In fiction he is undoubtedly a great original. He had no model, and has had no imitator. His qualities as a novel-writer are rapidity of narrative, variety of incident, ease of style, graphic description, and an exquisite eye for the humours, peculiarities, and absurdities of character and life. In language he is generally careless, but whenever a great occasion occurs, he rises to meet it, and writes with dignity, correctness, and power. His sea-characters, such as Bowling, and his characters of low-life, such as Strap, have never been excelled. His tone of morals is always low, and often offensively coarse. In wit, constructiveness, and general style, he is inferior to Fielding; but surpasses him in interest, ease, variety, and humour, "Roderick Random" is the most popular and bustling of his tales. "Peregrine Pickle" is the filthiest and least agreeable; its humours are forced and exaggerated, and the sea-characters seem caricatures of those in "Roderick Random;" just as Norna of the Fitful Head, and Magdalene Graeme, are caricatures of Meg Merriless. "Sir Lancelot Greaves" is a tissue of trash, redeemed only here and there by traits of humour. "The Adventures of an Atom" we never read. "Humphrey Clinker" is the most delightful novel, with the exception of the Waverley series, in the English language. "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," contains much that is disgusting, but parts of it surpass all the rest in originality and profundity. We refer especially to the description of the pretended English Squire in Paris, who bubbles the great bubbler of the tale; to Count Fathom's address to Britain, when he reaches her shores,—a piece of exquisite mock-heroic irony; to the narrative of the seduction in the west of England; and to the matchless robber-scene in the forest,—a passage in which one knows not whether more to admire the thrilling interest of the incidents, or the eloquence and power of the language. It is a scene which Scott has never surpassed, nor, except in the cliff-scene in the "Antiquary," and, perhaps, the barn-scene in the "Heart of Midlothian," ever equalled.
Smollett's poetry need not detain us long. In his twin satires, "Advice" and "Reproof," you see rather the will to wound than the power to strike. There are neither the burnished compression, and polished, pointed malice of Pope, nor the gigantic force and vehement fury of Churchill. His "Tears of Scotland" is not thoroughly finished, but has some delicate and beautiful strokes. "Leven Water" is sweet and murmuring as that stream itself. His "Ode to Independence," as we have said elsewhere, "should have been written by Burns. How that poet's lips must have watered, as he repeated the line—
'Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye,'
and remembered he was not their author! He said he would have given ten pounds to have written 'Donochthead'—he would have given ten times ten, if, poor fellow! he had had them, to have written the 'Ode to Independence'—although, in his 'Vision of Liberty,' he has matched Smollett on his own ground." Grander lines than the one we have quoted above, and than the following—
"A goddess violated brought thee forth,"
are not to be found in literature. Round this last one, the whole ode seems to turn as on a pivot, and it alone had been sufficient to stamp Smollett a man of lofty poetic genius.
SMOLLETT'S POEMS
ADVICE: A SATIRE.
——Sed podice levi
Caeduntur tumidæ, medico ridente, mariscæ.
O proceres! censore opus est, an haruspice nobis?