CHAPTER X
SMOLLETT AS A NOVELIST
Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’ In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. The grounds for such a comparison do not exist, save in the initial fact that all three wrote novels!
Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. Nothing missed his ‘inevitable eye,’ either in a situation, an incident, or a landscape. If he had not Fielding’s keen power of vision into the mental and moral characteristics of his fellow–men, he had twice his aptness of objective photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance or of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to forget the humorous bearings of any experience through which he had passed, or of which he had learned. The affaire de cœur with Melinda in Roderick Random, the challenge and arrest through the affection of Strap, also the inimitable ‘banquet after the manner of the ancients’ in Peregrine Pickle, were described from incidents occurring in Smollett’s own history. To few writers has the faculty been given in measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes he was describing upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, whence he transferred them to his pages. The naturalness of setting in the case of all the incidents is so marked, and stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded in the Memoirs of a Lady of Quality (published in Peregrine Pickle), that one scarcely knows which to admire most—the originality of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and impressiveness of the painter’s reproduction.
Smollett’s strength lay in his great power of self–restraint. He knew what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept himself within the limits of his imaginative ability. He could very easily have made either Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist, sighing after his mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and fears and ups and downs of the knights–errant of love. But therein he would have trenched upon Richardson’s province, and placed himself in a decidedly unfavourable comparison with the author of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe. He might have developed a splendid character–study out of the colossal Borgia–like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom, who can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime which possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of Shakespeare’s early days, Aaron in Titus Andronicus, who, when dying, curses the world with the words—
‘If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.’
But had he done so, he would have entered into direct competition with Fielding; a competition he knew he was unfitted to support. But in his own department he was supreme. In fertility of invention and apt adaptation of means to end he had no rival. His novels present one bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes, imprisonments, love–makings, and what not, until the mind positively becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident provided for it. A less profound genius than Smollett would in all probability have worn itself out in a vain attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the principle ‘never venture, never win.’ Smollett was a surer critic, on this point at least, than many of his friends, who were continually urging him to attempt something in the mode of Fielding. ‘There is but one husbandman can reap that field,’ he replied. He knew what he could do and what he could not do, and therein, as has been said, lay his strength.
Viewing his novels as a whole,—Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand Count Fathom, Launcelot Greaves, The Adventures of an Atom, and Humphrey Clinker,—the first quality which strikes a critical reader is the family likeness existing between all the leading characters. Dissimilar though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Peregrine Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, and Lismahago in what may be termed his nobler qualities, there is nevertheless in all that happy–go–lucky carelessness, that supreme indifference to consequences, that courage that never flinches from the penalties of its own misdeeds, but accepts them without a murmur—in a word, a bonhomie diversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in no other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that sentimental, melodramatic, watery ‘gush’ which the taste of last century denominated pathos—the sort of thing Dickens long after described in the phrase ‘drawing tears from his eyes and a handkerchief from his pocket’; but of that quality there is not the faintest trace in Smollett. If anything, his characters are too callous, too fond of the rough–and–tumble Tom–and–Jerry life in which their creator so perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there a curve, heightening the light in one place, deepening the shading in another, never picturing an incident or a trait without some definite end to be served in perfecting the final portrait. Smollett never takes time for such microscopic character studies. He is a veritable pen–and–ink draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he sketches, through the agency of incident, the outlines of his characters, filling in these outlines with but few subsidiary details regarding the feelings and moral impulses of his creations. For such he has neither the time nor the space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of the setting of the story and study them apart, paying no heed to anything affecting the other personages, and he will see at once how completely Smollett relied on incident to do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings of his heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better story–teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, Smollett the more vigorous painter of contemporary manners. Further, let the reader carefully study Lovelace in Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe, Blifil in Fielding’s novel of Tom Jones, and Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse method of the three great novelists. Richardson builds up what might be called the ‘architectonic’ of the creation by a series of great scenes wherein dialogue plays the greatest part. Lovelace has all the light–hearted villainy of a man to whom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and whose standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richardson does everything by square and rule. He expends at the outset a wealth of ingenuity in portraying the most insignificant qualities of Lovelace’s nature. And so fully does he make us acquainted with his nature, that at the end of the novel we know in reality very little more of him than we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand, winds his way into the very heart of a character, ‘like a serpent round its prey,’ as Goldsmith said of Burke’s treatment of a subject in conversation. Every chapter gives us some addition to the creation, even to the very close of the novel. But when that is reached, the great synthesis is complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master Blifil stands pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is contemptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of Ferdinand Count Fathom the initial description of the character is reduced to a minimum. Everything is left to the effect produced by incident. All Fathom’s pitilessness, his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his colossal selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader’s own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not formally labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson and Fielding the author is constantly present in his creation. So with Smollett, he is ever in evidence. None of them attain that superb art of Walter Scott, who simply effaces himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says: ‘He sits like a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights to the view; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria the author himself never appears to take part with his characters. It is the perfection of art to conceal art, and this is here done so completely, that, while it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the merit of the author. As he does not thrust himself into the foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.’
By the critical student closely attentive to the development of Smollett’s genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that in the gallery of his characters, chronologically considered, there is a definitely progressive growth or increase in the power wherewith he limned character. Bearing in mind our initial position, that in Smollett’s art incident was the prime element, and the delineation of character subordinate to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of circumstance, I would invite attention to the following analysis, as being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be deduced from a patient, faithful, and impartial study of the personages named. My contention is that in the character sequence we have a series of ascending psychologic gradations, each one presenting features of greater complexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more clearly the value of a system in that concatenation of event which influenced so intimately his personages.
Roderick Random is little else than the Gil Blas of Le Sage Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellent Lazarillo de Tormes of Hurtado de Mendoza. In his Preface to the novel Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness to French and Spanish fiction, and announces his conviction of the superiority of the novel of circumstance over all others. Roderick Random, therefore, as a novel consists of a succession of incidents, some startling, some improbable, some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative affinity to each other. The book is a record of the ‘adventures’ of the hero from his cradle to his marriage. As in the case of all such books, the peg whereon the incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose and disjointed, happy–go–lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick is only a big schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal passions, far, very far from being a saint, yet as far from being an irreclaimable sinner. He is the plaything of his passions, carried like a straw on the stream of circumstance. He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it woe, be it good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. He treats his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his fidelity, worse than indifferently. He is not by any means faithful, and certainly not very respectful, to his lady–love, Narcissa; nay, he even takes the discovery of his long–lost father—a circumstance materially altering his social station—quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was the spirit incarnate of the cold–blooded, coarse–fibred, religionless eighteenth century—a century wherein virtue was perpetually on the lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts of its men, a century wherein its women were colourless puppets, without true individuality or definite aims, but oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism to escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true culture. Roderick Random as a creation was a purely adventitious one, resulting from the fortuitous concourse of incidents. How the character was to shape itself, morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator little, provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, and the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. Incidents were piled up, whether tending to heighten the effect of the dramatis personæ, or not. There was no conservation of material, no wise economy, no evidence of careful selection. Prodigality and profusion were everywhere present, with the signs of youth and inexperience writ large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick Random, critically estimated as a work of art, is little better than Lobeyra’s Amadis de Gaul, a portrait limned wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas without premeditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of character contemporaneously with the evolution of event. The character has gathered no wisdom during its course. It is represented to us in quite as immature a state at the end of the story as at the beginning. There is a heartlessness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive is this phase of the hero’s character; nay, the novel is only saved from being as darkly shaded and as morally repellent as Count Fathom, by the pathetic doglike fidelity of poor Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of nature in a chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book.