But it must not be supposed, pardonable though it might be, considering his early love of rollicking fun, that all his spare time was spent in roistering horseplay like the above. Such an incident as it must assuredly be relegated to the early days of apprenticeship. Meagre though the facts are which have descended to us of his residence in Glasgow, that he studied both hard and perseveringly is proved by the position he secured in his final medical examination. Not for a moment do I desire to institute any comparison between the standard or extent of requirements demanded in order to qualify for a medical degree nowadays, and that which gave Smollett his first step on the medical ladder. In those days physicians were in reality supervised by no competent board as to their qualifications, and surgeons, despite the navy regulations, were in a case very little better. At the same time, to accept the description Smollett gives in Roderick Random of the ‘first and only’ professional examination candidates were expected to undergo prior to obtaining an appointment in the service, would be uncharitable. The creator of Roderick Random was still in his youthfully exuberant period, when fidelity to fact was esteemed by him as a very secondary consideration, provided a piquant, sarcastic colouring was imparted to the incidents. Not until he became a historian did Smollett really learn, in a literary sense, to recognise the value of truthfulness in delineation.
From the records of Glasgow University for 1738–39, the facts are to be gleaned that he passed with approbation his examination in anatomy and medicine, and was thereafter qualified to practise as a surgeon. But whether comprehensive or not as a course of medical study, the curriculum was sufficient to endow him with a knowledge of his profession, quite adequate for all the professional calls afterwards made on it. From the unconscious testimony of his own works, in the number and accuracy of the medical references contained therein, we are able to gauge the range and depth of his surgical and scientific knowledge. For the times wherein he lived, his acquaintance with matters the most recondite was extraordinary.
Not only, however, had his studies been of a scientifico–medical character. English literature in more than one of its manifold departments was made the subject of systematic reading. To the plays of Otway, Davenant, Dryden, Rowe, Southerne, and other post–Revolution tragedy writers, he devoted close attention. To the romantic tales of French literature, and to their imitations by Robert Greene, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Manley, and others, he likewise turned with delight, while we learn from his own correspondence at this period that he drank deep draughts of Milton, Cowley, and Dryden, whose earlier poems he especially admired. The fruit of these studies appeared in a tragedy entitled The Regicide, written during the last year of his University work. Dealing with an outstanding event in early Scottish history, an event that afforded scope for considerable diversity of opinion as to the nobility or otherwise of the motives actuating the murderers of James I., the drama could have been made a great psychological and ethical study in the hands of a stronger writer. But as Smollett was neither a Cowley nor a Milton, able to produce verse at thirteen and sixteen worthy to be compared with the work of men twenty years their seniors, The Regicide is but a sorry production. A curious problem how far a man is fitted to act as his own critic is raised by The Regicide. Nine readers out of every ten who peruse the work will toss it on one side contemptuously as the immature ravings of a callow poet. Yet, until he had been five years editor of the Critical Review,—that olla podrida of everything that was not criticism, along with a great deal that was of the best type of it,—he believed almost as implicitly as in his own salvation, that The Regicide was not much less notable a play than any of Shakespeare’s, but had been sacrificed by the spleen of envious rivals and knavish managers. But the point settled by it at this stage of our inquiry is that young Tobias had not idled his time during his University days. Not only had he taken a good place in the estimation of his examiners, but the fruit of the occupation of his spare time is a tragedy, for a youth of nineteen a sufficiently notable achievement, though not by any means so when we regard it as the mature expression of manhood’s ideas, as Smollett later on asserted it to be. In 1738–9, Smollett completed his studies, passed his examination, and then faced the future manfully, to see what indications of weal or of woe it might hold for him.
CHAPTER III
WANDERJAHRE
Smollett’s Lehrjahre were over, his Wanderjahre were about to commence. After passing his examination in Glasgow, he returned for a time to his mother’s house at Dalquharn, glad once more to feel himself among the scenes of his early boyhood. Changes great and manifold had, however, taken place there. His grandfather had, as we have seen, died some years before, so had his uncle, James Smollett; and now another James, the son of the old Commissary’s second son, George, and therefore a full cousin of Tobias, was laird of Bonhill. His mother, though still undisturbed in her tenancy of Dalquharn, was preparing to spend at least one half of each year with her daughter Jane, Smollett’s only sister, who had a month or two before been married to Mr. Telfer. Home was no longer home to him. His eldest brother was away with his regiment, the friends of boyhood’s years were either scattered or had formed new ties. He felt, as he said in one of his letters, ‘like a bird that returns to find its nest torn down and harried.’
For him in his new profession there was of course no opening in his native district. The thriving village of Renton did not come into existence until 1782, eleven years after Smollett’s death. Dumbarton also was well supplied with medical practitioners; therefore his only chance lay in going farther afield. His mother would have liked to keep her Benjamin near her, but Benjamin had all the prodigal son’s love of roving without his vices. Besides, his studies in English literature had inflamed him with the desire to throw himself into the great literary gladiatorial arena—London. His friends were overborne by his enthusiasm. He was brimming over with all youth’s sanguine hopes. He would succeed, in fact, he could not fail to succeed, was his insistent assurance. Alas! he had yet to learn in the hard school of disappointment that in nine cases out of ten the battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift, but that literary success then as now was a lottery, wherein the least worthy often bears away the prize.
The days were past when the head of the family, the laird of Bonhill, could afford material assistance to any youthful scion of the house proceeding out into the battle of life. Beyond good wishes and a bulky sheaf of introductions, his cousin, James Smollett, had little to give Tobias. As it was, however, the future novelist carried away from his native place the best of all recommendations and heritages, an unsullied character, with an indomitable love of honest independence that atones for a multitude of less lovely traits. ‘What kind of work you individually can do ... the first of all problems for a man to find out, that is the thing a man is born to in all epochs,’ were the wise and weighty words of Thomas Carlyle in his Rectorial address. To Tobias Smollett the problem in question was one whereto he applied himself with all youth’s jaunty assurance. At nineteen the point at issue usually is not ‘What career am I fit for?’ but ‘What career shall I choose?’ a faculty, a capacity for all being confidently presupposed as a precedent certainty. Youth can make no calculation of probabilities. The ratios of chance are always esteemed likely to favour the young gladiator. So with Smollett. With a light heart he went forth to the deadly battle of life, recking not that the Goliath of failure and disappointment was waiting for him almost at the parting of the ways, and that the only pebbles in his bag were a boyish tragedy, and the certificate of surgical proficiency from an obscure Scottish medical school. With such weapons, would he prove successful in the impending strife? From this second point of view the aphorism is once more apposite, that the battle is not to the strong.