical labours, and other occasional publications, we are surprised that so much should have been done in a life of no longer continuance.
Excepting Congreve, I do not remember that any of the poets, whose lives have been written by Johnson, is said to have produced anything in the shape of a novel. Of the Incognita of Congreve, that biographer observes, not very satisfactorily, that he would rather praise it than read it. In the present series, Goldsmith, Smollett, and Johnson himself, if his Rasselas entitle him to rank in the number, are among the most distinguished in this species of writing, of whom modern Europe can boast. To these, if there be added the names of De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne, not to mention living authors, we may produce such a phalanx as scarcely any other nation can equal. Indeed no other could afford a writer so wide a field for the exercise of this talent as ours, where the fullest scope and encouragement are given to the human mind to expand itself in every direction, and assume every shape and hue, by the freedom of the government, and by the complexity of civil and commercial interests. No one has portrayed the whimsical varieties of character, particularly in lower life, with a happier vein of burlesque than Smollett. He delights, indeed, chiefly by his strong delineation of ludicrous incidents and grotesque manners derived from this source. He does not hold our curiosity entangled by the involution of his story, nor suspend it by any artful protraction of the main event. He turns aside for no digression that may serve to display his own ingenuity or learning. From the beginning to the end, one adventure commonly rises up and follows upon another, like so many waves of the sea, which cease only because they have reached the shore.
The billows float in order to the shore,
The wave behind rolls on the wave before.