In June 1763, Smollett’s health and spirits became alike so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed! Alas, poor Nancy! She pled with her obdurate husband for many a week before he consented to wind up his numberless projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of £1200 left to Mrs. Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That he left England with arrangements made whereby his ‘myrmidons’ were to forward their ‘copy’ to him, whithersoever he might be, goes without the saying. The booksellers, also—Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and others—all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who had done so much for them. But therein they did no more than their duty.
For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in 1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip, Travels through France and Italy: containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Antiquities, with a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett to friends at home; and in the first letter he remarks: ‘In gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.’ The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is perceptible in the following passage: ‘I am traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.’
Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it: ‘His letters afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain over the best disposition.’ Letters written under such circumstances should never have been published. In the exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes: ‘Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not the only people to whom Smollett gave offence: he exposed himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is one to think of a man who likened the snow–clad glories of the Alps to frosted sugar; who said of the famous Venus de Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, “I cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of character”; and who remarked of the Pantheon, “I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top”?’
The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of all others, should have remained silent—a man whose whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to reprehend in Smollett—Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of course, was the motive. The author of Tristram Shandy could never forgive the fact that the public preferred Peregrine Pickle to the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state of Smollett’s health, and how it would colour every estimate he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the world was the author of Tristram Shandy to have sat as moral or æsthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty sledge–hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill–natured critic! Sterne wrote: ‘The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “It is nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus Medicis,” replied I—for in passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I popped upon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi.” He had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. “I’ll tell it,” said Smelfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”’ Now, though Smollett deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited above is not the manner in which such literary punishment should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter: ‘Be it said without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne’s writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was—
“Like a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.”’
Alas! not long now was the worn tenement of the great novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was known to be only a question of a year or two at most. Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ‘My poor Nancy; let me make the best use of the time for her.’ Constant rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drained his strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A premature break–up of the system, rather than the positive disease of consumption, numbered his days.
Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, with that keen insight into the future which often distinguishes the aged, said, ‘We’ll no’ be long parted, any way. If you go first, I’ll be close on your heels: if I lead the way, ye’ll no’ be far behind me, I’m thinking.’ And so it proved. Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew better. ‘The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,’ she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and get his health thoroughly established.
But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for the Critical Review, compiling travels, translating from French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature of the day—anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer.
Only two more works of any moment was he to live to accomplish—one, an indifferent production judged by his own high standard—the other, like the dying cygnet’s song in Grecian fable—the greatest and the last! In 1769 appeared The History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols. 12mo. This is a politico–social satire, wherein are represented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till the dissolution of Lord Chatham’s administration in 1762, but under the thin veil of Japanese names. George III. was consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been to–day an integral part of the Empire, which would have feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short–sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to be evolved. The History of an Atom was successful, but is to–day the portion of Smollett’s writings with which we could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity.
Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to all, that if Smollett’s life was to be preserved, he must henceforth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered his existence during the past few years, and faction was jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. His only political friends neglected him who had fought so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their ingratitude.