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Perhaps they may partly be filled up by the aid of passages in his novels, plays, and poems: in these, at all events, he describes conditions and situations through which he himself may, or must, have passed. Born in 1721, he was a younger son of Archibald, a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, a house on the now polluted Leven, between Loch Lomond and the estuary of the Clyde.
In fact the poet's friend is not wrong, when, in "Reproof," he calls Smollett "a flagrant misanthrope." The world was out of joint for the cadet of Bonhill: both before and after his very trying experiences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept "The Regicide." This was reason good why Smollett should try to make a little money and notoriety by penning satires.
He was repeatedly involved in acrimonious controversy, and on one occasion fined and imprisoned for a libel, which, with various private misfortunes, embittered his life, and he d. disappointed and worn out near Leghorn. Had he lived four years longer he would have succeeded to his grandfather's estate of Bonhill.
He escaped punishment; and prepared, in 1715, to lead his clans to the field, headed by Macgregor of Glengyle, his nephew. Upon Michaelmas day, having made themselves masters of the boats in Loch Lomond, seventy of the Macgregors possessed themselves of Inch-murrain, a large island on the lake. About midnight they went ashore at Bonhill, about three miles above Dumbarton.
Modern taste, enlightened by the works of a better period of Greek art, has come round to Smollett's opinions. But, in his own day, he was regarded as a Vandal and a heretic. In 1764, he visited Scotland, and was warmly welcomed by his kinsman, the laird of Bonhill.
Tali tantoque viro, patrueli suo, Cui in decursu lampada Se pottus tradidisse decuit, Hanc Columnam, Amoris, eheul inane monumentum In ipsis Leviniae ripis, Quas VERSICULIS SUB EXITU VITAE ILLUSTRATAS Primis infans vagitibus personuit, Ponendam curavit JACOBUS SMOLLET de Bonhill Abi et reminscere. We had this morning a singular proof of Dr Johnson's quick and retentive memory.
"Humphrey Clinker" is an astonishing book, as the work of an exiled, poor, and dying man. None of his works leaves so admirable an impression of Smollett's virtues: none has so few of his less amiable qualities. With the cadet of Bonhill, outworn with living, and with labour, died the burly, brawling, picturesque old English novel of humour and of the road.
Out of her slender means she contrived to erect a monument to her deceased husband, on which the following inscription from the pen of his friend Armstrong was inscribed: A column with a Latin inscription was also placed to commemorate him on the banks of his favourite Leven, near the house in which he was born, by his kinsman Mr. Smollett of Bonhill.
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