Although Roderick Random, coming, as it did, sandwiched in, so to speak, between Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones, had to pass through a trying fire of literary comparison, it emerged from the ordeal more popular than ever. Readers realised that in him was a writer who was a story–teller pure and simple, whose moral lessons were conveyed rather by implication than by positive precept, and to whom the progress of his story was the prime consideration. The wearisome moralisings of Richardson and the tedious untwistings of motive so characteristic of Fielding were unknown in Roderick Random. The story for the story’s sake was evidently the writer’s aim throughout, and nobly he fulfilled it. By many of our latter–day novelists the imaginative swiftness of Smollett might with advantage be studied.
All criticism will be reserved for our closing chapters, but at this point it may not be out of place to state that, although Smollett’s characters are many of them drawn from life, it does not follow they are portrayed to the life. By this distinction I would seek to relieve him of the imputation, shameful in many cases beyond a doubt, of having deliberately drawn line for line the portraits of his relatives, of individuals met with on board the Cumberland, and other fellow–travellers with whom he had fallen in during his journey along the highway of existence. That suggestions were given to him by the actions of such men as the commander of the Cumberland, the staff of surgeons on board, and other personages with whom he came in contact, is perfectly probable. But that he noted through the microscope of his keen faculty of observation, every trait, every moral feature, and registered them on the debit or credit side of each character, I cannot admit, nor would such a course be consistent with the originality of his genius. The setting of incident may in some cases be drawn from his own experience, but that we can in any sense rely on each portrait in his works being a truthful representation of the prototype, that I deny. The assumption is negatived by his own confession with regard to his grandfather, and also by his action with reference to Gordon, his former employer. If the latter were drawn to the life under the character of either Potion or Crab in Roderick Random, as many biographers contend, Smollett completely ate his own words in Humphrey Clinker when he remarked that Gordon ‘was a patriot of a truly noble spirit,’ etc. There is nothing more misleading and at the same time more unfair to an author than to subject him to this sort of literary dissection. No author is without suggestions from without in limning his gallery of characters, but that he draws them wholly from without is as impossible as that a doctor’s diagnosis is based solely on what he observes, or on what is visible to the eye, and not also on what is the result of arguing from the known to the unknown. Captains Oakum and Whiffle, Squire Gawky, and others, are intentionally exaggerated for the purposes of literary effect. If they were drawn from nature, then they would have to be severely condemned as exaggerations.
Sir Walter Scott speaks very decidedly on this point in The Lives of the Novelists and Dramatists: ‘It was generally believed that Smollett painted some of his own early adventures under the veil of fiction; but the public carried the spirit of applying the characters of a work of fiction to living personages much farther than the author intended.’ Dr. Moore, also, while acknowledging that Smollett was not sufficiently careful to prevent such applications of his characters, yet denies that they were portraits of living personages.
Smollett now could contemplate the future with hopefulness. Roderick Random had achieved a success so extraordinary, that even at that early period in his literary career, the booksellers, or, as they would now be termed, ‘publishers,’ were bespeaking his wares ahead. Taken all in all, Smollett accepted his good fortune with conspicuous moderation. Success did not turn his head. He was not like his characters, Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle, extravagantly uplifted by prosperity, plunged into despair by adversity. More akin to worthy old Matthew Bramble was he, who, while he took the world at no very high valuation, and was not averse to accepting its smile, yet did not break his heart over its frown.
The only foolish action to which he gave way at this period of popularity was the publication by subscription of The Regicide. The fame accruing to him from the success of his novel was, he reasoned, a favourable means whereby to enable him to launch his play upon the waters of public opinion. His reputation certainly ensured the sale of his play, but the sale of his play materially affected his reputation. That The Regicide was not a work of merit Smollett never could be brought to see, until he had criticised for some years the works of others in the Critical Review. Besides, he had sufficient of the old Adam in him that he wished ‘to have his knife’ into the offending theatrical managers, and the ‘great little men,’ as he called them, who had professed to take his play under their patronage. Therefore, when The Regicide was published in 1749, our author prefixed thereto a preface full of gall and vinegar—a piece of spleen, of which, in his later days, he was sincerely ashamed. That preface is not pleasant reading to those who love the genius of Smollett. A vindictive schoolboy in the first flush of resentment against his teacher for giving him a sound but deserved birching could not have perpetrated anything much worse.
In 1750, Smollett and his wife paid a visit to Paris, in order that the popular novelist might collect materials for his new work of fiction. The charms of the gay city, the kindness and consideration shown him by the Parisians, the adulation showered on him by the literary men of the French capital, all coloured Smollett’s estimate of the place and people. ‘To live in Paris,’ he says in one of his letters of the period, ‘is to live in heaven.’ That he saw reason slightly to alter his opinion afterwards, was only to be expected. But the delights of this first visit to Paris remained indelibly impressed on his memory.
He met many persons in France whose characters and circumstances afterwards suggested to him some of the most notable personages in his gallery of fiction. For example, Moore, in his memoirs of Smollett, states that the portrait of the Doctor in Peregrine Pickle was drawn in some respects from Dr. Akenside, the well–known poet, author of The Pleasures of Imagination, a man of true learning, culture, and high talents, but whose offence, in Smollett’s eyes, was that he had cast some sneering reflections upon Scotland in Smollett’s presence, although, on the other hand, Akenside had studied in Edinburgh, and acknowledged the excellence of its medical school. Pallet the painter, also, was suggested to him, adds Moore, by the coxcombry of an English artist, who used to declaim on the subject of Virtu, and often used the following expressions, familiar enough to readers of the novel in question—‘Paris is very rich in the arts; London is a Goth, and Westminster a Vandal, compared to Paris.’
But the most effective episode drawn by Smollett from his French experiences was, as Anderson says, the story of the Scottish Jacobite exiles, banished from their country for their share in the Rebellion of 1745. Readers of Peregrine Pickle will remember that at Boulogne the hero meets a body of these unfortunates, who daily made a pilgrimage to the seaside to view the white cliffs of Britain, which they were never more to approach. That incident was drawn from life. Mr. Hunter of Burnside was the individual amongst them who is mentioned as having wept bitterly over his misfortune of having involved a beloved wife and three children in misery and distress, and in the impatience of his grief, having cursed his fate with frantic imprecations. Dr. Moore heard Mr. Hunter express himself in this manner to Smollett, and at the same time relate the affecting visit which he and his companions daily made to the seaside when residing at Boulogne. From his visit, then, Smollett drew a wealth of incidents and characteristics, which he was able with surpassing skill to touch up, recolour, magnify, and exaggerate as he saw fit in the interests of his story.
At this period, John Home, author of Douglas, was paying a visit to London in order to try to induce Garrick to accept his tragedy of Agis. He met Smollett, introduced to him by their mutual friend ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle, and had much pleasant intercourse with him. From the Life[5] of Home by Henry Mackenzie, I extract the following details, as they throw a curious side–light on Smollett’s character. In his letter, dated 6th November 1749, to Carlyle, he remarks: ‘I have seen nobody yet but Smollett, whom I like very well.’ Farther on he adds: ‘I am a good deal disappointed at the mien of the English, which I think but poor. I observed it to Smollett, after having walked at High–Mall, who agreed with me.’ Then, a little later, Home writes to ‘Jupiter,’ evidently grateful for some kindnesses shown him by Tobias, in the following terms:—‘Your friend Smollett, who has a thousand good, nay, the best qualities, and whom I love much more than he thinks I do, has got on Sunday last three hundred pounds for his Mask.’ What this Mask was it is hard to say, but in all probability it referred to some work which Smollett was executing for Garrick. To the Alceste the allusion could not refer, nor to the Reprisals. The allusion, therefore, must be directed to some cobbling dramatic work, of which Smollett did a great deal for Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Goodman’s Fields.