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He never lets us forget that he is a scholar of antiquity, a man of education and a speculative philosopher. Hence his references to Celsus and Hippocrates and his ingenious etymologies of wheatear and samphire, more ingenious in the second case than sound. Smollett's field of observation had been wide and his fund of exact information was unusually large.
This is Smollett's method throughout, even in that singular pastiche of Don Quixote itself, Sir Launcelot Greaves, which certainly was not his happiest conception, but which has had rather hard measure. He showed it first in Roderick Random , which appeared a little before Tom Jones, and was actually taken by some as the work of the same author.
"I have read Smollett's account of his illness as it appears in several passages in his travels and in the statement which he drew up for Professor 'F. at Montpellier. "Smollett speaks of his pulmonic disorder, his 'asthmatical disorder, and uses other expressions which show that his lungs were affected.
And here have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, "punt en punt, gat en gat," and commenced in this little work, a history to serve as a foundation on which other historians may hereafter raise a noble superstructure, swelling in process of time, until Knickerbocker's New York may be equally voluminous with Gibbon's Rome, or Hume and Smollett's England!
For assuredly he did entertain a spite against his grandfather: and as many of the incidents in "Roderick Random" were autobiographical, the public readily inferred that others were founded on fact. The outlines of Smollett's career are familiar, though gaps in our knowledge occur.
The real date of his marriage is obscure: more obscure are Smollett's resources on his return to London, in 1744. Houses in Downing Street can never have been cheap, but we find "Mr. Smollett, surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster," and, in 1746, he was living in May Fair, not a region for slender purses. His tragedy was now bringing in nothing but trouble, to himself and others.
Among other celebrated residents at Nice during the period of Smollett's visit were Edward Augustus, Duke of York, the brother of George III., who died at Monaco a few years later, and Andre Massena, a native of the city, then a lad of six.
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Smollett's third novel, was given to the world in 1753. Lady Mary was both right and wrong. The inventive power which we commonly think of as Smollett's was the ability to work over his own experience into realistic fiction. Of this, Ferdinand Count Fathom shows comparatively little.
There are always signs that Walpole's malice, and Smollett's animosity, and the rancour of Richardson, have had too much to do with the representation; and even Murphy and Lady Mary are scarcely persons whom one would select as ideal biographers. The latter is probably right in comparing her cousin to Sir Richard Steele.
Their social and documentary value is thereby considerably enhanced, for they were nearly all written close down to the facts. The original intention had been to go to Montpellier, which was still, I suppose, the most popular health resort in Southern Europe. The peace of 1763 opened the way. And this brings us to another feature of distinction in regard to Smollett's Travels.
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