Do wondrous feats, but never heard of The man who bade the Theban domes

Applaud the fool that highest lifts his Tuned to soft woe, made all the mountains

Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of Subdues the rage of poison, and the

the most probable account, at Dalquhurn House, Dumbartonshire. Yet Bonhill House, a short distance farther up the Vale of Leven, is also assigned as his birthplace.

But he did not despair of literary distinction, and his experience here and elsewhere formed the materials out of which he constructed his Roderick Random.

After leaving the naval service, he resided some time in the West Indies, where he married Miss Lascelles. On his return to London, which took place

physician, but was unsuccessful; he therefore settled in Chelsea, and again took to literature. His first essays were two satires, the Advice and the Reproof, the former published in 1746, and the latter in 1747. But his first popular work was Roderick Random, published in 1748. With little by way of plot or plan, it consists of a series of incidents of the most varied kind, which seldom exceed the bound of probability, related with a profusion of humour, which, though often gross, is never dull or constrained in its flow. Its verisimilitude is even enhanced by its absence of plan or aim, or even moral purpose or principle in the character of its hero. Peregrine Pickle appeared in 1751, and is constructed on the same lines as Roderick Random, but with greater scope, and surpasses its precursor in the richness and grossness of its humour, as well as in the moral unscrupulousness of its hero. His next work, Count Fathom, published in 1754, is a romance.

His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, died early in life, and consequently young Smollett was educated by his grandfather, first at the grammar-school of Dumbar-in 1744, he tried to obtain practice as a ton, and afterwards at Glasgow University. After what can hardly be called a regular University course, he was consigned to Dr Gordon, of Glasgow, as a medical apprentice; and at the age of nineteen completed his engagement. The death of his grandfather about this time deprived him of any expectations that he might have built upon his relations; and he resolved to try his fortunes in London, having already tried his literary powers in the form of a tragedy, entitled the Regicide, which he was sanguine enough to expect he would get brought out at one of the London theatres. Arbuthnot, Mallet, and Thomson, had set an example of successful literary adventure to young Scotchmen, which had the effect of inspiring many of them with the confidence to follow their lead; and Armstrong and Smollett, both medical men, were the earliest additions to the Scotch literary colony in London. As might be expected, Smollett's expectations were at first disappointed, and, having Having in 1755 completed his translafailed to storm the citadel of the tragic tion of Don Quixote, he visited Scotland, Muse, he returned to the service of for the first time since he left it. He had Esculapius, and entered the navy as a the pleasure of seeing his mother, and ensurgeon's mate on board an eighty-gun joying the consideration which his liteship, in which he took part in the ill-rary fame gave him in the estimation of fated expedition against Carthagena. his countrymen. After visiting the scenes

of his boyhood and youth, he returned to London, when he commenced his History of England, which appeared in 1758 in four volumes, the work of fourteen months. He also undertook the editing of the Critical Review. In it he published in 1762 an attack on Admiral Knowles, one of the commanders of the Carthagena expedition. For this article he was tried and condemned to an imprisonment of three months, and to pay a fine of £100. While in prison he wrote the romance of Sir Lancelot Greaves, a travesty of Don Quixote. His health now began to yield to the strain which the number of his literary labours entailed; and the death of his daughter, an only child, at the age of fifteen, accelerated the progress of its decline. He went abroad for two years, and published an account of his travels on his return, which savours of the irritability which impaired health served to aggravate. On his return from the Continent, he again sought the benefits of his native air; and again had the pleasure of seeing his mother, to whom he was much attached.

After residing for some time with his cousin, Mr Smollett of Bonhill, he returned to London and his literary labours, and wrote the Adventures of an Atom, an attack on Lord Bute and the Earl of Chatham.

but he had little more than the satisfaction of seeing it published, when, on the 21st October 1771, he died in his fiftyfirst year. He was buried at Leghorn, where his widow erected a monument to his memory. A similar memorial was erected by his relations in his native Vale of Leven, whose pastoral beauties he so well loved.

ODE TO INDEPENDENCE.

STROPHE.

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 every
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.

The Saxon prince in horror fled, From altars stained with human gore, His health having become worse, he again resolved to go abroad, and his And Liberty his routed legions led In safety to the bleak Norwegian shore. friend, countryman, and fellow-poet Dr There in a cave asleep she lay, Armstrong engaged a cottage for him Lulled by the hoarse-resounding main, near Leghorn, where his strength someWhen a bold savage passed that way, what rallied. Here he wrote Humphry Impelled by destiny, his name Disdain. Clinker, his last and best work, in which❘ Of ample front the portly chief appeared : he describes the scenes of his boyhood: The hunted bear supplied a shaggy vest;

The drifted snow hung on his yellow Fair Freedom's temple, where he marked beard, her grave. And his broad shoulders braved the He steeled the blunt Batavian's arms

Full often wreathed around the miscre- And taste unspoiled the frugal table ant's brow; spread,

Where ever-dimpling falsehood, pert and And industry supply the humble store,

Nature I'll court in her sequestered The ruthless pike, intent on war,
haunts,
The silver eel, and mottled par.

By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, Devolving from thy parent lake,

or cell; Where the poised lark his evening ditty By bowers of birch, and groves of pine,