I
The Scotch-born Tobias Smollett published his first fiction, "Roderick Random," eight years after "Pamela" had appeared, and the year before "Tom Jones"; it was exactly contemporaneous with "Clarissa Harlowe," A strict contemporary, then, with Richardson and Fielding, he was also the ablest novelist aside from them, a man whose work was most influential in the later development. It is not unusual to dismiss him in a sentence as a coarser Fielding. The characterization hits nearer the bull's eye than is the rule with such sayings, and more vulgar than the greater writer he certainly is, brutal where Fielding is vigorous: and he exhibits and exaggerates the latter's tendencies to the picaresque, the burlesque and the episodic. His fiction is of the elder school in its loose fiber, its external method of dealing with incident and character. There is little or nothing in Smollett of the firm-knit texture and subjective analysis of the moderns. Thus the resemblances are superficial, the differences deeper-going and palpable. Smollett is often violent, Fielding never: there is an impression of cosmopolitanism in the former—a wider survey of life, if only on the surface, is given in his books. By birth, Smollett was of the gentry; but by the time he was twenty he had seen service as Surgeon's Mate in the British navy, and his after career as Tory Editor, at times in prison, literary man and traveler who visited many lands and finally, like Fielding, died abroad in Italy, was checkered enough to give him material and to spare for the changeful bustle, so rife with action and excitement, of his four principal stories. Like the American Cooper, he drew upon his own experiences for his picture of the navy; and like a later American, Dr. Holmes, was a physician who could speak by the card of that side of life.
Far more closely than Fielding he followed the "Gil Blas" model, depending for interest primarily upon adventures by the way, moving accidents by flood and field. He declares, in fact, his intention to use Le Sage as a literary father and he translated "Gil Blas." In striking contrast, too, with Fielding is the interpretation of life one gets from his books; with the author of "Tom Jones" we feel, what we do in greater degree with Shakespeare and Balzac, that the personality of the fiction-maker is healthily merged in his characters, in the picture of life. But in the case of Dr. Smollett, there is a strongly individual satiric bias: less of that largeness which sees the world from an unimplicated coign of vantage, whence the open-eyed, wise-minded spectator finds it a comedy breeding laughter under thoughtful brows. We seem to be getting not so much scenes of life as an author's setting of the scene for his own private reasons. Such is at least the occasional effect of Smollett. Also is there more of bitterness, of savagery in him: and where Fielding was broad and racily frank in his handling of delicate themes, this fellow is indecent with a kind of hardness and brazenness which are amazing. The difference between plain-speaking and unclean speaking could hardly be better illustrated. It should be added, in justice, that even Smollett is rarely impure with the alluring saliency of certain modern fiction.
In the first story, "The Adventures of Roderick Random" (the cumbrous full titles of earlier fiction are for apparent reasons frequently curtailed in the present treatment), published when the author was twenty-seven, he avails himself of a residence of some years in Jamaica to depict life in that quarter of the world at a time when the local color had the charm of novelty. The story is often credited with being autobiographic, as a novelist's first book is likely to be; since, by popular belief, there is one story in all of us, namely, our own. Its description of the hero's hard knocks does, indeed, suggest the fate of a man so stormily quarrelsome throughout his days: for this red-headed Scot, this "hack of genius," as Henley picturesquely calls him, was naturally a fighting man and, whether as man or author, attacks or repels sharply: there is nothing uncertain in the effect he makes. His loud vigor is as pronounced as that of a later Scot like Carlyle; yet he stated long afterward that the likeness between himself and Roderick was slight and superficial. The fact that the tale is written in the first person also helps the autobiographic theory: that method of story-making always lends a certain credence to the narrative. The scenes shift from western Scotland to the streets of London, thence to the West Indies: and the interest (the remark applies to all Smollett's work) lies in just three things—adventure, diversity of character, and the realistic picture of contemporary life—especially that of the navy on a day when, if Smollett is within hailing distance of the facts, it was terribly corrupt. Too much credit can hardly be given him for first using, so effectively too, the professional sea-life of his country: a motive so richly productive since through Marryat down to Dana, Herman Melville, Clark Russell and many other favorite writers, both British and American. In Smollett's hands, it is a strange muddle of religion, farce and smut, but set forth with a vivid particularity and a gusto f high spirits which carry the reader along, willy-nilly. Such a book might be described by the advertisement of an old inn: "Here is entertainment for man and beast." As to characterization, if a genius for it means the creation of figures which linger in the familiar memory of mankind, Smollett must perforce be granted the faculty; here in his first book are Tom Bowling and Strap—to name two—the one (like Richardson's Lovelace) naming a type: the other standing for the country innocent, the meek fidus Achates, both as good as anything of the same class in Fielding. The Welsh mate, Mr. Morgan, for another of the sailor sort, is also excellent. The judgment may be eccentric, but for myself the character parts in Smollett's dramas seem for variety and vividness often superior to those of Fielding. The humor at its best is very telling. The portraits, or caricatures, of living folk added to the story's immediate vogue, but injure it as a permanent contribution to fiction.
A fair idea of the nature of the attractions offered (and at the same time a clear indication of the sort of fiction manufactured by the doughty doctor) may be gleaned from the following precis—Smollett's own—of Chapter XXXVIII: "I get up and crawl into a barn where I am in danger of perishing through the fear of the country people. Their inhumanity. I am succored by a reputed witch. Her story. Her advice. She recommends me as a valet to a single lady whose character she explains." This promises pretty fair reading: of course, we wish to read on and to learn more of that single lady and the hero's relation to her. Such a motive, which might be called, "The Mistakes of a Night," with details too crude and physical to allow of discussion, is often overworked by Smollett (as, in truth, it is by Fielding, to modern taste): the eighteenth century had not yet given up the call of the Beast in its fiction—an element of bawdry was still welcome in the print offered reputable folk.
The style of Smollett in his first fiction, and in general, has marked dramatic flavor: his is a gift of forthright phrase, a plain, vernacular smack characterizes his diction. To go back to him now is to be surprised perhaps at the racy vigor of so faulty a writer and novelist. A page or so of Smollett, after a course in present-day popular fiction, reads very much like a piece of literature. In this respect, he seems full of flavor, distinctly of the major breed: there is an effect of passing from attenuated parlor tricks into the open, when you take him up. Here, you can but feel, is a masculine man of letters, even if it is his fate to play second fiddle to Fielding.
Smollett's initial story was a pronounced success with the public—and he aired an arrogant joy and pooh-poohed insignificant rivals like Fielding. His hand was against every man's when it came to the question of literary prowess; and like many authors before and since, one of his first acts upon the kind reception of "Roderick Random," was to get published his worthless blank-verse tragedy, "The Regicide," which, refused by Garrick, had till then languished in manuscript and was an ugly duckling beloved of its maker. Then came Novel number two, "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle," three years after the first: an unequal book, best at its beginning and end, full of violence, not on the whole such good art-work as the earlier fiction, yet very fine in spots and containing such additional sea-dogs as Commodore Trunnion and Lieutenant Hatchway, whose presence makes one forgive much. The original preface contained a scurrilous reference to Fielding, against whom he printed a diatribe in a pamphlet dated the next year. The hero of the story, a handsome ne'er-do-well who has money and position to start the world with, encounters plenty of adventure in England and out of it, by land and sea. There is an episodic book, "Memoirs, supposed to be written by a lady of quality," and really giving the checkered career of Lady Vane, a fast gentlewoman of the time, done for pay at her request, which is illustrative of the loose state of fictional art in its unrelated, lugged-in character: and as well of eighteenth century morals in its drastic details. We have seen that Fielding was frankly episodic in handling a story; Smollett goes him one better: as may most notoriously be seen also in the unmentionable Miss Williams' story in "Roderick Random"—in fact, throughout his novels. Pickle, to put it mildly, is not an admirable young man. An author's conception of his hero is always in some sort a give-away: it expresses his ideals; that Smollett's are sufficiently low-pitched, may be seen here. Plainly, to, he likes Peregrine, and not so much excuses his failings as overlooks them entirely.
After a two years' interval came "The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom," which was not liked by his contemporaries and is now seen to be definitely the poorest of the quartette. It is enough to say of it that Fathom is an unmitigable scoundrel and the story, mixed romance and melodrama, offers the reader dust and ashes instead of good red blood. It lacks the comic verve of Smollett's typical fiction and manipulates virtue and vice in the cut-and-dried style of the penny-dreadful. Even its attempts at the sensational leave the modern reader, bred on such heavenly fare as is proffered by Stevenson and others, indifferent-cold.
It is a pleasure to turn from it to what is generally conceded to be the best novel he wrote, as it is his last: "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker," which appeared nearly twenty years later, when the author was fifty years old. "The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Graves," written in prison a decade earlier, and a poor satire in the vein of Cervantes, can be ignored, it falls so much below Smollett's main fiction. He had gone for his health's sake to Italy and wrote "Humphrey Clinker" at Leghorn, completing it only within a few weeks of his death. For years he had been degenerating as a writer, his physical condition was of the worst: it looked as if his life was quite over. Yet, by a sort of leaping-up of the creative flame out of the dying embers of the hearth, he wrought his masterpiece.
It was thrown into letter form, Richardson's framework, and has all of Smollett's earlier power of characterization and brusque wit, together with a more genial, mellower tone, that of an older man not soured but ripened by the years. Some of its main scenes are enacted in his native Scotland and possibly this meant strength for another Scot, as it did for Sir Walter and Stevenson. The kinder interpretation of humanity in itself makes the novel better reading to later taste; so much can not honestly be said for its plain speaking, for as Henley says in language which sounds as if it were borrowed from the writer he is describing, "the stinks and nastinesses are done with peculiar gusto." The idea of the story, as usual a pivot around which to revolve a series of adventures, is to narrate how a certain bachelor, country gentleman, Matthew Bramble, a malade imaginaire, yet good-hearted and capable of big laughter—"the most risible misanthrope ever met with," as he is limned by one of the persons of the story—travels in England, Wales and Scotland in pursuit of health, taking with him his family, of whom the main members include his sister, Tabitha (and her maid, Jenkins), and his nephew, not overlooking the dog, Chowder. Clinker, who names the book, is a subsidiary character, merely a servant in Bramble's establishment. The crotchety Bramble and his acidulous sister, who is a forerunner of Mrs. Malaprop in the unreliability of her spelling, and Lieutenant Lishmahago, who has been complimented as the first successful Scotchman in fiction—all these are sketched with a verity and in a vein of genuine comic invention which have made them remembered. Violence, rage, filth—Smollett's besetting sins—are forgotten or forgiven in a book which has so much of the flavor and movement of life, The author's medical lore is made good use of in the humorous descriptions of poor Bramble's ailments. Incidentally, the story defends the Scotch against the English in such a pronounced way that Walpole calls it a "part novel"; and there is, moreover, a pleasant love story interwoven with the comedy and burlesque. One feels in leaving this fiction that with all allowance for his defects, there is more danger of undervaluing the author's powers and place in the modern Novel than the reverse.