With Dr. ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle of Inveresk he renewed that acquaintance begun some years before, when neither of them had attained the fame that came to them in the course of time. Carlyle introduced him to many of his influential friends, and, in consequence, Smollett’s visit to Edinburgh proved an exceedingly happy one. ‘It was also in one of these days that Smollett visited Scotland for the first time,’ says Carlyle, ‘after having left Glasgow immediately after his education was finished, and his engaging as a surgeon’s mate on board a man–of–war, which gave him an opportunity of witnessing the siege of Carthagena, which he has so minutely described in his Roderick Random. He came out to Musselburgh and passed a day and a night with me, and went to church and heard me preach. I introduced him to Cardonnel the Commissioner (of Customs), with whom he supped, and they were much pleased with each other. Smollett has reversed this in his Humphrey Clinker, where he makes the Commissioner his old acquaintance. He went next to Glasgow and that neighbourhood to visit his friends, and returned again to Edinburgh in October, when I had frequent meetings with him, one in particular in a tavern, where there supped with him and Commissioner Cardonnel, Mr. Hepburn of Keith, John Home, and one or two more.... Cardonnel and I went with Smollett to Sir David Kinloch’s and passed the day, when John Home and Logan and I conducted him to Dunbar, where we stayed together all night.’
Smollett’s picture of the Edinburgh of his time in Humphrey Clinker is exceedingly graphic. ‘In the evening we arrived,’ writes Melford, ‘at this metropolis, of which I can say but very little. It is very romantic from its situation on the declivity of a hill, having a fortified castle at the top and a royal palace at the bottom. The first thing that strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless; but what first strikes the eye is the unconscionable height of the houses, which generally rise to five, six, seven, and eight storeys, and in some cases, as I am assured, to twelve. This manner of building, attended by numberless inconveniences, must have been originally owing to want of room. Certain it is the town seems to be full of people.’ In the next letter Matthew Bramble adds: ‘Every storey is a complete house occupied by a separate family, and the stair being common to them all is generally left in a very filthy condition; a man must tread with great circumspection to get safe housed with unpolluted shoes. Nothing, however, can form a stronger contrast between the outside and inside of the door, for the good women of this metropolis are very nice in the ornaments and propriety of their apartments, as if they were resolved to transfer the imputation from the individual to the public. You are no stranger to their method of discharging all their impurities from their windows at a certain hour of the night, as the custom is in Spain, Portugal, and other parts of France and Italy; a practice to which I can by no means be reconciled, for, notwithstanding all the care that is taken by their scavengers to remove this nuisance every morning by break of day, enough still remains to offend the eyes as well as the other organs of those whom use has not hardened against all delicacy of sensation.’ Nor can we omit what the inimitable Winnifred Jenkins—the prototype and model of all future soubrettes in fiction—says on the subject: ‘And now, dere Mary, we have got to Haddingborough (Edinburgh) among the Scots, who are cevel enuff for our money, thof I don’t speak their lingo. But they should not go for to impose on foreigners, for the bills on their houses say they have different easements to let; but behold there is nurra geaks in the whole kingdom, nor anything for pore sarvants, but a barril with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs in the family are emptied into this here barril once a day, and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into some street or lane, and the Made cries “Gardyloo” to the passengers, which signerfies, “Lord have mercy upon you,” and this is done every night in every house in Haddingborough, so you may guess, Mary Jones, what a sweet savour comes from such a number of profuming pans. But they say it is wholesome; and truly I believe it is; for being in the vapours and thinking of Issabel (Jezabel) and Mr. Clinker, I was going into a fit of astericks when this fiff, saving your presence, took me by the nose so powerfully that I sneezed three times and found myself wonderfully refreshed; this, to be sure, is the raisin why there are no fits in Haddingborough.’
From Edinburgh, Smollett, as we have seen, proceeded to Dumbartonshire, and then to Glasgow. His cousin was still laird of Bonhill, and welcomed him with much warmth back to the scene of his early years. In Glasgow he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Moore, who had succeeded him as apprentice with Mr. Gordon, and was now a physician of repute in the western metropolis. With the latter he remained two days, renewing old associations both at the College and elsewhere. Unfortunately, very little information can be gleaned regarding this visit of Smollett’s to Glasgow. Moore dismisses it in two or three lines, and every succeeding biographer, Anderson, Walter Scott, Chambers, Herbert, and Hannay, although mayhap spinning out a few more sentences, really do not add a tittle to our facts.
On returning to Edinburgh in October, he was welcomed by all the literati of the capital, and was specially invited to a meeting of the famous Select Society,[6] first mooted by Allan Ramsay the painter, as Mr. John Rae tells us in his Life of Adam Smith; but the fifteen original members of which had increased well–nigh to a hundred, comprising all the best–known names in literature, philosophy, science, and the arts. There he met or saw Kames and Monboddo (not yet ‘paper lords’ or lords of Session), Robertson and Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Dr. Blair, Wilkie of the Epigoniad, Wallace the statistician, Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller of the Court of Session, the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rosebery, Errol, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Gray, Garlies, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam the architect, Dr. Cullen, John Coutts the banker, and many others.[7] The Society met every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates’ Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Masonic Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers, men like Wedderburn and Robertson, took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland, as intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival.
On returning to London, Smollett at once threw himself into the feverish excitement and worry of a journalistic life. In other words, he assumed the editorship of the new Critical Review, representative of High Church and Tory principles. This periodical, with its older rival, the Monthly Review (started by Griffiths in 1749 as the Whig organ), may be considered the prototypes of that plentiful crop of monthly magazines wherewith we are furnished to–day. The Critical Review was the property of a man named Hamilton, a Scotsman, whose enlightenment and liberality, remarks Herbert, had been proved by his listening to Chatterton’s request for a little money, by sending it to him and telling him he should have more if he wanted it. The Critical Review for its age was really a very creditable production, though there was little to choose between the rivals as to merit, for the Monthly, at the date of the founding of its antagonist, was edited by a young man of surpassing ability, who won for himself a name in English literature even more distinguished than Smollett’s—Oliver Goldsmith. Thus the authors of the Vicar of Wakefield and of Peregrine Pickle—compositions wide as the poles apart in character—were thrown into rivalry with each other. That it was a rivalry embittered by any of the rancour and acrimony distinguishing Smollett’s future journalistic relations with John Wilkes, cannot be supposed, inasmuch as Goldsmith contributed several articles to the Critical Review, and as a return compliment Smollett four, at least, to the Monthly. The proprietors of the opposing periodicals may have had their squabbles and bespattered each other with foul names, but the editors seem to have been on the most amicable of terms and to have united in anathematising both parties.
Much of Smollett’s time was frittered away on work for the Review which would have been more remuneratively employed in other fields. But the pot had to be kept boiling, and there was but little fuel in reserve wherewith to feed the fire. He was far from making an ideal editor,—indeed, to tell the plain truth, he made an exceedingly bad one. He never kept his staff of contributors in hand. They were permitted to air their own grievances and to revenge their own quarrels in the Review. His criticisms, also, are very one–sided. The remarks on John Home’s Douglas, though true so far, are much too sweeping in their generalisations. The play has many merits, but the Critical Review would fain persuade one it had next to none. The same remarks are true of Wilkie’s Epigoniad, by no means a work of great genius, but deserving better things said of it than the Critical meted out. With respect to the criticism on Dr. Grainger, the writer simply displayed the grossest and most culpable ignorance and impertinence towards the productions of a learned and refined Englishman. In a word, the injustice, the intemperance of language, and the inexcusable blunders which characterised Smollett’s occupancy of the editorial chair of the Critical Review, caused it to be deservedly reprobated by those who admired justice and fair play, to say nothing of cultured criticism.
In one case, however, he was clearly in the right. A certain Admiral Knowles, who had so disgracefully failed in conducting to a successful issue the secret expedition to Rochelle in 1757, along with Sir John Mordaunt, wrote a pamphlet to justify his actions in the face of the storm of condemnation raised against him after a court–martial had acquitted Mordaunt. This pamphlet fell into Smollett’s hands, who characterised the writer as ‘an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity.’ Knowles entered an action against the printer, giving as his reason ‘his desire to find out the writer, in order to obtain the satisfaction of a gentleman, if the writer’s character would admit of it.’ On Smollett learning this, he at once came forward, acknowledged himself as the writer, and declared his willingness to meet the admiral with any weapons he chose. But the latter was a poltroon and a coward. He had obtained a judgment of the Court, and he sheltered himself under it. Smollett was mulcted in £100, and in 1759 sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Knowles seems to have merited Sir Walter Scott’s severe terms of reprobation: ‘How the admiral reconciled his conduct to the rules usually observed by gentlemen we are not informed, but the proceedings seem to justify even Smollett’s strength of expressions.’
But we have suffered our account of his relations to the Critical Review to run ahead of the narrative of his life. For several years the works he published were mostly hack–compilations for the booksellers. The most notable among these was A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, exhibiting a clear view of the Customs, Manners, Religion, Government, Commerce, and Natural History of most nations of the world, illustrated with a variety of Maps, Charts, etc., in 7 vols. 12mo. To this day Smollett’s collection is read with appreciation, and only two years ago another edition (abridged) was published of this most interesting and instructive work.
Immense as was the reading and investigation required for such a compilation, Smollett cheerfully gave it, and really there are extraordinarily few errors in it notwithstanding the rapidity wherewith it had been produced. The publisher was Dodsley, and among the voyages recorded are those of Vasco da Gama, Pedro de Cabral, Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, Rowe, Monk, James, Nieuhoff, Wafer, Dampier, Gemelli, Rogers, Anson, etc., with the histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Also included therein was his own account of the expedition to Carthagena.
Some time before this Smollett had inserted in the Critical Review the following panegyric on Garrick, evidently intended to compensate for his bitter reflections on him in Roderick Random and The Regicide. Smollett’s eyes were being opened to the more correct estimate of his own powers. Accordingly he wrote: ‘We often see this inimitable actor labouring through five tedious acts to support a lifeless piece, with a mixture of pity and indignation, and cannot help wishing there were in his age good poets to write for one who so well deserves them. He has the art, like the Lydian king, of turning all he touches into gold, and can ensure applause to every fortunate bard.’ Was the wish father to the deed? Be this as it may, within a short time Garrick accepted Smollett’s comedy of The Reprisal, or The Tars of Old England, an afterpiece in two acts. The year 1757–58 had been a period of national disaster. Smollett, indignant at the timorous policy of the Government of the day, wrote the comedy in question to rouse the warlike spirit of the nation. The prologue begins—