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From the Llam y Lleidyr I went to the canal and walked along it till I came to the house of the old man who sold coals, and who had put me in mind of Smollett's Morgan; he was now standing in his little coal-yard, leaning over the pales.
"The generous wine of Fielding," says Taine, "in Smollett's hands becomes brandy of the dram-shop." A partial exception to this is to be found in his last and best novel, Humphrey Clinker, 1770. The influence of Cervantes and of the French novelist, Le Sage, who finished his Adventures of Gil Bias in 1735, are very perceptible in Smollett.
The borrowed contempt of Horace Walpole and the coterie of superficial dilettanti, from which Smollett's book has somehow never wholly recovered, could then easily be outflanked and the Travels might well be in reasonable expectation of coming by their own again.
A sufficiently ungracious critic may, if he chooses, see in Smollett's falling back on the letter-plan for Humphry Clinker an additional proof of that deficiency in strictly inventive faculty which has been noticed. The more generous "judge by results" will hardly care to consider so curiously in the case of such a masterpiece. For a masterpiece it really is.
REFERENCES. Lord Mahon's History should be particularly read; also Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole. Consult Smollett's and Tindall's History of England, and Belsham's History of George
E. Schuyler, who further points out Smollett's shrewd foresight in regard to the possibilities of the Cornice road, and of Cannes and San Remo as sanatoria." Frankly there is nothing to be seen which he does not recognise." And even higher testimonies have been paid to Smollett's topographical accuracy by recent historians of Nice and its neighbourhood.
One capital consequence, however, and one which specially concerns us, was that we get this unrivalled picture of the seamy side of foreign travel a side rarely presented with anything like Smollett's skill to the student of the grand siecle of the Grand Tour.
The temporary eclipse of their fame I attribute, first to the studious depreciation of Sterne and Walpole, and secondly to a refinement of snobbishness on the part of the travelling crowd, who have an uneasy consciousness that to listen to common sense, such as Smollett's, in matters of connoisseurship, is tantamount to confessing oneself a Galilean of the outermost court.
I've always liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit, and the picter of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my cock, you've got to. Cap'n Smollett's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline. 'Dooty is dooty, says he, and right he is. Just you keep clear of the cap'n.
And yet, in a way, Fathom displays more invention than any of the author's novels; it is based far less than any other on personal experience. Unfortunately such thorough-going invention was not suited to Smollett's genius. The result is, that while uninteresting as a novel of contemporary manners, Fathom has an interest of its own in that it reveals a new side of its author.
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