Fielding's Characteristics.

221 great similarity between his character and that of Sir Richard Steele. He had the advantage, both in learning and, in my opinion, genius; they both agreed in wanting money, in spite of all their friends, and would have wanted it if their hereditary lands had been as extensive as their imagination ; yet each of them was so formed for happiness, it is a pity he was not immortal." Her Ladyship's picture is a very graphic, and, as we know from other sources, a very correct one. Fielding was no hero. Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and he was always apt to prefer the call of pleasure to the call of duty. But with all his vices and weaknesses, which it is not desirable either to palliate or excuse, he was so good-hearted, so courageous, so affectionate, so manly, that we cannot contemplate his character without a certain admiration as well as liking. The leading features of his novels have been already sufficiently indicated. There are greater depths in human nature than he ever sounded; he had less of the spirit of a poet than any other novelist of equal merit; and he had no skill in that subtle psychological analysis which—whether for good or for evil, we need not discuss-is such a prominent characteristic of some of our great recent writers of fiction. Moral problems never troubled him; he was content to take the world as he found it, with its mixture of good and evil, riches and poverty, laughter and tears. Perhaps it is the want of the subjective or retrospective element in Fielding's novels which has caused him to be unduly depreciated by some who ought to have known better. Harriet Martineau, for example, could see scarcely any merit in his works, and was quite at a loss how to account for his popularity.

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Comparing his works with those of professed historians, Fielding said that in their productions nothing was true but the names and dates, whereas in his everything was true but the names and dates. There is more truth in this statement than may at first sight appear. "As a record of past manners and opinions, too," says Hazlitt, speaking of the English novelists, "such writings afford the best and fullest information. For example, I should be at a loss where to find in any

authentic documents of the same period so satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and of moral, political, and religious feeling in the reign of George II., as we meet with in the adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind. In looking into any regular history of that period, into a learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy of a diocese, or into a tract on controversial divinity, we should hear only of the ascendancy of the Protestant succession, the horrors of Popery, the triumph of civil and religious liberty, the wisdom and moderation of the sovereign, the happiness of the subject, and the flourishing state of manufactures and commerce. But if we really wish to know what all these fine-sounding names come to, we cannot do better than turn to the works of those who, having no other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for success from the fidelity of their picture."

The works of our next great novelist, Tobias Smollett, are like Fielding's in being of great value from an historical point of view, as depicting faithfully the social life of our ancestors. Although they differ in many respects, Fielding and Smollett resemble each other in this-they were both novelists who drew from real life, and filled their pages with such characters, incidents, and situations as were found in the England of their time. Smollett was born in Dumbartonshire in 1721. He came of a good family, being a grandson of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill. At an early age he was bound apprentice to John Gordon, an eminent surgeon of Glasgow, who seems to have appreciated the talents of his youthful pupil. Smollett was a tricky urchin, which caused some one to boast of the superior decorum and propriety of his youthful acquaintances. "It may be all very true," manfully replied Gordon, "but give me, before them all, my own bubbly-nosed callant with the stane in his pouch." To the end of his life, Smollett, in spite of his irritability and fretfulness, had something of a schoolboy's love of fun and frolic. It shines forth conspicuously in his novels, while it is almost totally absent from Fielding's

Tobias Smollett.

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When, after he had undergone the trials and privations of many years, he went to see his mother, he endeavoured to conceal his identity, but he could not so compose his countenance as altogether to refrain from smiling. His smile enabled his mother at once to recognise him. She afterwards told him that if he had kept his austere looks and continued to gloom, he might have escaped detection for some time longer, "but your old roguish smile betrayed you at once."

The death of his grandfather left Smollett, whose father had died early, totally unprovided for at the age of eighteen. He afterwards revenged his grandfather's neglect in making no provision for him, by consigning him to immortal disgrace as the old judge who figures in the early chapters of "Roderick Random." Armed with the "Regicide," a tragedy, Smollett in his nineteenth year set out for London to win fame and fortune by those talents of which he was always fully conscious. The tragedy, though at first patronised by Lord Lyttleton, whom Smollett afterwards described with perfect truth as "one of those little fellows who are sometimes called great men," was not appreciated by theatrical managers. Disappointed in his hopes of fame as a dramatist, Smollett embarked as surgeon's mate on board of a ship of the line, and served in the disastrous Carthagena expedition of 1741. Of his experience while thus employed he has left a faithful record in some of the most stirring and vigorous pages of "Roderick Random." It was at this period of his life that he acquired that accurate and intimate acquaintance with the habits of sailors to which we owe some of the most vivid and lifelike portraits in his novels. Smollett quitted the naval service in disgust in the West Indies, and after residing some time in Jamaica, returned to England in 1746. He then set up in London as a physician, but his success was very small, owing partly, it is said, to his haughty manners and irascible temper, which made him show very manifest signs of impatience when listening to prosy accounts of petty indispositions. In 1746-1747 he published two poetical satires, "Advice" and "Reproof," of no very great merit, but so bitter and unsparing as to greatly in

crease the number of his enemies. In 1747 he married Miss Lascelles, described as “beautiful and accomplished.”

Such is a brief outline of the leading events of Smollett's life up to the publication, in 1748, of his first great work, "Roderick Random." In great part it is a record of his own personal experiences, and of the queer acquaintances whom he had fallen in with during his rather stormy life. In this respect it resembles all his other works of fiction. Thackeray is doubtless right in thinking that Smollett's novels are recollections of his own adventures, and that his characters are drawn from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. "He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humour." "Roderick Random" has very little plot: it is merely a collection of incidents and adventures very loosely strung together by a thread of autobiography, after the fashion of "Gil Blas." The hero is intended to stand for Smollett himself, just as Tom Jones stood for Fielding. In neither case is the portrait thus presented a pleasing one; but Tom Jones is as far superior to the selfish and low-minded Roderick Random, as the devoted and generous Strap, the follower of the latter, is superior to the lying and self-seeking Partridge, Jones's attendant. The finest character in "Roderick Random," and the one to which the reader turns with most affection, is undoubtedly Lieutenant Bowling, whose bluff kind-heartedness, honesty, and impulsiveness, are sketched with a masterly pencil. The fidelity to naturė of all Smollett's accounts of life at sea is very marked. Не never surrounds the hardships, toils, and dangers of a seaman's existence with that rose-coloured atmosphere which leads the unsuspecting reader of such books as Captain Marryat's novels to suppose that a sailor's life is largely one of joking and sport, diversified by hairbreadth escapes and romantic dangers.

"Roderick Random" was at once received with favour by the public, and Smollett's position as an author was now finally established. In 1750 he made a tour to Paris, where he gathered materials for future works, and where "Peregrine

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Smollett as Editor.

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Pickle" was chiefly written. It was published in the following year. It is a laughter-provoking book, with abundance of incident and "go," but it is occasionally indefensibly coarse, and not unfrequently shows that want of gentlemanly feeling which Smollett's admirers have too often to regret. Shortly after the publication of "Peregrine Pickle," Smollett endeavoured to establish himself at Bath as a physician, and, with a view to make his name known in this capacity, published in 1752 an Essay on the External Use of Water." This second attempt to win success as a medical man failed as completely as the first. Campbell, in his "Specimen of the British Poets," remarks with much truth that the celebrity for aggravating and exposing personal follies which Smollett had acquired by his novels was rather too formidable to recommend him as a confidential visitant to the sick chambers of fashion. "To a sensitive valetudinarian," he goes on to say, "many diseases would be less alarming than a doctor who might slay the character by his ridicule, and might not save the body by his prescriptions." Having returned disappointed from Bath, Smollett fixed his residence at Chelsea, and never again seems to have thought of abandoning the career of an author. In 1753 he published the "Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom," a novel descriptive of the deepest depravity, unpleasing generally, and sometimes tedious, but containing one scene-the adventure in the hut of the robbers-equal if not superior in tragic intensity to anything he ever wrote. Two years later he gave to the world his translation of "Don Quixote," which, if in many ways not a faithful representation of Cervantes' immortal novel, is a lively and spirited production, showing Smollett's great command over language and power of fluent and vivacious narrative.

In 1756 Smollett became editor of the Critical Review, a Tory and High Church periodical. It was an evil day for hist happiness and peace of mind when he undertook this office. Impatient of folly and stupidity, of a satirical and cynical temperament, he soon showed that he was determined not to spoil the author by a sparing use of the critical rod.. Many