Johnson’s Jove–like power of driving home a truth, he frequently persuaded, by his calm and lucid logic, where the thunder of the Great Cham only repelled. If blame be his, then, with regard to the exercise of his critical authority, it was due more to sins of omission than of commission, more to believing that others were actuated by the same high ideals in criticism as himself. In reading some of the numbers of the Critical Review for the purposes of this biography, nothing struck me more in those papers that were plainly from the pen of Smollett, than the power he possessed of placing himself at the point of view assumed by the writer of the work under criticism, so that he might be thoroughly en rapport with the author’s sympathies. How few critics have either the inclination or the ability to do likewise!
CHAPTER XII
SMOLLETT AS POET AND DRAMATIST
Tradition states that Smollett, on being asked on one occasion why he did not write more poetry, replied that he had ‘no time to be a poet.’ The answer can be read in a dual sense—either that poetry demanded an absorption so complete in its pursuit that all other interests were as naught; or, on the other hand, that his time was so fully occupied that he could not devote attention to poetical composition without neglecting other things at that time of more value. As weighed against his fiction, little regret can be felt by any admirer of Smollett, that he did not pursue poetry more diligently. The specimens we possess of these fruits of his genius are not of such value as to awaken any desire to peruse more of his metrical essays. Small in bulk though his poetical works are, even these, as well as his dramatic compositions, we would gladly have spared in exchange for such another novel as Humphrey Clinker.
Smollett’s genius was by no means of that purely imaginative, highly spiritual type from which great poetical compositions are to be expected. He was rather an unsurpassed observer, who, having noted special characteristics of mind as being produced by the fortuitous concourse of certain incidents, straightway proceeded to expand and idealise them; than a mighty original genius, like Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Shelley, or Keats, that from the depths of his spiritual consciousness evolved original creations that are representative not of any age, but of all time. Smollett had none of the isolating power of the true poet, whereby for the time he raises his theme into the pure ether of imagination, dissociated from the world and all its concerns. Smollett loved the world too well to seek to sever himself from it. His workshop, his studio, his school, and observatory, it was in one. Like Balzac, he was more taken up with what men did than with what they thought. From the outward evidence of action he worked back to the predisposing thought, not predicting à priori from the thought what the action must necessarily be. Therefore, as Smollett’s genius was more practical than imaginative, dealing more with the reproduction of facts than the creation of fancies, his poetry rose little above the dead level of commonplace. Only in two poems does he rise into a distinctively higher altitude of poetic inspiration—these are ‘The Tears of Scotland’ and ‘The Ode to Independence.’ In both cases, however, the influence of patriotism and that keen sympathy with the oppressed which he always entertained, contributed to impart to the compositions in question loftier sentiments and more impassioned feelings than would otherwise have been the case. We have already seen that the horrors wrought in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 by the Duke of Cumberland were on his mind when he wrote ‘The Tears of Scotland’; while the heroism of the noble Corsican Paschal Paoli was the stimulating motive in the composition of the latter.
There is a great difference between the two. The former was written in 1746, while the ‘Ode to Independence’ was not produced until the last years of his life, and was not published until 1773, when the Messrs. Foulis of Glasgow, printers to the University of Glasgow, put it out, with a short Preface and Notes by Professor Richardson. In both, the language is spirited and striking, the thoughts elevated and just. In the ‘Ode’ he takes as his models Collins and Gray. The first and last stanzas of it—or, more properly, the opening strophe and the concluding antistrophe—are the finest in the poem, and are well worthy of quotation—
‘Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion–heart and eagle eye:
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.
Deep in the frozen regions of the North,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime
Hath bleached the tyrant’s cheek in ever–varying clime.
What time the iron–hearted Gaul,
With frantic Superstition for his guide,
Armed with the dagger and the pall,
The Sons of Woden to the field defied;
The ruthless hag by Weser’s flood
In Heaven’s name urged the infernal blow,
And red the stream began to flow,
The vanquished were baptised with blood.
Antistrophe.