Tobias Smollett

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771). Portrait by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735-1811). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Tobias George Smollett
Born	March 19 1721(1721-Template:MONTHNUMBER-19) Renton, Scotland
Died	September 17 1771(1771-Template:MONTHNUMBER-17) (aged 50) Italy
Occupation	author, poet, surgeon
Nationality	Scottish
Period	1748-1771
Genres	Picaresque, satire
Influenced Charles Dickens, George Orwell

Tobias George Smollett (19 March 1721 - 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and novelist, best known for his picaresque novels, which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.

Life

Overview

Smollett, the 2nd son of Archibald Smollett of Dalquhurn, Dumbartonshire, was educated at Glasgow, proceeded to London in 1739 with the view of having a tragedy, The Regicide, put on the stage, in which, however, he failed. In this disappointment he took service as surgeon's mate on one of the vessels of the Carthagena expedition, 1741, an experience which he turned to account in his novels. On his return he settled in London, and endeavored to acquire practice as a physician, but was not very successful, and having discovered where his talent lay, he thenceforth devoted himself to literature. Roderick Random appeared in 1748, Peregrine Pickle in 1751, Ferdinand, Count Fathom in 1753, Sir Lancelot Greaves in 1766, and Humphrey Clinker, generally considered his best novel, in 1770. Besides these works, however, he translated Voltaire; wrote a History of England (in continuation of Hume's), an Ode to Independence, travels, and satires; and contributed to various periodicals. He was repeatedly involved in acrimonious controversy, and once fined and imprisoned for a libel, which, with various private misfortunes, embittered his life, and he died disappointed and worn out near Leghorn. Had he lived 4 years longer he would have succeeded to his grandfather's estate of Bonhill. The novels of Smollet display great narrative power, and he has a remarkable comic vein of a broad type, which enables him to present ludicrous scenes and circumstances with great effect. There is, however, a strong infusion of coarseness in his treatment of his subjects.

Youth and education

Smollett was born in the old grange of Dalquhurn, near Bonhill, in the vale of Leven, parish of Cardross, Dumbartonshire, and was christened on 19 March 1721. His father Archibald (youngest son of Sir James, the laird of Bonhill, a zealous Whig judge and promoter of the Union of 1707) had made what was deemed in the family an improvident marriage.

Archibald died in 1723, and Sir James did what he could for the widow and her family during his lifetime. The elder son James was sent into the army. Tobias was sent to Dumbarton school, then in excellent repute under the grammarian John Love.

When the grandfather died in 1731 there was no further provision, and after qualifying for a learned profession at Glasgow University, Tobias was apprenticed in 1736 for 5 years to a well-known surgeon in that city.

This early "deception" conspired to make him angry, resentful and suspicious of motive; but he was neither vindictive nor ungenerous. If his tendency to satire and caricature made him enemies, his enthusiasm for Scottish history made him friends, and, in spite of peccadilloes, the "bubbly-nosed callant with a stane in his pouch," as Dr Gordon called him, seems as an apprentice to have won his master's regard.

Early career

The lad's ambition would not allow him to remain in Glasgow. The example of Thomson and Mallet was contagious, and at the age of 18 Smollett crossed the border in set form to conquer England with a tragedy, The Regicide, based on Buchanan's description of the death of James I. The story of the journey is told with infinite spirit in the early chapters of Roderick Random.

The failure of the play, his darling composition and certainly the worst thing he ever wrote, became the stock grievance of Smollett's life. For some months no one could be induced to read it, and the unrequited author would have been reduced to starvation had not a friend of the family procured him the position as surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Cumberland.

The fleet was ordered to attack Cartagena, the great stronghold of Spanish America, and the siege, which occupied most of the year 1741, proved a debacle. Smollett has left us a memorable picture of the miseries endured by soldiers and sailors, which historians have been content to accept as an eye-witness account in spite of the fact that it is embedded in the pages of a licentious novel.

When the enterprise was abandoned the fleet returned to Jamaica. There Smollett fell in love with the daughter of a planter, Nancy Lascelles, whom he married on returning to England. Before this, having removed his name from the navy books (May 1744), he had set up as a surgeon in Downing Street; but he attracted attention more as a wit than as a leech.

"Jupiter" Carlyle testifies to his brilliant accomplishments, and to the popularity he attained by his indignant verses "The Tears of Scotland," resenting Culloden. In the same year (July 1746) his name appeared upon the title-page of a political satire entitled Advice, followed characteristically in 1747 by Reproof, both of them "imitations from Juvenal" in the manner of Pope. He revenges himself in his satires on the should-have-been patrons of his play.

Novelist

Disappointed alike in the drama, his profession and his wife's dowry, Smollett devoted his attention in a happy hour to fictitious adventure. Richardson had published the 1st part of Pamela in 1741, and Fielding his Joseph Andrews in 1742. But Smollett owed less to these models than to his studies in Cervantes, Swift, Defoe, and above all Le Sage.

There was no author's name on the title of the 2 small volumes of Roderick Random (1748); Lady Mary Wortley Montagu thought a work so delightful could only be by Fielding, in whose name it was actually translated into French. But Smollett made no secret of the authorship, went to Paris to ratify his fame, and published his derelict play as "by the author of Roderick Random," hoping thus, as he said, to intimidate his discarded patrons. The incident well reveals the novelist's "systema nervosum maxime irritabile," of which his medical advisers spoke.

Smollett now became a central figure among the group of able doctors who hailed from north of the Tweed, such as Clephane, Macaulay, Hunter, Armstrong, Pitcairne and William Smellie, in the revision of whose system of Midwifery the novelist bore a part. He must have still designed to combine medicine with authorship, for in June 1750 he obtained the degree of M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen.

But in the autumn of 1750 he already had another novel in prospect, and went over to Paris with a new acquaintance, Dr. Moore (author of Zeluco), who soon became his confidante and was destined to become his biographer. The influence of this visit is marked in Smollett's 2nd novel, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (4 volumes, 1751), which proved from the start a resounding success, both in England and France.

Smollett's 3rd novel, Ferdinand Count Fathom, appeared in 1753, by which time the author, after a final trial at Bath, had definitively abandoned medicine for letters, and had settled down at Monmouth House, Chelsea, a married man, a father and a professional writer, not for patronage, but for the trade. In this capacity he was among the 1st to achieve a difficult inde- pendence.

With Fathom the earliest jet of Smollett's original invention was spent. The novel was not particularly remunerative, and his expenses seem always to have been profuse. He was a great frequenter of taverns, entertained largely, and every Sunday threw open his house and garden to unfortunate "brothers of the quill," whom he regaled with beef, pudding and potatoes, port, punch and "Calvert's entire butt-beer."

To sustain these expenses Smollett consented to become a literary impresario upon a hitherto unparalleled scale. His activity during the next 6 years was many-sided, chiefly in the direction of organizing big and sale-able "standard" works for the booksellers and contracting them out to his "myrmidons." Thus we see him almost simultaneously editing Don Quixote, making a triumphant visit to Scotland, inaugurating a new literary periodical The Critical Review (February 1756) by way of corrective to Griffith's Monthly Review, organizing a standard library History of England in quarto and octavo, with continuations, and a 7-volume compendium of Voyages, for which he wrote a special narrative of the siege of Cartagena, supplementary to his account in Roderick Random.

In 1758 he projected and partly wrote a vast Universal History, and in January 1760 he brought out the 1st number of a new 6-penny magazine, the British, to which he contributed a serial work of fiction, the mediocre Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. By these Herculean labours as a compiler Smollett must have amassed a considerable sum, to which the £200 received from the now forgiven "Marmozet" (Garrick) for the 6th performance of the patriotic extravaganza, The Reprisal; or, The tars of old England, must have come as a welcome addition.

The Critical Review was already responsible for plenty of thorns in the editorial cushion when in 1762 Smollett undertook the additional task of editing the Briton. He had already been ridiculed, insulted, fined and imprisoned in the Marshalsea (this last for an attack on Admiral Sir Charles Knowles). He was now to support the North British favorite of George III in the press against all comers, not we may reasonably suppose without substantial reward. Yet after incurring all this unpopularity, at a time when the London mob was more inflamed against Scotsmen than it has ever been before or since, and having aroused the animosity of such former allies as Wilkes and his friend Churchill, Smollett was to find himself unceremoniously thrown over by his chief, Lord Bute, on the ground that his paper did more to invite attack than to repel it.

The Briton expired or was killed by the North Briton in February 1763, and for the moment Smollett allowed himself to be beckoned back by the booksellers to such tasks as a universal gazetteer and a translation of Voltaire in 38 volumes, and we hear of him prescribing work to his minions or receiving their homage and demanding their copy as of old. In April however, his only daughter died at the age of 15, and, already over-wrought and almost broken down from sedentary strain, the tension proved too much and Smollett was never the same man again.

Travels

Smollett's wife earnestly begged him to "convey her from a country where every object seemed only to nourish grief," and he followed her advice. The result was 2 years' sojourn abroad, mainly upon the Riviera, which Smollett, who may be termed the literary discoverer of Nice, turned to such excellent purpose in his Travels (2 volumes, 1766), remarkable alike for their acidity and for their insight.

On his arrival from Italy, where he had provided material for Sterne's portrait of the distressful "Smelfungus," Smollett seemed decidedly better and appeared to be getting over some of the symptoms of his pulmonic complaint. But his health was thoroughly undermined by rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer, which had developed into a chronic sore, helped to sap his strength. As soon, therefore, as the Travels were out of hand Smollett resolved on a summer journey to Scotland.

The society of Edinburgh, then at the apogee of its brilliance, paid due attention to the famous Dr. Smollett. He was visited by Hume, Home, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, Carlyle, Cullen, and the Monros. Hume said that Smollett was like a coconut, rough outside, but full of human kindness within. He was easily ruffled by the rubs of fortune of which he had more than his fair share. Hence the adjectives corrosive and splenetic so often applied to a nature essentially both generous and tender. Smollett went to Glasgow to see Dr. Moore (where he patted the head of the future hero of Coruña), and stayed with his cousin, James Smollett, in his newly built mansion of Cameron.

Last years

Portrait circa 1770. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Smollett's mother, who hardly knew his toil-worn visage until it relaxed into his old roguish smile, died in this autumn, and he was still in a precarious state of health when he proceeded to Bath, spending the Christmas of 1766 in Gay Street, where his complaint at last took 1 turn for the better, and where it is possible that he may have commenced a rough draft of Humphrey Clinker.

In 1768 he was again in London, and with a return of his vital energy came a recrudescence of the old savagery in The History and Adventures of an Atom. After its publication in 1769, without other serious consequences, Smollett's health completely relapsed, and in December (a consulate in the Mediterranean having been refused him) he left England finally, settling at Pisa and then near Antignano, a few miles out of Leghorn. There, during the autumn of 1770, he penned his immortal Humphrey Clinker.

Smollett died at Leghorn aged 50 on 17 September 1771, and was buried in the old English cemetery there.

Writing

After Fielding, Smollett counts as the greatest purveyor of comic prose-epic of contemporary life to his generation, if not to his century. Scott and Dickens regarded him as fully Fielding's equal. Hazlitt and Thackeray thought otherwise. Equally rationalist and pagan with Fielding, Smollett is more of a pedagogue and less of the instinctive scholar and wit than his predecessor. His method in its broad outlines is similar, historic and ambulant rather than philosophic or poetic, but he has more potential romance or poetry about his make-up than the mystery-hating Fielding.

In the recognized requirements of prose-epic such as plot, character, scene, reflection and diction, Smollett could fairly hold his own. His prose, which carries on the robust tradition from Swift and Defoe to Johnson and Jeffrey, is more modern in tone than that of his great rival. In fictions such as Tom Jones, Roderick Random and the like, England could at length feel that it possessed compositions which might claim kinship and comparison with Cervantes and Le Sage. Much that these writers attempted has been done again in a style better adjusted to the increasing refinement of a later age. But Smollett's great powers of observation and description, his caustic and indignant turn of speech, will long render him an invaluable witness in the century which he so well represents. Much that he did was mere hackwork, but at his best he ranks with the immortals.

Roderick Random

The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) was Smollet's 1st novel, which set the tone for his subsequent, satirical and comedic works. Often lacking in cohesive narrative structure, his novels make up for it by the sheer humorousness of the characterizations. Roderick Random is not only notable for Smollett's sense of irony and comedy, but also for its extended sequences on life at sea. Smollett, who had 1st-hand experience as a seaman thanks to his excursions to the Caribbean, writes convincingly and realistically of naval experience. The novel has thus become, unusually, a resource not only for scholars of literature but also for scholars of English naval history, and some have quipped that if Dickens was the great novelist of London, Smollett most certainly was England's first great novelist of the sea.

His hero, who gives his 1st novel its capital name, Roderick Random, recounts like Gil Bias a life of varied adventure in the company of a servant, in which he enters the service of a physician and meets with old schoolfellows, thieves, notes of the bank of engraving, prison, semi-starvation and in the end an unexpected fortune. The author draws on his adventures on the English highway and in the cockpit of a king's ship. Virtually he revealed the seaman to the reading world — divined his character, sketched his outlines, formulated his lingo, discovered his possibilities to such purpose that, as Scott says, everyone who has written about the navy since seems to have copied more from Smollett than from nature.

Pungent observation allied to a vigorous prose, emancipated to a rare degree from provincialism or archaism, were perhaps the first of Smollett's qualifications as a novelist. Such coherence as his novels have owes more to accidental accumulation than to constructive design. The wealth of amusing incident, the rapidly moving crowd of amusing and eccentric figures, atones for a good many defects.

Smollett's peculiar coarseness and ferocity were gradually eliminated from English fiction, but from Tom Jones right down to Great Expectations his work was regularly ransacked for humor.

Peregrine Pickle

Like its predecessor, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) is a loosely constructed string of episodes and adventures in which a still greater scope is afforded to the author for eccentric display, The chief centers of attraction are the grotesque misanthrope of Bath, Cadwallader Crabtree, the burlesque scenes afforded by the physician (a caricature of Akenside) and Pallet the painter in Paris, and the so-called " garrison," with its inhabitants, Hatchway and Pipes and the inimitable Trunnion — whose death-scene fully exhibits Smollett's powers for the first time — the prototype of so many character portraits from Uncle Toby to Cap'n Cuttle.

Trunnion's grotesque ride to church reappears in John Gilpin; the misanthrope, practising satire under cover of feigned deafness, reappears in the Mungo Malagrowther of Scott, who frankly admits further debts to Smollett in the preface to the Legend of Montrose. The "garrison" unquestionably suggested the "castle" of Tristram Shandy and the "fortress" of Mr. Wemmick. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that the tideway of subsequent fiction is strewn on every hand with the disjecta membra of Smollett's happy phrases and farcical inventions.

Pickle himself is if possible a bigger ruffian than Random; in this respect at any rate Smollett clings to the cynical tradition of the old romances of roguery. The novel is marred to an even greater extent by interpolations and personal attacks than its predecessor; the autobiographical element is slighter and the literary quality in some respects inferior.

Later novels

In Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), Smollett endeavors unquestionably to organize a novel upon a plan elevated somewhat above mere agglomeration. It looks as if he had deliberately set himself to show that he too, as well as the author of Tom Jones, could make a plot. The squalor and irony of the piece repel the reader, but it is Smollett's greatest feat of invention, and the descriptive power, especially in the first half, reveals the latent imaginative power of the author. Few novels have been more systematically plundered, for Fathom was the studio model of all the mystery and terror school of fiction commencing with Radcliffe and Lewis.

The History and Adventures of an Atom (1768) is a very clever, but abominably coarse, Rabelaisian satire upon the whole conduct of public affairs in England from the beginning of the Seven Years' War down to the date of publication. He lashes out on all sides without fear or favor. The king, Chatham, Bute and North are bespattered with filth, the acridity of which owes something to Gulliver, with aid as to local color from the Jesuit and other accounts of Japan which had come under his ken as a compiler of travels.

In Humphrey Clinker, (1770) Smollett reverts to his favorite form of itinerant letters, a rare example of late maturity of literary power and fecundity of humour. The sardonic humour, persistent curiosity and keen faculty of observation shown in the Travels are here combined with the mellow contentment of the voyager who has forgotten the small worries of transport and with the enthusiasm of the veteran who revisits the scenes of his youth. The character drawing, too, though still caustic, seems riper and more matured. Smollett's speculative and informing 18th-century mind is here content for the most part, like Goldsmith's, merely to amuse.

Miscellaneous

The estimate formed of Smollett's work during the past generation has probably been diminishing, as we may infer in part from the fact that there is no standard Life and no definitive edition of the works. The chief collective editions are as follows: 6 volumes, Edinburgh, 1790; 6 vols., London, 1796, with R. Anderson's Memoir; Works, ed. J. Moore, 1797 (re-edited J. P. Browne, 8 vols., 1872); Works, ed. Henley and Seccombe, Constable (12 vols., 1899–1902). To which must be added a 1-volume Miscellaneous Works, ed. Thomas Roscoe (1841); Selected Works (with a careful life by David Herbert) (Edinburgh, 1870); Ballantyne's edition of the Novels with Scott's judicious memoir and criticism (2 vols., 1821); and Professor G. Saintsbury's edition of the Novels (12 vols., 1895).

Recognition

Smollett's "Tears of Scotland was included in Mendez's Collection of the Most Esteemed Pieces of Poetry that Have Appeared for Several Years, and his "Ode to Mirth" and "Ode to Sleep" in Pearch's Collection of Poems in Four Volumes; by several hands.

In 1774 the Smollett obelisk was put up at Renton (it now stands in the parish school-ground), half-way between Dumbarton and Balloch. The monument, beside Renton Primary School, Dunbartonshire, has a Latin inscription composed by Dr. Johnson. The area around the monument was improved in 2002, with an explanatory plaque added.

There is a plaque at his temporary residence in Edinburgh just off the Royal Mile at the head of St. John's Street. This states that he resided here in the house of his sister, Mrs. Telfer, for the summer of 1766. A 2nd plaque (dating the building at 1758, making it relatively new at that time) states that he "stayed here occasionally" implying more than a single visit, which way well be true if it was the house of his sister.

The best portrait belongs to the Smollett family, Cameron House, Loch Lomond (engraved by Freeman, 1831). The genuineness of the others, if we except that in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, is doubtful.

Smollett's poem "To Leven Water" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Advice: A satire. London: George Freer, 1746.
• Reproof: A satire; the sequel to 'Advice'. London: W. Owen / M. Cooper, 1747.
• Independence: An ode. London: J. Murray, 1774
  • also published as Mr. Smollett's Celebrated Ode to Independence. Glasgow: Brash & Reid, 1796.
• Ode to Leven Water (printed with The Emigrant: An eclogue by Henry Erskine). Glasgow: Brash & Reid, 1796.
• Poetical Works. London: Stanhope Press, by Charles Whittingham, for J. Sharpe, 1807.

Play

• The Regicide; or, James the First, of Scotland: A tragedy. London: J. Osborn, 1749; Dublin: S. Powell, for G. & A. Ewing, 1749.
• The Reprisal; or, The tars of old England: A comedy (anonymous). London: R. Baldwin, 1757.

Novels

• The Adventures of Roderick Random (anonymous). (2 volumes), London: J. Osborn, 1748; Dublin: R. James, 1748.
• The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (anonymous). (4 volumes,) London: D. Wilson, 1751. Volume I
• The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. (2 volumes), London: T. Johnson, 1753.
• The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. The British Magazine (January 1760 - December 1761); (2 volumes), London: J. Coote, 1762; (1 volume), London: C. Cooke (Cooke's edition), 1793.
• The History and Adventures of an Atom (2 volumes), London: Robinson & Roberts, 1769.
• The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. (3 volumes), London: W. Johnston / B. Collins, Salisbury, 1771. Volume II

Non-fiction

• An Essay on the External Use of Water. London: M. Cooper, 1752.
• Select Essays on Commerce, Agriculture, Mines.... London: D. Wilson / T. Durham, 1754.
• A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages (anonymous). London: R. & J. Dodsley ; Jo. Rivington ; Ja. Rivington and J. Fletcher ; W. Johnston / et al, 1756.
• A Complete History of England: From the descent of Julius Caesar, to the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 1748. (8 volumes), London: James Rivington & James Fletcher, 1757-1758. Volume III, Volume IV, Volume VII, Volume VIII
  • Continuation of the Complete History of England. London: R. Baldwin, 1760-1765.
• Travels through France and Italy. London: R. Baldwin, 1766.
• The Present State of all Nations: Containing a geographical, natural, commercial, and political history of all the countries in the known world. (8 volumes), London: R. Baldwin / W. Johnston / S. Crowder / Robinson & Roberts, 1768-1769.

Collected editions

• Select Works. (8 volumes), Dublin: United Co. of Booksellers, 1775-1776.
• Miscellaneous Works. (6 volumes), Edinburgh: David Ramsay, for Jo. & Ja. Fairbairn, 1790.
• Works. (8 volumes), London: B. Law / J. Johnson / C. Dilly / G.G. & J. Robinson / et al, 1797.
• Miscellaneous Works (edited by Thomas Roscoe). London: Bohn, 1844.
• Works. Edinburgh: Nimmo, 1870.
• Works (edited by William Ernest Henley). Westminster: Constable / New York: Scribner, 1899.

Translated

• Alain-Rene Le Sage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane. 1748.
• Miguel de Cervantes,The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. (2 volumes), 1755; London: T. Osborn, 1761.

Edited

• The Critical Review; or, Annals of literature (literary magazine). London: W. Simpkin & R. Marshall, 1756-1790.
• The British Magazine (literary magazine). London: James Rivington & James Fletcher / H. Payne, 1760-1767.
• Voltaire, Works (edited with Thomas Francklin). (38 volumes), London: W. Johnston, S. Crowder, T. Longman, 1761-1774.

Letters

• Letters (edited by Edward S. Noyes). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926.
• Letters (edited by Lewis M. Knapp). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1970.

Blue-Eyed Ann - Tobias Smollett poem reading - Jordan Harling Reads-2

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Tobias Smollett - Song, While With Fond Rapture

• List of British poets

References

• Lewis, Jeremy (Cape, 2003) Tobias Smollett
• George Rousseau (1982). Tobias Smollett: Essays of Two Decades (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
• George Rousseau (2004). Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-3453-3
•  Seccombe, Thomas (1911). "Smollett, Tobias". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 278-280. . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 2, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "To Leven Water"
• Burlesque elegy
• Tobias Smollett at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (3 poems)
• Tobias Smollett at PoemHunter (16 poems)
• Tobias Smollett at Poetry Nook (33 poems)

Books

• Works by Tobias Smollett at Project Gutenberg
• Online editions of his works
• Tobias Smollett at Amazon.com

About

• Tobias Smollett in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Tobias Smollett at NNDB
• Smollett, Tobias George in the Dictionary of National Biography
• "Tobias Smollett: Scotland's best novelist" by George Orwell
• This article uses Creative Commons licensed text from the New World Encyclopedia.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at "Smollett, Tobias George

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