T R A N S I T S

TRANSITS:/
L IT E R A T U R E , T H O U G H T & C U LT U R E 1 6 5 0 - 1 8 5 0
Aias Smollett
Series Editor
Greg Clingham
tk e E n lid k te n m e n t
Bucknell University

Transits is the next horizon. The series of books, essays, and monographs TRAVELS THROUGH
aims to extend recent achievements in eighteenth-century studies, and
to publish work on any aspects of the literature, thought, and culture of FRANCE, I T A LY,
the years 1650—1850. Without ideological or methodological restrictions.
Transits seeks to provide transformative readings of the literary, cultural, AND SCOTLAND
and historical interconnections between Britain, Europe, the Far East,
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RICHARD J. JONES
Titles in the Scries

Figures o f Memory: From the Muses to Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics

Zsolt Komaromy

Horace Walpoles Letters: Masculinity and Friendship in the Eighteenth Century

George Walpole

Thomas Sheridans Career and Influence: An Actor in Earnest

Conrad Brunstrom

The Selfas Muse: Narcissism and Creativity in the German Imagination

1750-1830
Alexander Madras

Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment: Travels through France, Italy, and

Scotland
Richard J. Jones LEWI SBURG
BUCKNELL U N I VE R SI T Y PRESS
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Acknowledgments Vll
Published by Bucknell University Press
Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Abbreviations ix
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suire 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com 1
Introduction
Smollett and the Enlightenment in Glasgow 2
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Travels through France and Italy 6
Copyright © 2011 by Richard J. Jones Attribution 10

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by 15
A Physical Gentleman
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval 16
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
Smollett and Medicine
Water 23
may quote passages in a review.
Natural History 32
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
A Good Critic 47
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 48
Smollett and the Fine Arts
Jones, Richard J., 1972- Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid 53
Tobias Smollett in the enlightenment: travels through France, Italy, and
Adam Smith 63
Scotland / Richard J. Jones,
p. cm.
A Theatrical Divine 75
Includes bibliographical references and index. 76
ISBN 978-1-61148-048-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61148-049-8
Smollett and the Theater
Novels and Performances 84
(electronic)
1. Smollett, T. (Tobias), 1721-1771— Criticism and interpretation. Carnival 95
2. Smollett, T. (Tobias), 1721-1771—^Travel. 3. Enligjttenment— Great Britain.
I. Title. A Friend o f Virtue 103
PR3698.T74J66 2011 Smollett and History 104
828'.608—dc22 2011015746 109
David Hume and the Stuarts
George III 120
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
[v]
Printed in the United States of America
 CONTENTS

Conclusion 131 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Notes 137

Bibliography 199

Index j 213

About the Author 221

T JL H I S B O O K B E G A N as a DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford. I

am grateful for the financial support at the time of the Humanities Research Board
of The British Academy (which has now evolved into the Arts and Humanities
Research Council).
At Oxford, my project was supervised by Isabel Rivers, and I would like
to thank her for her enthusiasm and scholarly rigor—she persuaded me of the
seriousness of the expedition. I am also grateful for the encouragement my work
received from Christine Getrard and Karen O’Brien.
Michael F. Suarez (despite living a few thousand miles away and, perhaps,
not being aware of it) has remained something of a mentor to me. I would like to
thank him for all his support.
Finally, this book would not have surfaced had it not been for someone who
hasn’t actually read it: Richard Danson Brown, at The Open University, for whose
encouragement I am grateful. My brother, Christopher Goto-Jones, also encour­
aged me in less polite but vety clear terms. I would like to thank him, especially,
not just for those words but also for showing me, through his own scholarly trav­
els, why such things are important.

[vi] [vii]
 ABBREVIATIONS

W. HEN REFERRING TO SMOLLETT’S Travels through

France and Italy, I have given the number o f Smollett’s letter followed by the page
in Frank Felsenstein’s edition for Oxford University Press (1979). Felsenstein’s later
edition for Oxford’s World’s Classics series (1981) provides this text without the
scholarly apparatus. I have also used the abbreviations below.

Atom Tobias Smollett. The History and Adventures of an Atom (1769). Edited
by Robert Adams Day and O M Brack Jr. Athens: University o f
Georgia Press, 1989.
BM The British Magazine: or. Monthly Repositoryfor Gentlemen and Ladies
(first published 1760).
CHE Tobias Smollett. A Complete History of England, from the Descent of Ju­
lius Caesar, to the Treaty ofAix la Chapelle. Containing the Transac­
tions of One Thousand Eight Hundred and ThreeYears{\757—l75^)‘,
2nd ed., 11 vols. London, 1758-1759.
Comp. A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages. 7 vols. London,
1756.
Cont. Tobias Smollett. Continuation of the Complete History of England. 5
vols. London, 1760-1765.
CR The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature (first published 1756).
Z)Q Tobias Smollett. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don
Quixote, Translatedfrom the Spanish of Miguel De Cervantes Saave­
dra. To which is prefixed Some Account of the Author’s Life. 2 vols.
London, 1755.
A B B R E V I A T I O N S

INTRODUCTION
Essay Tobias Smollett. An Essay on the External Use of Water in a Letter to
Dr. **** with Particular Remarks upon the present Method of using
the Mineral Waters at Bath in Somersetshire, and a Plan for rendering
them more safe, agreeable, and efficacious. London, 1752.
ECE Tobias Smollett. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753).
Edited bj^ Jerry C. Beasley and O M Brack Jr. Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1988.
HC Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) .-Edited
by Thomas R. Preston and O M Brack Jr. Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1990. When I rose in the morning, and opened a window that looked into
letters Lewis M. Knapp, ed. The Letters of Tobias Smollett. Oxford: Clarendon the garden, I thought myself either in a dream, or bewitched. All the
Press, 1970. trees were cloathed with snow, and all the country covered at least a foot
LG Tobias Smollett. The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves thick. “This cannot be the south of France, (said I to myself) it must be
(1760-1761). Edited by Peter Wagner. Harmondsworth: Penguin the Highlands of Scotland!”
Classics, 1988.
MR The Monthly Review: or. Literary Journal (first published 1749). —^Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy (12:110)
Poems Tobias Smollett. Poems, Plays, and The Briton. Edited by Bryon

Gassman, O M Brack Jr., and Leslie A. Chilton. Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1993.
PP Tobias Smollett. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). Edited by
James L. Clifford. Revised by Paul-Gabriel Bouce. Oxford: The
Worlds Classics, 1983.
PS Tobias Smollett. The Present State of All Nations. 8 vols. London,
1768-1769.
RR Tobias Smollett. TheAdventures of Roderick Random (1748). Edited by
Paul-Gabriel Bouce. Oxford: The World’s Classics, 1979; reprinted
1981.
TEL Tobias Smollett. Travels through France and Italy (1766). Edited by
Frank Felsenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Voltaire The Works of M. de Voltaire. Translated jrom the French. With Notes,
Historical and Critical By T. Smollett M.D., T. Francklin M.A., and
others. 34 vols. London, 1761-1765.
T
JL O B I A S S M O L L E T T T R A V E L E D to France in the sum­
mer of 1763. In the account he wrote of his journey. Travels through France and
Italy (1766), he presented himself as fleeing from his country.' In doing so, Smol­
lett was suggesting one of many Scottish contexts for his excursion to France.
As a supporter of the third Earl of Bute (1713—1792), Smollett had been part
of what he later called “a scene of illiberal dispute, and incredible infetuation.”^
When he arrived in Boulogne, he arrived as an exiled Scot and Stuart supporter,
an identity that his meeting with a certain Father Graeme immediately confirmed
(Father Graeme was “a native of North-Britain, who had been an officer in the
army of king James 11”).^ For the narrator of the adventures of the exiled Charles
Edward Stuart (1720-1788), the romantic possibilities of his journey would have
been clear.^ When Smollett opened the window of an inn near Montpellier and
saw the effects of the '‘MaestralJ he was able to complete an imaginative flight
into the Scottish highlands. In many respects, what he saw was his “dream” made
real, a bewitching ghmpse of his own Scottish journey. Smollett wrote about
this journey in Travels through France and Italy as much as his “real” one across
Europe. Adopting the form of a correspondence, and directing his letters at times

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 I N T ' R O D U C T I O N
to the Anderston Club at Glasgow,^ as well as his Glaswegian friend, John Moore
(1729-1802), Smollett involved his text in a notably Scottish community.^ This
book will explore the extent of such connections and examine their influence on
Smollett’s writing. In this introduction, I will outline Smollett’s relationship to
Scotland and my approach to Travels through France and Italy. I will then note
some of the difficulties involved in reading Smollett’s work.
Smollett and the Enlightenment in G l a s g o w
When Adam Smith (1723—1790) boasted about the city of Glasgow, Samuel
Johnson (1709-1784) apparently asked him if he had ever seen Brentford.
James Boswell (1740-1795) relates how he reminded Johnson of this incident
in Glasgow in 1773.^ While Johnson “expressed his admiration of the elegant
buildings,” Boswell whispered to him, “Don’t you feel some remorse?” The feet
that Boswell did not record Johnson’s answer might imply that he did not. In fact,
Boswell’s “general impression” was that they did not have “much conversation at
Glasgow,” despite being entertained by Thomas Reid (1710-1796), John Ander­
son (1726-1796), William Leechman (1706-1785), Robert Foulis (1707-1776),
and Andrew Foulis (1712—1775). For Johnson, the conversation was literally un­
bearable (he went “in a flutter” to Boswell and asked not to be left alone), and he
found that “men bred in the universities of Scotland” only obtained a “mediocrity
of knowledge.”®Johnson’s observation, however, was clearly a part of what Boswell
called his “spirit of contradiction,” since, only a few days earlier, he had been cor­
recting a Latin inscription for a monument to Tobias Smollett and treating the
suggestion of an English epitaph with “great contempt.”^“An English inscription,”
Johnson declared, “would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett,” even though, he might
have added, he was educated at Glasgow and had continued to converse there.
Johnson’s apparent silence amid “elegant buildings” was thus something more than
a sign of a lack of remorse. Coming at the end of his highland tour, it perhaps
expressed a new sympathy with the inhabitants of Glasgow, especially those who
had tried to describe their enlightened city.
Both Johnson and Smollett were eminent literary figures in London. De­
spite being almost exact contemporaries, they perhaps met only once or twice at
the end of Smollett’s garden.'® Boswell relates how Smollett petitioned John Wil­
kes (1727-1797) on behalf of Johnson, whose servant, Francis Barber, had been
pressed into the navy. Reprinting Smollett’s letter, Boswell noted that Smollett’s
description of Johnson as “that great CFLAM of literature” alluded to “the tide of
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
the Sovereign of Tartary.”" In return, Johnson reportedly declared that Smollett
was “A scholarly man, sir, although a Scot.”'^ While their feelings of respect were
mutual, both Johnson and Smollett maintained their distance. In part, this was
a sign of professional rivalry (both, for example, established literary journals at
exacdy the same time),'® but a major element must have been Smollett’s desire,
like'Adam Smith, to boast about Glasgow. For Smollett, “one of the greatest or­
naments of Glasgow” was the university in which many “ancient professors have
taught, and a great number of learned men have been produced.”'^ Contrary to
Johnson’s strictures on grammar schools in Scodand, Smollett also celebrated the
grammar school at Dumbarton (which he had attended). While the area around
Dumbarton was the “most wildly romantic” possible, Glasgow was, for Smollett,
“the most beautiful town in Great Britain” (Smollett was correcting the view of
Daniel Defoe [1660-1731] that Glasgow was the “cleanest and beautiftillest, and
best built city in Britain, London excepted”).’®For Johnson, Smollett might have
boasted a little too far; he would have to wait until after Smollett’s death to even
begin to appreciate what he might have meant.
Over two hundred years after the death of Smollett, the importance of
Glasgow to his work is still litde appreciated. Only a recent critic, Jerry C.
Beasley, expressing a “strong hunch” about the power of the beautiful image
of Glasgow,” seems to share in Johnson’s belated understanding.'® Smollett was
born in Dumbartonshire near Glasgow in 1721. His friend, John Moore, clearly
saw Smollett’s development in terms of the area’s illustrious past: this was the
birthplace of George Buchanan (1506—1582) and a home to William Wallace
(ca. 1270—1305) and Robert the Bruce (1274—1329).'^ The beauty of the sur­
rounding scenery, Moore speculated, meant that “the Muse might have addressed
him in the enthusiastic language of Burns [1759—1796].” By 1736, Smollett was
studying at the university and apprenticed to William Stirling (d. 1757) and John
Gordon (died 1772), respected surgeons in the city.'® At the same time, a young
A d a m Smith was also a student at Glasgow (he was later to become professor of
moral philosophy there).'® Both Smollett and Smith would have been exposed to
the thought of Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) at Glasgow, something that has
seemed more important to studies of Smith than of Smollett. Smollett probably
also experienced the teaching of Robert Simson (1687—1768) and Robert Dick (d.
1757) in mathematics and natural philosophy. Although he left Glasgow before
the arrival of William Cullen (1710-1790), he would have been familiar with
his medical research through their mutual friend, William Hunter. Furthermore,
Smollett’s relationship with his biographer, John Moore (who was also apprenticed
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 I N T R O DU C T I O N
to Stirling and Gordon), should not be underestimated: recently described as “one
of eighteenth-century Glasgows most ‘enlightened’ figures,” Moore kept Smollett
in touch with Glasgow long after he went to London in 1739.“ Something of
Smollett s involvement in the life of the university might be implied by Moore’s
account of a reading by William Richardson (1743-1814), professor of humanity
at Glasgow, in his hojior in 1784.^'
The fact that Smollett left Glasgow in 1739 has deflected scholarly.atfention
away from his Scottish origins. Only a few critics have tried to explore the influ­
ence of Scodand in his work. However, studies such asM A. Goldberg’s Smollett
and the Scottish School or Kenneth Simpson’s The Protean Scot (1988) have
tended to focus on his novels and neglect the extent of his other writing. Gold­
berg’s study, in particular, placed a misleading emphasis on Smollett’s involvement
in a Scottish Common-Sense School, which set out to bridge the major contra­
dictions of the eighteenth century.”^ Although Simpson has subsequently stressed
the unity of Smollett’s vision, his notion of a divided Scottish personality has seri­
ously complicated Goldberg’s reconciling model.^^ addition, Goldberg’s choice
of Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) as the most representative figure of the Common
Sense School seems inappropriate to a study of Smollett, who perhaps had closer
affiliations with the rationalism of Thomas Reid.^^ Goldberg, however, is right
to associate Smollett with the circle of literati in Edinburgh (to which Smollett
referred in his much quoted but little considered phrase, “a hot-bed of genius”).^’
Richard Sher has studied this group of “moderate” clergy in Church and University
in the Scottish Enlightenment Although Sher omits Smollett (born in 1721)
from his description of a “new literary generation” born in Scotland around the
year 1720 (which included Ferguson, Smith, William Robertson [1721-1793],
and John Home [1722-1808]), this is perhaps understandable.^ Even William
Robertson, meeting Smollett for the first time in London and expecting (from the
reputation of his novels) a “Ruffian” or “Profligate,” was surprised that he was one
of their polish’d and agreable” number.
In London, Smollett maintained his connections with the north. He was
well aware of the truth of the English proverb that “in every corner of the earth,
one may And a Scot, a rat, and a Newcastle grindstone.” Smollett quoted the
proverb with typical ambiguity in The Present State of M l Nations (1768-1769);
his insistence that Scots in “foreign countries” should prosecute their interest
with perseverance and success, even among people by whom they are envied
and discountenanced,” suggested something of his own experience.^ As I have
noted, Smollett was not part of the literary circles surrounding Samuel John-
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I N T RO D U C T I ON
son; for thirteen years he lived on the periphery of London society in Chelsea,
a place described by him as “pleasant and populous” and “inhabited mostly by
Londoners who have retired from business.”^ But he was also able to form an
alternative community among the Scottish coffeehouses of London. Here, he
nict the “moderate” Edinburgh minister (and former Glasgow student) Alexander
Carlyle (1722—1805) in 1746 and was introduced to Robertson in 1758.“ It was
through Alexander Carlyle that Smollett met John Home, whose interests in the
theater (and politics) he shared. He also became a member of a circle of Glaswe­
gian physicians (including John [d. 1743] and James Douglas [1675-1742] and
William Smellie) and may have attended a Scottish medical club at the British
Coffeehouse in the 1750s.^' Similarly, when Smollett established the Critical Re­
view: or, Annals of Literature in 1756, he did so with a Scot, Archibald Hamilton
(1719-1793), and two members of a Scottish coterie who had grown up around
the poet James Thomson (1700-1748)—-Patrick Murdoch (d. 1774) and John
Armstrong (1709-1779).“ The Critical Review may also have had close links with
the Edinburgh Review (published in 1755-1756); its later contributors included
Alexander Carlyle, David Hume (1711-1776), and Adam Smith, who had par­
ticipated in the Edinburgh publication. Smollett’s other journalistic projects, the
British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies (1760—1767)
(with a possible relationship to the Scots Magazine [1739—1817] and The Briton
[1762—1763], published in support of the Earl of Bute), shared such a background
with the “Scotch Tribunal.”^ Smollett may thus have understood his interest in
London as one of Scottish promotion: in his work he supported not only the Scots
he found in his corner but also a program of education for those who knew as
much about them as of Japan.“
Undoubtedly, Smollett derived some creative energy from being a “Scot in
England.”^^ In his well-known study, David Daiches has described the cultural
dislocation experienced by Scots after the Union in 1707. Some of the “para­
doxes” Daiches reveals—for example, the adoption of a “sentimental Jacobitism”
among those who were “deeply democratic and anti-monarchist in feeling”—seem
appropriate to Smollett’s work.^® But Smollett was also inspired by the unique
qualities of his Glasgow experience. In Glasgow, there was what has been called
“a dominant academic version of the Enlightenment associated with names like
Hutcheson, [James] Moor [1712-1779], Smith, [Joseph] Black [1728-1799],
Reid, [John] Millar [1735-1801], Richardson and Foulis”; there was also, at
the same time, “a popular and evangelical Presbyterian Enlightenment of ‘useful
knowledge’ . . . with particularly close ties to commerce, industry and the applied
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I N f R O D U C T I O N
I N T R O D U C T I O N

sciences.”” Thus the “Enlightenment” in Glasgow has been seen to bifurcate at

own illness (Eugene Joliat has thus written how France “joua le role capital dans
the end of the eighteenth century. In many ways, Smollett’s work combined these
cette epoque de sa vie”).'*’ But it also reflected the changed emphasis of his work
diverging influences. On the one hand, for example, his interest in the flne arts
since 1751. In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett continued the journalistic
represented the artisan approach of the university printer, Robert Foulis, who es­
and historical writing that had occupied him for over a decade. In doing so, he
tablished his “School for the Art of Design” in 1753; on the other, it reflected the
trarisformed the scope of a personal travel narrative as well as the whole nature of
aesthetic theories of Precis Hutcheson, whose books Foulis aimed to illustrate.
"his'visit to France and Italy.
A similar combination |)f academic and commercial interests can be seen in the-
Smollett worked on Travels through France and Italy in Nice, London and
project of another of Smollett’s acquaintances, Robert Urie (1711-1771)7'who
Bath. Although Joliat wrongly stated that it was the only work written by Smol­
printed a subscription edition of the Spectator (1711-1712 and 3714) in 1745. In
lett during the “crisis” years following 1763, he was no doubt right to emphasize
fact, the mercantile character of the Enlightenment ip Qasgow can be traced as
its biographical importance.*'* In the same way as Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to
clearly in Smollett’s literary work as in the ideas of Adam Smith. Smollett was also
Lisbon (published posthumously in 1755), Smollett’s letters have their valedictions
heavily influenced by the strength of evangelical Presbyterianism in the west of
and their poignancies.'*’ This might seem a surprising description of a work that
Scotland. While this might have made some impact on Smith’s theatrical theories
has been characterized as bad-tempered and (to cite a much-overused word just
(evangelical hostility to the theater in Glasgow was severe), it made an even deeper
once) “irascible.” However, such a view of Travels through France and Italy needs
impression on Smollett’s play-reviewing and novels. Both in its commercial aspect
revising. Joliat also contrasted Smollett with David Hume (who was in France in
and in the intensity of its Presbyterian feeling, the Enlightenment in Glasgow had
1763) and asked, “Pourqoui n’eut-il pas, comme lui, cette bienveillance et cette
no counterpart. Glasgow’s position, on the edge of the Gaelic-speaking highlands,
sympathie que Ics Ecossais ont traditionnellement manifestees a I’egard de la
also emphasized the popular nature of its difficult identity. Although Smollett
France?”'*^Joliat thus misrepresented Smollett in two fundamental ways. Although
lived, for the most part, in London, he remained within the sphere of Glasgow’s
a Scot, like Adam Smith (who was in France at the same time as Smollett and
attraction. He returned to the city on at least three occasions;’®in many ways, his
Hume), may have paid a visit to Voltaire (1694-1778),*^ it was Smollett who had
trip to the border town of Nice was another.
spent two years preparing Voltaire’s works for an English edition (before taking
them with him to Nice). Reevaluating Smollett’s attitude to France thus brings
Travels through France and Italy him closer to his compatriots. Nevertheless, it was the reception of the Travels
in France (“une certaine indignation,” as Joliat has described it) that led to the
Smollett arrived in Nice (then part of Italy) in November 1763. He was to reside
decline in the reputation of Smollett’s work.*® Even recent editors such as Thomas
there for the next year and a half, apart from an excursion to other Italian cit­
Seccombe (in 1907) and Frank Felsenstein (in 1979) still perceived Smollett, to a
ies m the autumn of 1764. This was not the first time Smollett had visited the
greater and lesser extent, as an insular “Britisher” on the Grand Tour.*’ Following
Continent. Before 1749, he had apparently “improved” himself by “travelling in
Louis Martz, Felsenstein corrected the earlier view of Smollett’s work as represent­
France and other forreign Countries.’”’ In 1750, he had visited Paris and met John
ing a “real correspondence” but was still inclined to see it as perilously close to
Moore.^» In 1759, he evidendy made a short trip to Flanders (he noted his “pas­
,a “standard guidebook” (in a travel tradition) rather than accepting its generic
sage from Flushing” in Travels through France and Italy) Some of the evidence for
relationships with Smollett’s other work.” George Karhl, in his seminal study of
his continental travels can be found in his novels The Adventures o f Roderick Ran­
Smollett as “traveller-novelist,” was similarly interested in “the dominating power
dom (1748) and The Adventures o f Peregrine Pickle (1751).« By the time Smollett
of Smollett’s personality, his outspoken expression of his own character, and his
came to write about his experiences in Nice, however, his attitude had changed.
insularity.”’* For him, Smollett was a “traveller, not a philosopher,” a view that also
No longer simply a focus for fiction and adventure (although this remained im­
needs to be addressed.
portant to him), Smollett’s travels in 1763-1765 took on a more serious aspect.
In a letter to John Moore from Bath, Smollett wrote, “The observations I
In part, this was the effect of the recent death of his daughter and the reality of his
made in the course of my Travels thro’ France and Italy I have thrown into a Series

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

of Letters which will make two Volumes in Octavo.”’^Drawing on this hint, some
in France since he took with him A Complete System of Geography [1744-1747]).®'
critics have focused on the artistry of Smollett’s apparent “ohservations.” Notably,
Although Smollett does not appear to have traveled with copies of The Briton, his
Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741—1821), in her own Observations and Reflections Made
memory of writing in support of the Earl of Bute would have been clear. Bute’s
tn the course o f a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (1789), wrote, “I
ministry (and the intense anti-Scottish feeling this produced) was an important
have not thrown my thoughts into the form of private letters; because a work of
part of the fifth volume of the Continuation (1765), as well as of The History and
which truth is the best recommendation, should not above all others begin with a
Adventures of an Atom (1769), which Smollett began to write at Nice.®^ When
lie.”” Smollett h^ been seen as something of a “travel liar” by Perry Adam, in j i is ^
Smollett returned to England in 1765, he did not merely publish an account of
well-known study of travel literature.’^ Further studies by RonaldJPatiEonlwho
his journey: the fifth volume of the Continuation and The Present State of All Na­
has stressed the imaginary” aspects of Smollett’s journey) or John Sena (who has
tions (not to mention a few articles in the Critical Reviewf^ were also published
shown how Smollett adopted the persona of a “melancholic traveller”) have con­
before he returned to Italy in 1768 (publication of the Atom was delayed until
firmed such an approach.” However, the premise, in Sena’s words, that “Smollett
after he had left the country).
has created a persona that, although closely resembling the author, has an existence
The fact that Smollett traveled to France with almost his entire literary
separate from and independent of its* creator” has led to exaggeration. Scott Rice,
output has been largely overlooked. Critics have preferred to trace the influence
for example, in an essay on the seventh letter of the Travels, has described Smol­
of the books Smollett found in France (such as the guidebook Roma antica, e
lett s satiric persona” engaged with a "mock correspondent,” or “adversarius,” in a
modema [1750]) on Travels through France and Italy.^ But in the same way that
Juvenalian tradition.’®Rice’s view of the Travels as a satirical “attack upon luxury”
Smollett’s wife and family maintained a shadowy presence behind his text, Smol­
IS important (and has been developed by John Sekora in relation to the rest of his
lett’s literary past made its presence felt. For example, in Boulogne, Smollett
work).’^But the image of Smollett’s “persona” occupying a separate aesthetic realm
compared “Mons. [de] L[ouvign]y” to “the picture of Don Quixote after he had
IS unhelpful. Notably, the seventh letter of the travels is directed not to some fic­
lost his teeth” (an illustration of which could be found in his own translation of
tional antagonist but to a very real Catharine Macaulay (1733-1791), the famous
Don Quixote [1755]);®’ similarly, Smollett’s interpretation of the title of Louis “le
historian and wife of his medical friend, George Macaulay (1716-1766).
GraruT as ironic developed a footnote in his edition of the works of Voltaire.®®
When Smollett went to France in 1763, he traveled with sixty-five volumes
More generally, Smollett must have been reminded of his “extensive” preparation
of his own work.’®Although Travels through France and Italy might be implicitly
for the press in 1753 of Travels through different Cities of Germany, Italy, Greece, and
regarded today as a bridge between his two novels The Adventures of Launcelot
Several Parts of Asia asfar as the Banks of the Euphrates (1754).®^ The author of this
Greaves (1760-1761) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), this was
work, Alexander Drummond (d. 1769), was a Scot who, like Smollett, had met
not how Smollett would have perceived it. He neither became a “traveler” in
Sir James Paterson (d. 1765) while traveling, and had realized Smollett’s ambition
France nor was he simply a “novelist.” For Smollett, Travels through France and
of being a British consul abroad (at Aleppo).®® Smollett probably enjoyed (and had
Italy was intimately related to his other literary projects. As I have mentioned,
perhaps emphasized) his tendency to make comparisons with Scotland. Standing
before leaving for France, Smollett was involved in editing the works of Voltaire.
in Florence, for example, Drummond reminisces about the “equestrian statue”
He took twenty-five volumes of this edition with him to Nice (because thirty-
in the “Parliament-close of Edinburgh”;®^ at the “palace of Pitti,” Smollett later
four volumes had been published, this might indicate the extent of his own work
thinks of “the palace of Holyrood house.”^®Both writers, at the Uffizi museum,
on the project).” He also took copies of the Critical Review and British Magazine
are prompted by what Drummond calls his “highland spirit.”^' Smollett may also
(then totaling sixteen volumes). Smollett had completed the fourth volume of his
have shared Drummond’s connections to a lodge of Freemasons. Drummond had
Continuation o f the Complete History of England m 1762; he worked on the fifth
established his own lodge in Smyrna, the “daughter” of “the lodge of Drummond
volume at Nice (having brought a set of his History, and fifty-eight volumes of the
Kilwining, from Greenock.”^^ In 1763, Smollett wrote to his friend Alexander
Universal History for the purpose).®® It seems likely that Smollett was also working
Reid (1719—1789) that he was not well enough to visit the “Lodge of french free
on The Present State of All Nations before 1763 (he may even have continued this
masons at Boulogne” and asked him to remember him to “all [their] Brotherhood
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I N T R O D U C T I O N

the British Magazine are also difficult to identify. My practice has been to follow
at the Swan.”^^While Smollett may have intended other communities when ad­
the attributions made by James Basket in Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist
dressing his letters in Travels through France and Italy to a “so ciety ,th e lodge of
(1988).®^ Given the comparative nature of my study, some of these attributions
Freemasons at Chelsea (with possible Scottish associations) was perhaps one of
have perhaps been strengthened. It should also be noted that Smollett effectively
them.
took responsibility for all the articles printed in the British Magazine^ Other dif­
Another project that shaped Travels through France and Italy was Smollett’s
ficulties' surround the nature of Smollett’s work on large-scale projects, such as the
involvement in A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages (1756). In
Compendium, Universal History, and Present State. In this, I have followed the work
this work, Smollett had included an account of his journey to Carthag^a an
of Louis Martz, accepting that Smollett wrote the account of Carthagena in the
1741.^^ More importantly, he had acted as the “compiler” of theaeven volumes,
Compendium and maintained a strong editorial presence in each undertaking.
his “principal view” being to “disincumber the useful species of history from a
Similarly, I have accepted the view that Smollett was responsible for the “prose”
great deal of unnecessary lumber.”^^ Smollett thus adopted a role similar to that
volumes in his edition, with Thomas Francklin (1721-1784), of the works of Vol­
taken up by John Locke (1632—1704) in his Essay concerning Human Understand­
taire.®^ In practice, however, lengthy discussion of these projects falls outside the
ing (1690). Presenting himself as an “underl^ourer,” Smollett cleared away such
scope of this book. The curious view that William Guthrie (1708-1770) wrote the
“rubbish” as “terms of navigation” and emphasized the improved classification of
fifth volume of Smollett’s Continuation is relevant to my study but can be easily
his material.^ Drawing on a similar analogy, Smollett wrote how the Present State
dismissed;®^ Smollett’s use of source material throughout his History poses a similar
had been “methodised” so that the mind would be led “by a succession of ideas,
but more intricate problem. I have regarded the traditional questions surrounding
from the simplest impressions of sense and fancy to the most abstract efforts of
the authorship of the Atom as now setded.®^ A final area of difficulty is Smollett s
reason and reflection.”^®In this book, I suggest that Travels through France and
writing for the stage: only two plays by Smollett survive (along with fragments of
Italy was another form of compendium or encyclopedia. This would have been
art opera written with Handel [1685—1759]), and I have accepted the attribution
most obvious in the way that Smollett assembled his “natural history” of Nice
of at least two more without the existence of the texts.®®
or presented the “present state” of France.^^ However, I also follow the approach
It should be recognized that authorship was also a problem for Smollett
of Robert Adams Day, who saw The History and Adventures of an Atom as a “vast
himself. In his “Account of the Expedition against Carthagene,” for example, he
patchwork of quotations from, versions of, and allusions to passages in the later
referred to the “author of this account” in the third person; while this implied
works of Smollett’s career.”®®Travels through France and Italy thus represents Smol­
some authority for his story (in line with the other accounts in the Compendium),
lett’s attempt to order a diverse body of (often personal) material. His particular
it also complicated his relationship to his own work.®® In Humphry Clinker, the
interests in medicine, art criticism, the theater, and history writing are reflected in
fictitious bookseller Henry Davis similarly refers to the popularity of “letters upon
the structure of this book. In each chapter, I discuss Smollett’s work in one of these
travels” by “Smollett”; notably, Humphry Clinker was written by “the Author of
areas while paying close attention to its Scottish context. I therefore hope to show
Roderick Randoml^ The best-known example of Smollett’s self-consciousness is
how Travels through France and Italy drew from the full extent of Smollett’s other
the dedication to The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753). Here, the
writing. In this way, Smollett’s Travels leaves the domain of the “travel book” and
“author” (according to the title page, “the Author of Roderick Random ) addressed
becomes, instead, an encyclopedic work of a Scottish (and notably Glaswegian)
his remarks to “DOCTOR ******,”®' The somewhat dispars^ing tone of his com­
Enlightenment.
ments (he particularly noted the doctors pride, ostentation, superficiality, and
coarseness) might be reflected in Smollett’s attempt to revise Travels through France
Attribution and Italy while living near Leghorn in YITQ. Treating the text as if it were another
bookseller project, Smollett added translations, emended sentences, and improved
Defining the extent of Smollett’s writing has its problems. Unlike the Monthly
the accuracy of certain details.®^ He also revised what he might have seen as his
Review (1749—1789), for example, no annotated set of the Critical Review ex­
weak appraisal of Giuseppe Bianchi (who had robbed the Uffizi Gallery and then
ists (except for the first two volumes of 1756).®' The articles Smollett wrote for

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 I N T R O D U C T I O N
set it on fire shortly after Smolletts visit).Sm ollett’s attitude to his own writing
in Travek through France and Italy (he is named on the tide page) forms an impor­
tant part of this study (it should be noted that Smollett’s unpublished revisions
have been Incorporated into Felsenstein’s edition of the text).’^ In many respects,
Smollett found himself in the situation of Nathaniel Peacock, who transcribed the
dictates of a “constituent particle of matter.” The atom’s outburst (“What! dost
thou mutter. Peacock? <iost thou presume to question my veracity? now by the in­
divisible rotundity of an atom, I have a good mind, caitiff, to raise such aT>u2zing
commotion in thy glandula pinealis, that thou shaft run distracted over the face
of the earth, like lo when she was stung by Juno’s gadfly!”)'resembles some of the
author’s declamations in Fathom?’’ It is as if Smolleft were not entirely sure that
the words he wrote were his own.
The fact that Smollett wrote in English may have contributed to his uncer­
tainty about attribution. It is likely that Smollett’s spoken language was a version
of Middle Scots.®® By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this language was
perceived as a dialect and most Scottish writers had turned to English as their me­
dium. Daiches has described the paradox of those who talked and felt in Scots but
thought and wrote in English. The alienation experienced by such writers has been
suggested by Beasley, who writes that Smollett had tried “to be an English writer
without ceasing to be a Scot. Some of the tensions between spoken and written
languages are a source of humor in the letters of Humphry Clinker, elsewhere, for
Smollett, they are a more serious problem.®* Smollett’s plans for an “ E n g lis h Acad­
emy (and his work on the Critical Review) reveal his desire for a regulated and
Scots-free language. Such a desire necessarily involved him in contradiction (such
as when he corrected the [printed] “Scotticisms” of his friend David Hume).®® In a
similar way, the church in eighteenth-century Scotland has been seen to be a focus
of national identity; according to Daiches, however, the church “kept splitting
from within because it could not adequately sustain the role forced on it by the
consequences of the union. Eor Smollett, the pressures of maintaining a unitary
language led to comparable internal divisions. Terence Bowers, for example, has
described how Smollett s weakened body in Travels through France and Italy was
“the result of a fragmenting body politic”;”” Frederic Ogee has similarly found a
“juxtaposition of contiguous elements” in the (plural) tide of Smollett’s TravelsH^
Such observations surest the way in which Smollett, while promoting a prescribed
form of expression, also experienced the discontinuities of his Scottish past.
In a sense, Smollett always made use of what could be seen as other people’s
words. Whether he derived paragraphs from hidden sources or wrote perfect Eng-
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
lish sentences, Smollett’s productions were never quite his own. He acknowledged
this in the positions he adopted in regard to his own work. Like Johnson, in his
Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Smollett effectively assembled a variety
of quotations for new (encyclopedic) purposes.’”^ Johnson thus saw his work as
“drudgery,” but he also sustained what he called his “dreams of a poet,” written
across the entries of his supposedly impersonal work.'®^ Martz has perceived the
Johnsonian aspects of Smollett’s works (for example, the inclusive style of the
Compendiurri) and given him an important role in an “Age of Synthesis.”'®®But
Martz was not thinking of the poetical dreams of the lexicographer. While he was
right to emphasize the unitary aspects of encyclopedic writing, he also missed its
dialogic tendencies. For Martz, the playfulness of Smollett’s “picaresque” period
belonged to his earlier career.'®® Mikhail Bakhtin, however, has described the hero
of the picaresque novel (the rogue) as appropriating and re-accenting higher lan­
guages than his own.'®^ Thus, in the Present State of A ll Nations, Smollett played
the picaro, appropriating (and redirecting) the words of Defoe’s Tour thro’ the
Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-1726).'®* As Tom Keymer has shown, in
reference to Humphry Clinker (which drew from Smollett’s work on the Present
State), Smollett challenged the (monologic) perspective of Defoe, transforming a
“description of Scotland” into at least five different “Scotlands.”'®®As such, Smol­
lett’s writing participated in a kind of “carnival” that destabilized generic categories
and unitary interpretations."® Put another way, Smollett presented a version of the
“social converse” that marked Enlightenment thought in Scotland (and which was
encapsulated in Smith’s dynamic image of the “impartial spectator ).'" Through­
out this book, I will explore the kind of “social converse” in which Smollett was
eng^ed. In Travels through France and Italy, this is clearly suggested by the letters
Smollett wrote and the “quotations” he assembled. It is also the peculiar basis of
the image with which I began this introduction: the image of a divided (and dis­
located) Scot, muttering to himself about being in Scotland.
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1
A PHYSICAL GENTLEMAN

I
I

But, what is surprising, no Mortal e’er view’d

Any one of the Physical Gentlemen stew’d.

—Christopher Anstey, The New Bath Guide (39)

I
JL. N N O V E M B E R 1 7 6 5 , Smollett provided John Moore with what
he called a “short sketch of [his] present situation.”' This included a detailed and
somewhat pessimistic account of his state of health: although he had “gained some
fiesh” since arriving in Bath five weeks earlier, Smollett wrote, “I have always found
myself better for about a month after any change of air, and then I relapse into my
former state of Invalidity.” He therefore despaired of being able to gratify his de­
sire of visiting Moore and “all [their] Glasgow friends.” But Smollett’s sketch also
revealed that he had completed throwing the observations he had made in France
and Italy into a “Series of letters” (which were then printing). He hoped that these
might “be usefull to other valetudinarians who travel for the Recovery of their
health,” particularly since he seemed to have experienced “a sort of Resuscitation.”
Writing to Moore, Smollett put his "resuscitation” down to “hard Exercise” (he
wrote, “[If] I was a galley slave and kept to hard Labour for two or three years, I
believe I should recover my Health intirely”) and the “Bath water.” Both of these
observations formed part of Travels through France and Italy and are the basis of
the second section of this chapter. In 1752, Smollett had published some “Par­
ticular Remarks upon the present Method of using the Mineral Waters at Bath”;
his remarks on mineral waters in France disputed the claim of Christopher Anstey
(1724-1805), in the New Bath Guide (1766), that no physician had ever been

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c H |A P T E R 1 A
Stew’d.” But Anstey’s image would have reinforced another of Smollett’s concerns:
how far being a “physical gentleman” entailed being a “quack.” In the third section
of this chapter, Smollett’s aspirations to be a “gentleman” are explored in relation
to the Glaswegian physicians, William Hunter and John Moore. Given SmoUett’s
emphasis, in his letter to Moore, on the importance of a “sort of natural history
of Nice” and the “Register of the Weather” in Travels through France and Italy, I
^so consider the more “physical” (not social) side of this equation. To begin with, ,
however, I will outline Smollett’s participation in eighteenth-century medical
circles and how his own practice found literary expression. - '
Smollett and Me d i c i n e
According to William SmeUie, the second case study of his Collection of Cases and
Observations in Midwifery (1754) was “communicated by Dr. Smollett.”^ The ar­
ticle relates to one of SmoUett’s patients, a twenty-seven-year-old woman, who had
apparently experienced a “preternatural extension” of the pelvic bones. Smellie was
obviously impressed by Smollett’s observation, since he noted that he had never
Ken “such separation of the bones of a living subject” (a position he shared with
Thomas Lawrence [1711-1783], William Hunter, and Alexander Monro [1697-
1767]). Smollett was thus in rare company: the only authority Smellie could find
to support such a phenomenon was the anatomist Adrian Spigelius (1578-1625),
who (according to Monro) witnessed “such a relaxation, which, however, he ob­
serves, very rarely occurs.” Smollett must have been pleased to have been accepted
by such a prestigious circle of physicians. In his review of Smellie’s companion
volume, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1752), Smollett drew
upon the authority that this unique observation had given him.^ He thus noted
that Smellie’s “description of the Pelvis, is accurate” and concluded.
In a word. Doctor Smellies improvements are, in our opinion, solid and
effectual, his instructions clear and perspicuous, his remarks judicious
and happily deduced, his general method of practice unexceptionable;
and there is an air of candour, humanity and moderation through the
whole book, which cannot fail to engage the reader’s favour and esteem.
But Smollett’s comments also suggested another way in which he was important
to Smellie and his fellow medical practitioners. It was Smollett who had prepared
f e l l i e s manuscript for publication (as he later prepared two fiirther volumes).<
His review was, in many respects, an attempt to promote his own medical practice:
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V
P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N
for he would have seen the clarity, order, and gentlemanly tone of Smellies book
as his own particular responsibility.
Smollett may have met Smellie as early as 1 7 3 9 (before embarking, as a
surgeon’s second mate, for Jamaica and Carthegena).^ He had been the apprentice
of Smellie’s friend John Gordon in Glasgow (from whom Smellie claimed to have
learnedrth'e use of the “blunt hook”);« he also met other Scottish obstetricians in
London, f a k in g up residence in the house of John Douglas in 1 7 4 4 .^ The exact na­
ture of his work on Smellie’s Treatise is, however, difficult to establish. A letter from
Smollett to William Hunter (who fbllowed Smollett to London from Glasgow in
1 7 4 0 and was also a close friend of Douglas and Smellie) reveals something of the
collaboration involved in the project: Smollett, for example, questioned Hunter’s
“petulant queries upon the Margins of Smellies Manuscript.”®It is also clear that
Smollett owned half the copyright of Smellie’s subsequent volume, A Collection of
Cases and Observations in Midwifery, and wrote the introduction to a third (pub­
lished in 1 7 6 4 , a year after Smellie’s death).’ The extent of Smollett’s involvement
in the Treatise is suggested by Smellie’s opening paragraph.
It must be a satisfaction to those who begin the study of any art or sci­
ence, to be made acquainted with the rise and progress of it; and there­
fore, I shall, by way of introduction, give a short detail of the practice of
Midwifery, with the improvements which have been made in it, at dif­
ferent times; as I have been able to collect the circumstances, from those
authors, ancient as well as modern, who have written on the subject.'®
In a review of The History of the Royal Society of London (1756) by Thomas Birch
(1705-1766), Smollett expressed the same sentiment in a similar way (for ex­
ample, he began with the thought of “satisfaction” and closed by referring to “the
subject”). Smollett’s words were as follows:
When we consider any production of nature or of art, we are not satisfied
with viewing it in its more advanced state, or in its maturity, and perhaps
enumerating the various uses to which it may be applied; our curiosity
leads us farther, to enquire into its origin, its early culture, and the suc­
cessive slow steps by which it arrives at perfection; for without these we
can have but an imperfect knowledge of the subject we are examining."
While this might not mean that Smollett wrote Smellies sentence, it is enough
to indicate the close association of the Treatise and the Critical Review. In some
ways, Smellie’s introduction was precisely a “critical review” of ancient and modern
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A P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N

authors: his comment, for example, that “Mr Quid, surgeon in Dublin, in the year
(1757), Smollett observed that it was “one of the best collections of the kind that
1742, published a treatise on the practice of Midwifery, in which there are two
have hitherto appeared” (it included contributions, in the tradition of Smellie’s
good observations.” would not be out of place in one of Smollett’s accounts of the
Collection of Cases and Observations in Midwifery, by such “men of eminence” as
Philosophical Transactions}^ Similarly, Smellie’s list of the “best modern authors
John Clephane and George Macaulay).^® Smollett also included a long footnote
who have written on the diseases of women and children” reflects the ambitions of
(extending over three pages) in order to defend William Hunter from an attack
the Critical Review to provide'advice for general readers.'^ Furthermore, Smellie’s in ^'^Monthly Review. This dispute, concerning the right of Hunter or of Alex­
dislike of secrecy (he wrote against those who pretended to be “in possession of
ander Monro (1733-1817) to be identified as the discoverer of the lymphatics
some secret or other” and exposed the "secret” of Roonhuisen’s forceps inJiis'
as absorbent vessels, continued in subsequent numbers of the Critical Review}^
second volume) anticipated Smollett’s desire, in the Critical Review^ to reduce Smollett was quick to point out inconsistencies in the arguments. For example, he
“private interest” in fevor of “public benefit.”'-' Smollett’s praise for the structure
explained that “while [the theory of compression in aneurisms] was believed to be
of Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752) by John Pringle (1707-1782)
a suggestion of Dr. Hunter, our critic condemns it as a hazardous expedient; but,
and his suggestion that James Grieve (d. 1773) make use of the phrase “theoiy and in the very next sentence, finding it was first advised by Dr. Monro, he extols it as
pracuce” (to remove the “inconsistency” in the'words “reason and experience”) a very great improvement}'^'^ For Smollett, this was “a flagrant instance of malevo­
clarify still further the kind of interest Smollett had in Smellie’s work.'^
lence, contradiction, and absurdity,” and he was adept at finding other examples.^®
Writing Smollett’s life in 1796, the physician Robert Anderson (1750- Donald Monro (1727-1802), Alexander’s brother, recognized the power of the
1830) suggested that after publishing Essay on the External Use of Water (1751),
Critical Review to influence such readings when he asked for his own letter on the
Smollett “dedicated the whole of his time to literature.”'®However, Smollett’s re­
dispute to be “inserted in the next number of [his] Review, without either notes
lationship with Smellie shows that his interests in medicine and literature cannot
or commentary,” a request that generated the footnote, “Though this gendeman
be so easily separated.'^ Although Anderson’s view has formed the basis of other
* has precluded us from the privilege of making notes upon his letter, we cannot
accounts of Smollett’s dwindling medical practice,'® there is an important sense
help taking notice of the cavalier manner in which we are treated.”^ The dispute
m which Smollett developed his role as a physician. Sitting in Smellie’s library, between Monro and Hunter had more than one literary dimension. Essentially a
Smollett would have found himself at the center of an ever-widening medical conflict over intellectual property, it was first of all a publishing issue, but it was
circle: Smellie, for example, instructed Smollett’s Glaswegian friend John Moore
also played out in a multitude of other texts.^® This had the effect of turning an
and maintained contacts with the club of Scottish physicians at the British cof­
apparently medical dispute into a kind of exercise in literary criticism.^ As Anita
feehouse, including, among others, John Armstrong (1709-1779), John Clephane
Guerrini has suggested, writing on the medical pamphlet wars in Edinburgh, such
(d. 1758), Thomas Dickson (1726-1784), and William Pitcairn (1711-1791).
literary dialogues could subvert the scientific issues supposedly being debated.®®
An anecdote by Alexander Carlyle shows that Smollett attended a dinner with
For Smollett, this could mean criticizing Andrew Wilson for his “disgusting” use
some^of these physicians in 1758 and made a careless remark about Armstrong’s
of “new and difiicult words,”®' or defending his friend Hunter on the basis of
nose.“ But Smollett’s work on the Critical Review from 1756 also reveals the ex­
“the beauty of the paper and print, a circumstance but too much neglected in the
tent of his involvement in this community. Not only did he undertake an exten­
generality of modern publications.”®®
sive amount of medical reviewing,he also made use of the journal to defend his
The importance of the role of the Critical Review in the controversy sur­
friends (for example, he supported Smellie’s views against those of Elizabeth Nihell
rounding Monro and Hunter is suggested by an appendix to William Hunter’s
[1723-1772] in 1760).“ In a society marked by endless medical disputes, Smol­
Medical Commentaries (1762). This contained “what was published in the Critical
lett was able in the Critical Review to reinforce his own professional identity. Far
■Review, relating to the dispute, before Dr. Alexander Monro jr. wrote his Observa­
from giving up his medical practice, Smollett continued it in a more literary form.
tions Anatomical and PhysiologcalP^ When Smollett reviewed Hunter’s work, he
By 1757, the Critical Review was already embroiled in controversy. Re­
referred back to his earlier articles as a kind of testimony of its truth.®-* In a similar
viewing Medical Observations and Inquiries, by a Society of Physicians in London
way, he accused another physician of not having read his Journal. In a review of

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C H A P T E R 1
Lectures upon the Heart, Lungs, Pericardium, Pleura, Aspera, Artena, Membrana
Intersepiens, or Mediastinum by H. Mason, Smollett observed some omissions that
seemed “to denote a litde invidious pique against the best anatomist of the age.
For Smollett, such omissions also implied a degree of pique against the Critical
Review, which had recently quoted Hunters description of emphysema (one of
the cases in qu^tion) at length.^^ Smollett thus bestowed on Hunter what he had ^
been carefhl to perfect in Smellie’s work: “an air of candour, humanity and-mtsd-
eration.”’^ Such gentlemanly qualities, however, were not without a more political
dimension; those who favored Smellie’s use of the fprceps, for example, or inocula­
tion against the smallpox, have been seen to share other allegiances.’®Since Monro
studied medicine at Edinburgh, it is possible that the Hunter-Monro controversy
concealed a kind of institutional rivalry (Smollett, for example, quoted Hunter
citing Joseph Black [1728-1799], then professor of medicine at Glasgow, in his
defense).’’ Later, in Travels Through France and Italy, Smollett would report from
Montpellier (another rival center of medical expertise) in order to disparage the
practice of Antoine Fixes (1690-1765). Althou^ this was a controversy of Smol­
lett’s own making, his letter (addressed “Dear Doctor” and referring to Dr. H r
and “Dr. Sm—ie” [11:89]) reflected some of the conflicts of the Critical Review.
Smollett was surrounded by prestigious medical personalities, and it is easy
to question his “total lack of medical achievement.”'*®Notably, the same criticism
has been leveled against the whole of the Scottish medical enlightenment (in
which there was a lack of “remarkable clinical achievements”) T h e first view,
however, does not adequately take notice of Smollett s role in a close-knit medi­
cal circle originating in Glasgow;^ the second does not allow for the educative
agenda of such a group. The lectures of William Hunter in London can be seen
as the kind of market-led education that has been shown to have developed in
Scotland.'*’ Smellie’s advertisement at the end of his Treatise for a subscription
edition of Riemsdyk’s “anatomical figures,” an advertisement repeated by Smollett
in his review, was similarly part of the cooperative spirit this inspired.*'* Although
Smollett missed the innovations ofWilliam Cullen in Glasgow from 1747, his re­
lationship to John Gordon (shared by Smellie, Hunter, and John Moore) confirms
1
' at Aix “communicated to the society by Dr. Clephane”)’®and Smollett s com­
the “enlightened” basis of his interests in midwifery and public health.*’ Gordon
had studied with his partner William Stirling in Leiden.*® The influence of Her­
man Boerhaave (1668-1738) on his work can be traced in Smellie’s Collection
of Cases and Observations in Midwifery, as well as Smollett’s Critical Review and
Travels through France and Ltaly (Boerhaave, for example, emphasized careful ob­
servation and “case histories”).*" Smollett, whose clinical achievements were slight
[2 0 ]
A PHYSI CAL GENT L EMAN
but who had praised Pringle (a former pupil of Boerhaave) in the Monthly Review,
and presumably endorsed Smellie’s inclusion of woA by Francois Maunceau
(1637—1709) (also recommended by Boerhaave) in his Treatise^ must e seen as
fiilly participating in the concerns of his medical friends.*®
One view that SmoUett shared with other Glasgow physicians was the
importance of practical learning. Observing the seasonal appearance of “new sys­
tems of medicine and philosophy,” in a review of Short Remarks upon autumnal
Disorders of the Bowels (1765) by Andrew Wilson, Smollett offered a prayer for the
"gentlemen who have studied the art of medicine at Edinburgh. He explained,
“We think there should be a form of prayer in the Liturgy, for the support “ “
couragement of those students, who, in the course of their education, are oblige
to peruse every article of the medical library, from the works of Hippocrates
to the lucubrations of Dr. Andrew Wilson.” In a later review of TFe Midwifes
Pocket Companion; or, a Practical Treatise of Midwifery (1765), Smollett similady
described how it seemed “entirely to be copied from books, and not dictate y
experience He provided the author of the account, John Memis, with a use­
ful comparison: “Learning and genius avail little in this case. We question if Sir
Isaac Newton, after studying the subject three years, could make a pair of shoes
so well as an illiterate man who had employed the same space of time in actu
trials.”’* Smollett’s view of midwifery as a trade or “handy-craft” was suggestiw
of a uniquely Glaswegian perspective; his reference to Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
concealed a suitable glance at the Royal Society.’" Such an emphasis on practical
experiment even led Smollett to wonder if Memis had copied William Smellie too
closely: following Mauriceau in Treatise, Smellie had suggested delaying the
separation of a weak child from its mother, a practice that had apparently been
improved by experience.” It is in this context that Smollett’s republication of the
“case histories” included in publications such as Medical Observations must be
seen.’* It is also the context for some of the letters of Travels through France and
L ta ly.The cases described in Medical Observations were often presented in letter
form (for example, in the Critical Review, Smollett noted a letter from a physician
munications on the “Boerhaave of Montpellier,”’" or the bad effects of b^daging
children at Paris,’®are similar examples. In a letter to “Mr. M - ” (probably John
Moore or George Macaulay),” Smollett mentioned the “society” to which his
letters are properly addressed.®® In this respect. Travels through France and Italy
reflected Smollett’s educative agenda, presenting experiences of a medical nature
to a Glasgow-orientated group of physicians.
[2 1 ]

C H A P T ER 1
The longest case study in Travels through France and Italy was, of course, a
description of Smollett himself The account, however, was not limited to a letter
to Antoine Fizes:®' the very act of writing bore a complicated relationship to Smol­
lett’s medical interests. On the one hand, writing as a physician, Smollett believed
that “in consequence of reading and writing in a stooping posture, his breast
became affected.’’^ On the o^'er hand, writing as a patient, Smollett thought that
“without some such employtnent,” the tedious hours “would be rendered insup­
portable by distemper and disquiet.”®^ Smollett’s illness was thus both the cauSe”
and the effect of his literary work. This kind of relationship betweenTiterature and
medicine has been discerned in other literary illnesses. For exathple, the writing of
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1761-1767) has been seen to have kept
Laurence Sterne (1713—1768) alive “when nothing else could”; Samuel Johnson’s
intense writing of The History ofRasselas (1759) may have similarly “soothed” his
fears of death.^ Like Henry Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, Traveb through
France and Italy was conceived when, as Smollett observed, it was “a moot point
whether I should ever return” it was completed in Bath almost as part of his regi­
men of taking the air and waters. Thus, while Smollett gave voice to the “scorbuti-
cal eruption on my right hand”^^and a headache (caused by reading a guidebook
by Johann Keysler [1693—1743]),®^ he did not simply employ “contemporary
medicine for artistic purposes.”®* Rather, he revealed something of the medical
purposes (and influences) of his own artistry. It was perhaps Laurence Sterne, all
along, who, announcing that Smollett should have told his story to his physician,
truly understood his medical aims and difficulties.®^
As a literary patient, Smollett had a lot in common with Samuel Johnson.
Johnson has been seen as something of an “amateur physician”: for example,
he wrote the lives of several physicians (including Boerhaave) for the Medicinal
Dictionary (1743) by Robert James (1705-1776) and provided the medical defi­
nitions for his own Dictionary of the English Language-, his letters also show him
recommending Peruvian bark (for his mother), electrical treatment (for the physi­
cian Thomas Lawrence), and a warm bath (for Hester Thrale).^® He also suffered
from a kind of melancholy.^' But while Johnson’s understanding of his own illness
remained suitably intellectual, Smollett suggested a more physical basis.^^ Johnson
was no doubt aware of the conventional view of melancholy (based on the humors
and pardy treatable, as George Cheyne suggested, through exercise),^^ but his in­
terpretation of his own fears and anxieties derived from Locke’s idea of “delusion”
and madness.''® Like Smollett, Johnson found that his health was complicated by
his literary work, but for Johnson this was an effect of the “imagination,” not a
[ 2 2 ]
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A P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N
Stooping posture and a “sedentary life.”” Smollett’s emphasis on the relationship
of the mind and body testified to his Glasgow origins and affiliations. William
Hunter’s brother John (1728-1793) was perhaps the closest source of such materi­
alist views;” William Cullen at Glasgow, and the Scottish physician Robert Whytt
(1714-1766) also speculated about the shared properties of the nervous system
^nd the^mind.^^ In the rest of this chapter, I will explore this aspect of Smollett s
thought, focusing particularly on his interests in character and natural history
(two subjects Smollett listed on the tide page of Travels through France and Italy).
Such Interests cannot be dissociated from his literary work; they also inform his
medical inquiry into the “external use of water.” It is in this way that Smollett
distinguished himself from other “men of letters” and preserved his identity as a
Glaswegian physician.
Wat e r
In the Present State of All Nations, Smollett wrote how the “water in Scotland is
remarkably pure, light, and agreeable to the stomach.” He explained, “[0]ver and
above that which is used for the ordinary purposes of life, here are many medicinal
springs of great note and wonderful efficacy, which shall be described in the ac­
count of particular places.”''* Smollett’s account of the water in Scotland followed
his account of the water at Nice, which had been “surprizingly cool, limpid, and
agreeable.”” Both reflected the concerns of his Essay on the External Use of Water
(published over a decade earlier in 1752); they were probably also inspired by the
controversy surrounding the water at Bath (reaching its peak in 1765). In the
New Bath Guide, Christopher Anstey alluded to this controversy when he noted
the lack of stewing “Physical Gentlemen. He continued.
Since the Day that king BLADUD first found out the Bogs
And thought them so good for himself and his Hogs,
Not one of the Faculty ever has try’d
These excellent Waters to cure his own Hide:
Tho’ many a skilful and learned Physician,
With Candour, good Sense and profound Erudition,
Obliges the World with the Fruits of his Brain
Their Nature and hidden Effects to explain.*'
Completing Travels through Erance and Italy at Bath, Smollett obliged the world
with another theory. He began his account by noting that he had been advised
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C H A P T E R 1
“to have recourse again to the Bath waters, from the use of which I had received
great benefit the preceding winter”;*" the fact that he had “many inducements to
leave England” meant he had to turn to other sources. His description of water
in France and Italy thus implied some comparison with his experiences at Bath.
It therefore revealed that at least one member of the faculty had tried the waters
for himself. j thought it was something, like Diederick Linden’s A Treatise on the three me­
In 1796, Robert Anddrson observed that the value of Smollett’s Essay on
the External Uses of Water had been “considerably diminished by subsequent dis='
coveries in pneumatic chemistry.”*^ As this view suggests, Smollett had not been
particularly concerned about chemical analysis. Instead, he formulated an opinion
on the “hidden Effects” of “Pure Water.”
For my own part, without having recourse to the assistance of a Spiritus
Rector, an Acidum vagum, or subtile elastic Spirit. . . I can easily conceive
how extraordinary cures may be performed by the mechanical effects of
simple Water upon the human Body; and I fully believe that in the use
of bathing and pumping, that Efficacy is often ascribed to the mineral
Particles, which properly belongs to the Element itself, exclusive of any
foreign assistance.®'*
Most of the “mechanical effects” Smollett had in mind depended on the tem­
perature of the water. For example, he noted that the external use of common
Water, properly warmed, would have the same, or nearly the same, effect in the
gout which an ingenious physician attributes to the saponaceous and sulphureous
Particles with which the Waters of Bath are impregnated.”®^ But, as his qualifica­
tion (“or nearly the same”) might suggest, Smollett did not dismiss the new chem­
istry completely: he observed, for example, that in a Vapour Bath (a method of
application that had not been practiced at Bath), minerals had a more obvious
effect.®^ Smollett thus had something in common with physicians on both sides
of this debate. In the Critical Review, Smollett corrected the errors of Charles
Lucas (1713-1771) concerning the fluidity of hot and cold water.®" But he also
defended Lucas’s Paracelsian opponent, John Rutty (1698-1775).*® Although
Smollett might appear to have more in common with Lucas s Galenist approach,
he evidently enjoyed dismantling his position. In a review of Lucas’s Analysis of Dr.
Rutty’s Methodical Synopsis (1757), he observed,
[Ajfter having declared that Dr. Rutty had seen his essay, and raved
against him for having neglected to quote it, he in p. 21. says that gentle­
man “seems to have read but the worst writings of the worst authors.”
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\
A P H Y S i C A L G E N T L E M A N
Now this is either a plain acknowledgment that he had unjustly accused
Dr. Rutty; or a confession that his book called The Essay on Waters-, is one
of the worst writings of the worst author.®’
Despite preparing Rutty’s reply to Lucas for the press, Smollett had already
questioned several inaccuracies in the Methodical Synopsis.^^ He probably
dicinal Mineral Waters at Llandrindod, in Radnorshire, South Wales (1756), to
ge perused "with caution.”’* Thus, while sharing Lucas’s emphasis on “simple
Water,” Smollett was progressive enough to accept that there was “no absurdity
in the “real existence of sulphur in the Bath waters.” In a review of The Nature
and Qualities of Bristol Water (1758) by A. Sutherland, Smollett explained,
“every good gentlewoman that keeps a favorite lap-dog will tell you, that a
lump of common brimstone thrown carelessly into a basin of water, will com­
municate its flavor and its virtues to that water, which water will cure Pompey
of the mange.”’"
Smollett’s basic classification of water (into hot and cold) would have ap­
peared very different from Rutty’s division into “soft and hard,” “nitrous,” sdine,
“acaline,” “calcarious,” “bituminous,” and “sulphureous.” Nevertheless, he found
Rutty’s approach “pertinent and plausible.’”* He may have simply believed that
the presence of sulfiir in the waters at Bath was not as “capable of being distincdy
exhibited” as in “the waters of Aix-la Chapelle.”« Since Rutty provided a long list
oLures performed at Aix, it is possible that Smollett’s visit there in 1765 was part
of a continuing assessment of Rutty’s methods and claims.
In the Present State of All Nations, Smollett observed that the “warm waters
at Aix were “not so much esteemed now as formerly.”’* In part, Smollett might
hpe accepted this as support for his own theories about cold water bathing, but
he also sought to address such a view. In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett
described some of his inquiries at Aix.
As I had neither hydrometer not thermometer to ascertain the weight
and warmth of this water; nor time to procure the proper utensils, to
make the preparations, and repeat the experiments necessary to exhibit
a complete analysis, I did not pretend to enter upon this process; but
contented myself with drinking, bathing, and using the douche, which
perfecdy answered my expectation, having, in eight days, almost cured
an ugly scorbutic tetter, which had for some time deprived me of the use
of my right hand.’®
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CHAPTER 1
Smollett may well have derived his “expectation” from reading the list of cures
provided by John Rutty. Unlike Rutty, however, Smollett revealed that he had
actually tried the waters himself. He observed that the water “is about the same
degree of temperature with that in the Queens Bath, at Bath in Somersetshire,”
and noted that the “steams smelled like those of sulphur” although “the bath itself
smelled strong of a lime-kiln.”^^He also seems to have carried out some kind of ex­
periment (boiling the water at home and leaving it standing all night in a bottle),
although he avoided taking these observations too far. The waters clearly invited
comparison with Bath, and Smollett’s inability to determine-whether the “active
particles” consisted of a “volatile vitriol” was probably an' attempt to participate in
the debate there.Earlier in Travels, Smollett had'discussed a “Latin manuscript”
on the baths at Rocabiliare and noted how the author “talks much of the sulphur
and the nitre which they contain,” adding, “but I apprehend their efficacy is owing
to the same volatile vitriolic principle, which characterises the waters at Bath.”’^It
is notable that Smollett never visited Rocabiliare and simply advanced the kind of
erudite conclusion derided by Anstey and also by himself. The careful portrayal of
his personal experience at Aix was therefore complicated by Smollett’s relationship
to other medical texts. In fact, it is quite possible that by the time of his own Essay
on the External Use of Water, Smollett had not tried the waters at Bath.™
In his Essay, Smollett described some “common Well-water” that had “de­
rived its reputation from the superstition of the people.” The water cured “the
most sordid and inveterate scropuluous and scorbutic ulcers” but “exhibited no
signs of mineral impregnation.” By suggesting that the cures were “undoubtedly
performed by the coldness, pressure, and moisture of those waters,” Smollett was
associating those interested in minerals with the “ignorant” people who had dedi­
cated the well to “one of the legendary saints of the Roman kalendar.”’°' In Travels
through Trance and Italy, Smollett achieved a similar conflation of ideas when he
suggested that it would have been better for the ancient Romans to have plunged
into the Tiber than use the warm bath.‘“ Such an emphasis on the ordinary quali­
ties of water was perhaps part of a wider post-Reformation movement that sought
to dissociate spas from religious belief*”^At Bath, Smollett had identified a kind
of superstitious conspiracy, the modern-day counterpart of the Roman deity Sulis
Minerva, which had presided over the waters.'”'* In a language reminiscent of the
Reformation, Smollett defended the physician Archibald Cleland from the “mean,
selfish, and malicious arts” of the Bath hospital.'”^In particular, he argued that the
“salutary Springs” were “the gift of heaven,” and should not be monopolized by the
“private claims, sordid passions, or selfish views of any particular set of men.”'”®
[26]
P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N
Notably, Charles Lucas also recommended improvements at Bath but, as Smollett
carefully pointed out, he did not acknowledge Cleland (or Smollett), from whom
he seemed “to have literally borrowed many of his most valuable hints of reforma­
tion.”'”^At Aix, Smollett’s observation that the magistrates had rendered the baths
“more useful and commodious”'”®confirmed his earlier prediction, in his Essay,
th a t^ e people of Aix la Chapelle . . . will seize the first opportunity of improv­
ing those Waters” (along Cleland’s lines).'”” Such an enlightened attitude toward
public health (which was shared by General Paterson at Nice"” and the more
“beneficent popes” in Rome)"' was part of Smollett’s Presbyterian upbringing in
the Toun’s Hospital at Glasgow."^
What mattered to Smollett were the “mechanical effects of simple Water. In
hxs Essay, he referred to the cure of “chronical Tumours about the knee, effected
by the “learned and judicious Commentator upon Boerhaaves Aphorisms,” by
“letting warm water fall from an high place, guttatim, or drop by drop, upon the
part.”"’ Possibly the temperature of this water made Smollett feel uncomfortable
since he referred in a footnote to the recommendation of cold water by Hip­
pocrates, Celsus, and Archigenes, a practice he affirmed to be “a very powerfiil
and salutary method of application.”"^ In Travels through France and Italy, Smol­
lett continued to illustrate his ideas about cold bathing. Arriving in France, for
example, with a “violent cough,” Smollett described a dejection of spirits as [he]
never felt before”;
In this situation I took a step which may appear to have been desper­
ate. I knew there was no impostume in my lungs, and I supposed the
stitches were spasmodical. I was sensible that all my complaints were
originally derived from relaxation. I therefore hired a chaise, and going
to the beach, about a league from the town, plunged into the sea without
hesitation. By this desperate remedy, I got a fresh cold in my head: but
my stitches and fever vanished the very first day; and by a daily repetition
of the bath, I have diminished my cough, strengthened my body, and
recovered my spirits."’
Smollett observed that in France, “exercise and the cold bath are never pre­
scribed.”"” However, he revealed that he had educated the locals at Nice:
The people here were much surprised when I began to bathe in the
beginning of May. They thought it very strange, that a man seemingly
consumptive should plunge into the sea, especially when the weather
[27]

C H A T E R 1
was so cold; and some of the doctors prognosticated immediate death.
But, when it was perceived that I grew better in consequence of the bath,
some of the Swiss officers tried the same experiment, and in a few days,
our example was followed by several inhabitants of Nice."^
As Smollett explained to .^ntoine Fizes, it was the “cold and pressure of the sea
water on the surface of tlie body” that had brought about his cure."® On the
one hand, this suggests how Smollett was influenced by the mechanical model of
healing adopted by followers of Boerhaave (such as John Gordon) at Glasgow."^
This model also supported Smollett’s comparison of the body, fn a review of An
Inquiry concerning the cause of the Pestilence, with “an hydraulic machine” (a notion
possibly derived through the ideas of the Scottish physician Archibald Pitcairne
[1652—1713]).'^“ But Smollett’s suggestion thit the “imagination” might also be
“concerned” in the “drop by drop” cure described by Boerhaave’s commentator
implies another approach.'^' In his review of v4 Treatise on Madnesshy'^'AWa.m Bat-
tie (1704—1776), Smollett was once again recommending the cold bath (in spite
of Battie’s disapproval) and finding the “immediate origin” of madness in “pres­
sure or impulse!’'^^ The developing interest in the nervous (not vascular) system
in the eighteenth century was also shared by Smollett’s friend, John Moore, who
described the body’s “universal sympathy.” These theories concerning stimula­
tion and “irritability” were developed by Albrecht von Haller (1708—1777) in the
1760s and provide a particularly resonant context for Smollett’s Travels}^^
In An Essay on the External Use of Water, Smollett had established a connec­
tion between the cold bath and the imagination: for example, he explained that
“if the intention is to induce a strong contraction in the solids, nothing more
effectually accomplishes that aim, than such treatment as inspires the passions of
anger and fear.” He described the following case studies:
There is upon record, a famous instance of a lady of very high rank, who
was cured of the Palsy by an affront and mortification purposely offered
to her pride, whereby she was seized with a fever of indignation.—I have
known a gendeman who was paralytic to a deplorable degree, enraged to
a perfect use of all his limbs, while his anger predominated . . . and in
some parts of this island it hath been a common practice in the Mania
and bite of the mad dog, to reinforce the power of the Cold Bath, by
shutting up the patient alone, and properly secured, in a solitary church,
where his fancy might be haunted all night long, with images of supersti­
tious terror."^
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A P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N
The final example suggests some of the medical intentions that lay behind Smol­
. lett’s other writing: following Don Quixote, Crowe suffers a similar ordeal in The
Adventures of Launcelot Greaves, and Smollett obviously intended to frighten his
readers in The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom}^ In Travels through France
and Italy, fear accounts for the improvement in health Smollett experienced after
hisJlItalian expedition,” during which he was “agitated either in mind or body, and
very often in both at the same time.”'^^Walking to Florence in the dark and the
rain and afraid all the time of “assassination,” Smollett thus enacted a strange
remedy he had noted in his Essay (this was the “cure of Wens by the application of
the .hand of a person who hath been hanged,” which could be accounted for in
no other way but from the coldness of the cadaver, the friction of the member, and
the power of the imagination”).Afterward, Smollett drank to the health of “[his]
physician Barazzi,”'^” the banker who had recommended the route.'^i a letter to
William Hunter, Smollett later wrote how he believed that his “Circulation would
have stopped of itself if it was not every now and then stimulated by the stings of
[his] Grub street Friends, who attack [him] in the public Papers, and it is likely
that Smollett understood the “stings” of the Italian publicans in the same way.'“
Like the “lady of very high rank,” Smollett, who “fired inwardly” at the “sarcasms’
of a villainous innkeeper,showed that the affronts offered to his pride resulted in
a peculiar form of “irritability.” Enraged (momentarily) to perfect health, Smollett
made use of Travels through France and Italy to narrate the extended process of a
successful cold bath.
In his review of Sutherland’s The Nature and Qualities ofBristolWater {175S),
Smollett declared that if the “practice of writing upon hydrochernia increases,
[they], the Reviewers, will certainly be seized with the hydrophobia.” His descrip­
tion of the “bewildered” critical reviewers associated an interest in water with a
kind of delusion: “we shall be obliged to undergo a course at some medicinal well,”
he wrote, “the steams of which may purge our understanding of these doubts and
film..: which they have generated.”'^^ As in his review of An Essay on the Bite of a
mad dog (1762) by Daniel Peter Laynard (1721-1802), Smollett suggested that
the cure for hydrophobia was water itself.'’^ Travels through France and Italy,
Smollett elaborated on his interests in the relationship of water to the violent pas­
sions of the mind, chiefly anger and fear.”'^®He thus presented himself as obsessed
by water: not only was he impressed, for example, by the prodigious quantities
of cool, delicious water” at Rome,'^^ he also delighted in “a body of water rush­
ing down the mountain” at Marmore.'^® Noting all kinds of rivers, streams and
aqueducts on his journey, Smollett included an inscription he had found at Nice
[29]
 \ A PHYSICAL G EN T L EM AN
C H A P T E R 1

home some of his more hobby-horsical (and “splenetic”) interests.'” It is possible

because the recipient “well deserved such a mark of respect from a people whom
that in Travels through Trance and Italy, in the same way as in the dedication to
he had assisted in two such essential articles, as their corn and their water, and
Eerdinand Count Fathom, Smollett intended to anticipate some of his own enlight-
praised a sculpture at Pisa mainly because it looked wet.‘^“ Contained within a
ened'self-criticisms. During the eighteenth century, it had become fkshionable to
narrative of both anger and fear, Smollett’s views of water were generally irritated:
turn-to nature for a cure: James Graham (1745-1794), for example, lectured on
he complained that water had been wasted at Rome;’^' at Villa Pianciana, foun­
the-medicinal qualities of earth while buried up to his neck in mud.'” Smollett is
tains served “only to encumber the ground and even at Mamore, the effect of
perhaps not quite so extreme. But following Pliny’s Namral History, water became
the waterfall was “lost, for want of a proper point of view, from which it nugfrt-—'
for him the element that was “lord over all the others.
be contemplated.”'^^At Nice, where water was listed among “the demerits,” no
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett wrote how he was “not one
one had “either spirit or understanding” to trace a stream tpJts source.'^’ Smollett’s
of those who implicitly believe in all the dogmata of physic.”'” At Bath, he had
reactions revealed the kind of hydrophobia that had-plagued the Critical Review.
successfully drunk and bathed “in diametrical opposition to the opinion of some
It is notable that Bramble, in The Expedition of-Humphry Clinker, understands his
physicians there settled.”'” When he returned from France, he provided a context
whole life in such terms: he writes, “We should sometimes increase the motion of
for'his related remarks about Antoine Fixes in TraveL Reviewing Observations on
the machine, to unclog the wheels of life-, and now and then take a plunge amidst
the Baume De Vie (1765), Smollett explained, “[It was] not enough that we are
the waves of excess, in order to case-harden the constitution.” Recasting Lau­
over-run with French foppery and French cooks, our misery must be compleated
rence Sterne’s description of Shandeism in this way. Bramble reveals the presence
wi[t]h French quackery; though, to say the truth, our own quacb are equal y
of Smollett’s own hobby-horse (Sterne had written how Shandeism forces the
expert in this mischievous art.”'«" Montpellier was well known for its medical
blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro’ its channels, and makes
school, and Smollett may have understood his attack on Fixes m be a defense
the wheels of life run long and cheerfully round”).''''' In Humphry Clinker (which
of his own Glaswegian background. Smollett thus exposed Fizes’s malpractice
included a detailed account of the conditions at Bath),'^® Bramble is attempting
in’misreading his case'«' and sending Mr. Mayne a similar (and inappropriate)
to stimulate valetudinarians who are “too sedentary, too regular, and too cautious,
prescription.’^ In a letter to William Hunter, Smollett was very clear about his
and it may be that Smollett viewed this condition as strangely hydrophobic.
opinion of Fixes: his description of him as “an old sordid Scoundrel, and an old
Charles Lucas, in his Essay on Waters, suggested that, for many physicians,
woman into the Bargain” was, however, moderated in Travels as an allusion to
water had become an “idol.”'^" Smollett, undoubtedly, would not have liked to
“the famous Mrs. Mapp, the bonesetter.’”” In 1737. William Hogarth (1697-
be placed in such company, but he may have viewed it as somehow inevitable.
1764) had featured Sarah Mapp in an engraving in The Company of Untkrtak-
Reviewing William Aphorismi de Cognoscendis & Curandis Morhis (1761),
ers that provides an interesting analogy.’^ Mapp is here one of twelve “quack
he had written how even “the most speculative practioners are forced to treat a
heads” accompanied by twelve “cane heads” contemplating a symbolic urinal.
number of alarming disorders in the trite empirical course, and to apply medicines
Her “checkie” suit perhaps finds a “mingled” verbal equivalent in Fixes s apparent
for which they cannot offer the shadow of reason. Since Smollett held a medical
affectation “to speak the Patois.”'” Such a profrision of cane heads, however, re­
degree from Aberdeen, he would have been aware of how easy it was for his em­
flects ironically on Smollett’s own cane activity: Smollett’s description of the way
pirical methods to be perceived in the “trite empirical” way.'^' The easy transition
he shook his cane over a postillion’s head suggests something of its original dis­
from “empiricism” to “empiric” (or “quack”) suggests something of the ambivalent
infecting function.'” Although Smollett presented an enlightened involvement
social status of medicine in the eighteenth century.T his is particularly clear
with medical controversy, he could not escape the Hogarthian view of popular
in Sterne’s portrayal of John Burton (1710—1771), whose specialism in man-
medicine. In The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), Smollett had pictured
midwifery was a notorious branch of quackery.'” Burton would have been known
the physicians at Bath “like so many ravens hovering about a carcase, plying
to Smollett (he had complained, for example, of being omitted from Smellies
for employment “like Scullers at Hungerford stairs.’”” Like Hogarth, Smollett
T reatise),and Smollett would not have missed how he reflected his own practice.
associated such “physical gendemen” with actors and criminals: Ferdinand, for
Notably, Smollett had met Sterne at Montpellier, a meeting that perhaps brought
[ 31 ]
[30]

CHAPTER 1
example, becomes a physician in Ferdinand Count Fathom, and Ferret, in Launce-
lot Greaves, is a “nostrum monger.”'^® Revealing “the good people of France” as
somewhat over-reliant on “un bon houillon”^^^ Smollett’s Travels through France
and Italy became an advertisement for his own nostrum; water. Although Ander­
son and Moore, in their respective “lives” of Smollett, tried to detach him from
such low company (one of the reasons for Smollett’s “failure” in medicine was his
“contempt fot the low arti of finesse, servility, and cunning”), Smollett could not
be entirely recovered.'^® Certainly, Joseph Reed (1723—1787) thought that he-t^as
“as meet an old woman, as ever wore Petticoats.”'^' It is notable, that, at the end
of Travels, Smollett felt unable to bring his narrative home. Fie concluded, “I am
now in tolerable lodging, where I shall remain a few^eeks, merely for the sake of
a little repose; then I shall gladly tempt that invidious straight which still divides
you from / Yours, &c.”'^'' The division of “you” and “Yours,” like “empiric” and
“empiricism,” reflected Smollett’s essential disunity. The “invidious straight” was
more than the English Channel: it was a view of the difficult passages of water
that separated him from himself
Natural History
Smollett might have found some consolation for his sense of alienation in the
work of Jonathan Swift (1667—1745). Like Smollett, I.emuel Gulliver had served
as a naval surgeon and witnessed the failure of his own London practice because,
he explained, “my Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad Practice
of too many among my Brethren.”'^^ Reading Gulliver’s account of his return to
England in his Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726), Smollett
might have recognized how his own journey was also incomplete."’"' Furthermore,
he might have reflected upon Gulliver’s pretensions to midwifery: in 1726, for
example, the famous Mary Tofts case (in which MaryTofts [1701—1763] claimed
to have given birth to seventeen rabbits) had generated an explicatory pamphlet by
“Lemuel Gulliver, Surgeon and Anatomist to the FQngs of Lilliput and Blefiiscu,
and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Balnibarbi” (1727)."’’ The slippery na­
ture of Gulliver’s professional standing would not have been lost on Smollett. In
fact, Smollett might have been attracted to the way Gulliver sought to uphold that
standing through an interest in natural history. Although Smollett was not himself
a member of an “Academy of Science,” his friendship with Wilham Hunter would
have involved him in the proceedings of the Royal Society. Hunter no doubt in­
tended to advance his career through his contributions to the Philosophical Trans-
[32]
A PHYSICAL G EN T L EM AN
actions and his interests in natural philosophy and collecting;"'^ Smollett s reviews
of the Philosophical Transactions in the Critical Review would have been similarly
inspired. But Smollett’s interests in natural history went beyond the establishment
of his own professional character; he also sought to explore the natural basis of
character itself In this, he foreshadowed the interests of his friend, John Moore.
TFiej:ombining interests of these Glasgow physicians are the subject of the follow­
ing section of this chapter. To begin with, I will consider Smollett’s involvement
with the Royal Society (something that was informed by Swifts satirical writing)
and then go on to show how eighteenth-century medicine appropriated other
areas of scientific inquiry.
Smollett’s ambivalent attitude toward the work of the Royal Society was
apparent in his reviews of the Society’s journal, the Philosophical Transactions. For
example, he began one review by observing how
[tjhere has been a time when the transactions of this learned society
were so highly esteemed, that every philosopher in Europe watched the
hour of their publication, with all the impatience of a witling politician
gaping after a Gazette extraordinary, now the scene is changed, and those
huge quartos are purchased as a family collection of narcotic recipes, to
lull the understanding, and dose away an hour in dreams of science.
This was not, however, Smollett’s own opinion, since he added that he was speak­
ing the “language of drolls, who ridicule and banter whatever is above their shal­
low understanding.” Apparendy, the writers of the Critical Review entertained
“notions far diflFerent of the labours of this respectable body.” Even so, from his
very first review, Smollett had been wishing that the publication “had been better
weeded before it was presented to the public.”"'® In a later article, he described
the Philosophical Transactions as a “chaos of literature,” deterring “men of talent”
from corresponding with the Society.'^® According to Smollett, the blame for this
lay with a committee established in 1752 “for the express purpose of directing the
publication.” He addressed the following questions to it:
Why the size of the publication is not reduced by authority of the soci­
ety? Why the papers intended by the secretary or committee for publica­
tion, are not submitted to the judgment of the whole body before they
are committed to the press? Why it should be imagined, that the public
utility of the society is estimated by the bulk and price of the annual
Transactions?'®”
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C H A P t 'e R 1
Smollett had thus identified an editorial problem. By suggesting a reduction “to
less than a third of its present bulk and price,”'** Smollett usurped the “author­
ity of the society” and presented the Critical Review as an alternative version of
its esteemed publication. Selecting “such articles as we apprehend will be most
instructive to our readers” while “passing over the rest in silence, as the gendest
criticism we are able to bestp[w upon them, *®^ Smollett reconstructed the Philo­
sophical Transactions along his own lines. He continued this work year after year:
for example, he provided errata (“for ‘time of greatest observation at GreenwidC
read ‘time of greatest obscuration', &c”),'*^ suggested articles thapwo'uld be more
useful printed independendy,'*^ pointed out those that shotild have been pub­
lished twenty years ago,'*’ and noted others that were, he wrote, “so litde deserving
of a place in the Philosophical Transactions, that We will not even condescend to
mention their titles in the Critical Review" (a much more philosophical publica­
tion).'*® The “neglect” of the gentlemen at the Royal Society,'*^ along with the shift
to a less selective style of reviewing by the Critical Review in 1764 (when Smollett
was in France),'** testified to the difficulty of what Smollett was trying to achieve.
Some of the problems Smollett experienced while reading the Philosophi­
cal Transactions are clear from his review of an essay on migrating swallows by
the naturalist Peter Collinson (1694-1768). Although he claimed to agree with
Collinson (that “the swallow is actually a bird of passage”), Smollett could not
believe that “he intended this crude article for any other purpose than a burlesque
on the labours of the learned body of which he is a member.”'*" Since this article
appeared first in the “present collection,” Smollett perhaps found that his reading
of the entire volume had been affected: the article was, he wrote, “alone sufficient
to render all the labours of a respectable community ridiculous.” Smollett had
been similarly troubled while reviewing Elizabeth Nihell s A Treatise on the Art of
Midwifery (1760). Punning on Nihell’s name (for “Everybody knows that nihil
signifies nothing), Smollett was led into a doubt that “hath this instant struck our
imagination”: it was possible, he wrote, that the author may have intended a “hum
in the character of No-thing" since, “if we attempt to understand this treatise seri­
ously, we must reject it by the lump, as the incoherent effusion of a lunatic, not
lucid.”'"* The possibility that the articles in the Philosophical Transactions were not
“serious” (however ironically Smollett may have intended this) no doubt destabi­
lized his view of scientific writing.
The few papers in pure geometry and mechanics form almost the only
scientific part of our modern transactions; for as to the absurd medley
of communications in natural philosophy, the prolix accounts of mete-
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A P H Y S I C A L G E N T L E M A N
ors, thunder-storms, earthquakes, lightning, comets, &c. &c. &c. they
scarce deserve the name of philosophical, or indeed, the perusal of any
man who is not as much at leisure as these idle correspondents of the
society.'"'
Such subjects were better read about in newspapers than in the Philosophical Traw-
dciio^P^ Elsewhere, Smollett was dismissive of the many accounts of agitations
of bodies of water and noted, for example, that there was not much “philosophical
instruction to be dug” from “a simple account of a peat-pit near Newbury in Berk­
shire.”'"* He also allowed his customary closing remark on the catalogs of plants
from the “Chelsea-garden” to gently burlesque itself: one catalog had apparently
been “presented to the Royal Society, by the worshipful company of apothecaries,
for the year 1756, pursuant to the direction of Sir Hans Sloane, baronet, med. reg.
&c., byjohn Wilmer, M.D. clariss. soc. pharm. Lond. soc. hort. Chels. praefect.
& prelect, botan.”'"'* It was perhaps inevitable that Smollett should deny having
written a “complete natural history” in Travels through France and Italy, his claim
that he found himself “altogether unequal to the task” was not without a little
ambiguity of its own.'"’
In spite of Smollett’s opinion, Louis Martz has suggested that the thirteenth
letter of Travels through France and Italy was “almost equivalent to the opening
chapter of a ‘Natural History.’”'"® Certainly, Smollett’s list of plants in the “gar­
den” around Nice,'"" his account of the “culture of silkworms,”'"* his excursion
to measure an amphitheater with packthread,'"" and his somewhat contradictory
suggestion for rendering seawater “potable”™ resembled subjects that had been
derided in his articles on the Philosophical Transactions. Smollett’s attempt to study
the weather at Nice had a similar basis. In his first review of the Philosophical
Transactions, Smollett had noted.
In the twelfth article we are given to understand, by John Canton, A.M.
and Henry Miles, D.D. that on the eighth and ninth days of February,
1755, the weather was cold in Spital-square London, and at Tooting in
Surry. This might have remained a secret to the end of time, had not
those literati kept a register of their thermometers.
Smollett’s inclusion of “A Register of the Weather” in Travels through France and
Italy (complete with details about the two thermometers he had used) revealed
how he had followed what he had earlier called “one of the easiest ways we know
of maintaining the character of a philosopher.”™ Even after his return from
France, Smollett was poking ftm at tables of the weather. In the Critical Review,
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C H A P T E R 1
he observed, “the rain in this part of Cornwal exceeded that at Carlisle half an
inch —A very important circumstance, truly! though, we think, scarce worthy
to be perpetuated in the Philosophical Transactions!”^”’ Smollett had kept his
weather register with “all possible care and attention.” He noted, “[From] a perusal
of it, you will see that there is less rain and wind at Nice, than in any other part
of the world that I know.”^”^,But Smollett is not being ironic here. He had praised
the weather register of Richard Brooke, included in the Philosophical Transac­
tions, since some of “that gentleman’s observations on the epidemic^ distempers
consequent on the changes of the air well deserve the medical readers perusal.
Like Montesquieu (1689-1755). Smollett attempted to tie his observations on the
weather with health:
Another advantage I have reaped from this climate is my being, in a great
measure, delivered from a slow fever which used to hang about me, and
render life a burthen. Neither am I so apt to catch cold as I used to be in
England and France; and the colds 1 do catch are not of the same com
tinuance and consequence, as those to which 1 was formerly subject.^
In another place, Smollett associated a “violent cold” with the “vernal equinox”
and combined observations on his body, some mountains and the weaker m
one sentence: “As the heat increases, the humours of the body are rarefied, and,
of consequence, the pores of the skin are opened; while the east wind sweeping
over the Alps and Appenines, covered with snow, continues surprisingly sharp
and penetrating.”^^ Smollett seems to have perceived the “sort of natural History
of Nice, with [his] Remarks upon that climate and a Register of the weatheF’ as
the most “useful” part of his book.^“®But it was also riddled with “philosophical
difficulties. Montesquieu had shown that climate was related to temperament by
laying ice on an animal’s tongue;^”’ Smollett revealed that he was afraid of eating
a sorbette.^'” The “character of a philosopher” in Travels through France and Italy
could not altogether escape burlesque.
The biographer o f ’William Hunter, Samuel Foart Simmons (1750-1815],
closed his “Memoir” of Smollett’s friend by going back “to describe the origin and
progress of Dr. Hunter’s Museum, without some account of which the history
of his life would be very incomplete.”^” Hunter’s interests in natural history and
collecting predated the formation of this museum in 1770 (and his election to Ae
Royal Society in 1767). In a letter to Hunter from Boulogne, Smollett alluded
to his book collection: “You say you should be glad to have every curious Book
on the face of the Earth,” he wrote, “but I should be afraid of sending you some
[36]
A PHYSICAL GEN TLEM AN
Books which you may have already.”^” In another letter, he referred to Hunters
collection of medical specimens: noting the teeth of the people of Nice, he added,
“I wish I could send you a Head, but I am afraid I shall find no opportunity.”
In the same letter, Smollett gave Hunter a potted version of his "natural history”
at Nice, perhaps providing the descriptions of “Roses. Jonquills, Ranunculas and
Anemoiries” for Hunter’s growing herbarium.^'’ Since Smollett incorporated parts
of these letters in Travels through France and Italy,^^^ it is important to consider
hnw Hunter might have influenced his text. In 1768, Hunter became “Professor
of Anatomy” at the Royal Academy but he had previously lectured to the “incor­
porated society of Painters, at their Rooms in St. Martin’s Lane, upon a subject ex­
ecuted at Tyburn.”^'’ Smollett’s anatomical descriptions of sculptures (for example,
at Rome, where “the course of the muscles called lonpssimi dorsi, are so naturally
marked and tenderly executed”)^'” perhaps referred to the plaster-casK Hunter
made of his “subjects,” as well as his interest in art more generally.^'^ It is possible
that Hunter’s collection, which extended to insects, corals, coins, and paintings,
also informed Smollett’s writing: Smollett described, somewhat vaguely, the “flies,
fleas, and bugs” at Nice, especially the '^couzins" and the “mischievous” moths,='‘®
as well as the samphire along the coast at Boulogne,” ®the bank of St. George at
Genoa,“" and a variety of gold, silver, and copper coins in Tuscany and Rome.^”
It would have been impossible for Smollett to afford the kind of collection that
Hunter was projecting (it finally included specimens from Queen Charlotte
[1744_1818], John Fothergill [1712-1780], and the Cook voyages),^" although
he may not have wanted one (bearing in mind his opinion of some remarks on a
“Samnite-Eutrascan coin” by “Mr. Swinton”).^’ Nevertheless, Hunters successful
combination of medicine and natural history set a model for Smollett to follow.
Both had shared an early friendship with the physician-collector James Douglas;^^^
while Hunter inherited Douglas’s collection of natural curiosities, Smollett set
about writing his own.
The interests of Hunter and Smollett in natural history reflected a wider
movement in eighteenth-century medicine. Physicians in Edinburgh, for ex­
ample, turned to the language of natural philosophy to secure their ambiguous
social status.^’ William’s brother John also enjoyed a high reputation for trans­
forming surgery into a Baconian science.^” William had published three papers
on natural history by the time of Smollett’s death; something of the status he had
achieved is indicated by a painting by Johann Zofiany (1733-1810), who placed
him, standing next to Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), in the center of the Royal
Academy’s “life school.”"^^ But the close relationship of medicine with systems
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 A PHYSI CAL G ENT L EM AN
C H A P T ER 1

the “prejudices” of his fellow physicians;^^^ he also followed Smollett by writing

of classification, experimental methods, and mathematical theories bad other
A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany (1779) and A
effects. Contact with the taxonomic schemes of Carolus Linnaeus (1707 177 ),
View of Society and Manners in Italy (1781). both containing “Anecdotes relating to
for example, renewed the attempts of physicians to classify disease.^^' Smollett s
some Eminent Characters?^^^
register of the weather, itself an example of a statistical approach to medicine,
Early reviews of Travels through France and Italy emphasized the authors
perhaps contributed to these debates by suggesting the unitary nature of illness
“thorough'knowledge of mankind.” For example, the London Magazine retitled the
(in this theory, illness could bSe calibrated like a thermometer between extremes
seventh letter of the Travels as “on the characters of the French people” and cited
of stimulation and understimulation).Smollett had also been impressed
it in full. Other extracts, focusing mainly on the “French nation, were indexed
John Pringle’s Observations on the Diseases of the Army, which promoted-the
on the Londons tide page as “Character of the Burghers &c. &c. of Boulogne,”
“more remote or general causes” of disease, “namely, such as depend upon the
“Character and Manners of the Noblesse of Boulogne, and Character of the
air. diet, and other circumstances, usually comprehende4 under the head of the
French Military Officers.”^^^Smollett’s text also provoked interest about the “low­
Non-naturalsP^^ Such a view may have informed Smollett’s progress through
ness” of some of its examples.^^" It is possible that John Moore, traveling across
France and Italy: for example, he was surprised to find that Lyons was “counted
France and Italy a few years later, remembered and defended the travels of his
a healthy place.’’^^' and suggested that the air of Nice was “agreeable to the
friend:
constitution of those who labour under disorders arising from weak nerves, ob­
structed perspiration, relaxed fibres, a viscidity of lymph, and a languid circula­ A knowledge of the characters of men, as they appear varied in different
tion” (although it possibly had “scorbutical” side effects).^” In this way, Smollett situations and countries;—the study of human nature indeed in all its
widened his medical gaze to include the more “remote” influences on the health forms and modifications, is highly interesting to the mind, and worthy
of eighteenth-century society.^” j«r-TTAt> the attention of the greatest man. This is not to be perfecdy attained in
On the title page of Travels through France and Italy, Smollett listed CHAK- courts and palaces. The investigator of nature must visit her in humbler
ACTER” along with his advertisement for “A Register of the Weather” and “a par­ life, and put himself on a level with the men whom he wishes to know.^^’
ticular DESCRIPTION of the TOWN, TERRITORY, and CLIMATE of NICE.”
Moore’s interest in the “manners and conversation of merchants and manufactur­
In doing so, Smollett might have recalled the words of William Smellie, who had
ers” at Lyons, or his narration of the story of a tobbacconist at Frankfurt who “had
written that an “accoucheur” should “be endued with a namral sagacity, resolu­
accumulated a prodigious fortune by making and selling snuff, reflected Smol­
tion, and prudence; together with that humanity which adorns the owner, an
lett’s involvement with the “merchants” and “artisans at Nice^'*^ and the galley
never fails of being agreeable to the distressed patient.”^^^Smollett thus advertised
slaves at Marseilles,^**^ as well as a variety of innkeepers and postillions. The pres­
an account of his own medical character (before leaving for France, he had written
ence of Glasgow in such an approach was perhaps revealed hy Moore’s description
that he was “now ambitious of nothing so much as of dying with die Character
of Geneva, a city in which it was apparendy “not uncommon to find mechanics in
of an honest man”).^^’ But Smollett no doubt also hoped to signal his professional
the intervals of their labour amusing themselves with the works of Locke, Mon­
understanding of “character.” John Moore was later to write, in Medical Sketches
tesquieu, Newton, and other productions of the same kind.”^'^^ Smollett may not
(1786), how physicians should be “men of real penetration, who understand char­
have quite found Glasgow at Nice, but it is likely that Moore understood Travels
acter” (not simply adopt it), and Smollett had a lot in common with his friend. For
through France and Italy in precisely that context.
Moore, it was the “uncertain and conjectural” nature of medicine that led to the
Smollett seems to have shared Moore’s view that “the real character of a
need for such discrimination: only the physician who truly understood character
people can only be discovered by living among them on a familiar footing, and for
could recognize the “ostentatious and superficial.”^^^In Traveb through France and
a considerable time.”^'*^In Florence, he speculated how he would “walk every day
Italy, Smollett revealed himself to be such a physician. He also showed that a study
in the gallery,” in order to “become acquainted with the faces of all the remarkable
of character was most properly part of his interests in natural philosophy. In Medi­
personages, male and female, of antiquity, and even be able to trace their differ-
cal Sketches, Moore went on to suggest some of the social and physical causes for

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CHAPTER 1
ent characters from the expression of their features.”^"*^He also sought to correct
the French view, based on a cursory relationship with (“silly”) travelers, that the
English were “immensely rich and incredibly generous Moore later clarified
Smollett’s interests by explaining that “in no nation are the education, sentiments,
and pursuits of those who travel so different from those of the people who remain
at home.” According to Moqfre, the people who were left at home were generally
younger brothers who followed “commerce” and manufactures, or farming ,
those who traveled were the “idle men of fortune responsible for the imposi­
tions Smollett suflFered.^“®Siding firmly with the (enlightened) younger brothers,
Smollett presented a corrective, in Travels through France <tnd Italy, to the view of
English travelers. He also suggested that the French people had simply “affected”
these beliefs for their own ends.«“ In this way, Smollett hinted that his own beliefe
might be similarly affected. In the London Magazine, Smolletts reasons were made
dear: “This publication,” it explained, referring to Smollett’s Travels, “may be of
infinite service to our country, by giving some check to the follies of our Apes,
male and female of the French fashions and politeness, with whom we are over
run.”“ ' Smollett’s adoption of certain beliefs about the French was thus inspired
by other English travelers. In Italy, he had spotted “a number of raw boys, whom
Britain seemed to have poured forth on purpose to bring her national character
into contempt”:"” ^hese were consistently pinpointed by the reviews as Smollett’s
particular target."”
David Hume began his essay “Of National Characters (1748) by remarking
that the “ v u lg a r are apt to carry all national characters to extremes.”"’^An unknown
reviewer of Smollett’s Travels in the Critical Review clearly agreed. Observing the
“partiality with which everything relating to France and Frenchmen is commonly
exhibited,” the reviewer provided this hopefiJ analysis:
The English, however, with great good-nature, have excellent sense; they
are open to conviction, and may be reasoned out of their prejudices.
The work before us is calculated for that purpose: it is formed upon no
hypothesis, but experiment. A man of sense, divested of partiality, rea­
soning with freedom and candour upon every occurence, and without
the smallest temptation to be biassed, exhibits a naked view of objects
and characters, and such a view as must endear England to Englishmen:
In short, we hazard nothing in saying, that a work of this kind does
more service to Great Britain than fifty acts of parliament for prohibit­
ing French fripperies and foreign commodities, or even forbidding the
exportation of fools, fops, and coxcombs."^®
[ 4 0 ]
A PHYSI CAL GENT L EMAN
Both Moore and Smollett were at pains to show the enlightened qualities of their
texts. Noting that travelers were “too apt to form, hasty, and for the most part,
unfavourable opinions of national characters,” Moore showed how his idea of
the Italians differed from the norm."” In France, he pointed out that there were
“exceptions to these, as to all general remarks on the manners and character of any
natiorr,’iand that it would have been “almost superfluous to observe, that there are a
great many people in France, who think in a very different manner from that which
I have just mentioned in my’last.”"” Similarly, Smollett had explained, “When I
talk of the French nation, I must again except a great number of individuals, from
the general censure.”"” He had also qualified his remarks on Italian women (the
“most haughty, insolent, capricious and revengeful females on the face of the earth”)
by noting that he did not, in this case, pretend “to judge of the national character,
from [his] own observation.”"” In this way, Smollett and Moore demonstrated
how the English people might be “reasoned out of their prejudices : It would be
equally absurd,” Smollett noted, “to suppose the French are a nation of philoso­
phers, because France has given birth to a Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur,
and a Buffon.”"® Of course, such remarks often went unnoticed. This was certainly
the case for Philip Hiicknesse (1719-1792), who attacked Smollett for his “real
incapacity to give an account of people with whom he never eat or conversed.
Notably, the Critical Review replied to Thicknesse by pointing out his own (anti-
Scottish) prejudices and asking, “Can we suppose any one so much of a madman as
to doubt there are to be found in France, persons distinguished for merit, piety, and
virtue?”"” Smollett was interested in the “national character” of Britain not France;
the exceptions to his somewhat “extreme views could always be taken for granted.
Smollett perhaps hoped to be seen as the “Man of Sense that Hume had
described."” But even Moore had his doubts. Reflecting on his meeting with
Smollett in Paris in 1750, Moore wrote.
It must be acknowledged, that Dr. Smollett had imbibed some of the
common English prejudices against the French, of which he never got
entirely free. He never attained the power of speaking their language
with facility, which prevented him from mixing in their society, and
deciding, from his own observation, on their mutual character."”
Moore’s understanding of Smollett’s practice might have underwritten his account
of an ideal traveler in A View of Society and Manners of Italy. A traveler, he sug­
gested, “will gradually improve in the knowledge of character, not of Englishmen
only, but of men in general”; he continued.
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C H A P T ER 1

In his discussion of national characters, Hume had emphasized moral

[H]e will perceive how odious those travellers make themselves, who
causes.”^^®By this, Hume meant social factors such as “the nature of the govern­
laugh at the religion, ridicule the customs, and insult the police of the
ment.” Following Hume, Smollett found that the arbitrary government of France
countries through which they pass, and who never fail to insinuate to the
was reflected at all levels of society.^^ Moore suggested a similar relationship when
inhabitants that they are all slaves and bigots. Such bold Britons we have
he noted that the national character of the French could “supply the deficiencies,
sometimes met with, fighting their way through Europe, who, by their
and eorrect' the errors, of the government.”^^* But Smollett and Moore departed
continual broils and dis|>utes, would lead one to imagine that the angel
from Hume in their view of “physical causes. Hume had been quite clear: As to
of the Lord had pronounced on each of them the same denunciation ^_
physical causes" he wrote, “I am inclined to doubt altogether of their operation in
which he did on Ishmael the Son of Abraham, by his handmaid Hagar.
this particular; nor do I think, that men owe anything of their temper or genius to
"And he will be a wild man, and his hand will be against every-riian, and
the air, food, or climate.”^^’ His observation that “people in the northern regions
every man’s hand against him. ^ have a greater inclination to strong liquors, and those in the southern to love
’and women,” provided the only example of possible physical causes (but Hume
Moore thus alluded to Thicknesse’s description of Smollett’s Traveb as “Quar­
dismissed the observation itself as inaccurate).^*® Smollett seems to have followed
rels through France and Italy”; he similarly questioned the "experimental” basis
Montesquieu in relating temperament and climate;^*' his list of vegetables and
of Smollett’s writing.^*^ But Moore’s reliance on a biblical precedent to explain
fruits at Nice,“ ^along with his observation that a Frenchman “eats three times the
the concept of a “bold Briton” showed how his own approach to character
quantity of bread that satisfies a native of England,”'*’ confirm his interest in other
was based on "hypothesis.”^^ In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett had
“physical causes.”'*’* Smollett’s investigations into the external use of water also
demonstrated how stock characters informed the understanding. In his account
posited an “irritable” relationship between body and mind. For Hume, the pro­
of the “petit maitre” in France, for example, Smollett revealed his predictive (or
pensity to company” caused “like passions and inclinations to run, as it were, by
typological) qualities: “If a Frenchman is admitted into your family,” he wrote,
contagion, through the whole club or knot of companions”:'*’ Smollett, however,
“and distinguished by repeated marb of your friendship and regard, the first
modified this exclusively social view. Both Thicknesse and Moore seem to have
return he makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is hand­
agreed with Robert Anderson’s view of Smollett’s Travels as “a melancholy proof
some; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. Smollett similarly made
of the influence of bodily distemper over the best disposition.”'*® More recendy,
the following predictions: “If there were five hundred dishes at table, a French­
the book has been described as Smollett’s “most notorious account of the body.
man will eat of all of them, and then complain he had no appetite,”^® and “A
Although Hume may have considered Smollett’s character to have a “moral cause”
Frenchman will sooner part with his religion than with his hair, which, indeed,
(George Cheyne, after all, implied this in the term “English malady”), his own
no consideration will induce him to forgo.”^^° In some ways, Smollett described
image of a “contagion of manners” suggested a more subde physiology.'**
a “typological fable,” in which he may have conceived of himself as a “type” of
Ihe metaphor of “contagion” used by Hume reveals how he conceived of so­
Ishmael or Hogarthian quack.^^' Rather than accepting the truth of such images,
cial influences. Hume was particularly interested in how the mind formed certain
Smollett may have used them (like Hogarth) to show how they constituted his
ideas (such as the idea of a vacuum) and that his application of the langu^e of
understanding of the world.^^^ Smollett thereby resembled another “enlightened”
illness (to a social science) betrayed these concerns.'*® In effect, Hume was hinting
physician: Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). Mandeville’s portrayal of a society
that concepts were inscribed by the experience of the body. In Glasgow, the profes­
based on pride, articulated through some fairly stylized caricatures of his own
sor of moral philosophy Thomas Reid would later describe some of the analogies
(such as “skilful politicians”), had provoked an outcry.^^^ Mandeville claimed that
between body and mind and their effect upon language (such as the equation of
he was misunderstood, adding, “nothing would more clearly demonstrate the
light and seeing with knowledge and knowing);'®® more recent cognitive theories
Falsity of my Notions, than that the generality of the People should fall in with
have confirmed that thought is “embodied.”'®’ Foreshadowing these develop­
them.”^^^Strangely silent about the opposition to Travels through France and Italy,
ments, Smollett also implied that his understanding of certain characters derived
Smollett may well have agreed.^”
[ 43 ]
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 A PHYSI CAL GENT L EMAN
C H A P T ER 1

must therefore be contented with such imperfect intelligence as my op­

from his physical interaction w ith them . In doing so, he turned from typology
portunities can afford.^"®
in its biblical sense to m ore “enlightened” theories o f classification. D raw ing partly
on the approach o f John Locke (who did n o t “m eddle w ith the Physical Consid­ Smollett’s progress through “soil,” “hem p, vegetables, silk-worms, and
eration o f the m ind”),^’^ Smollett showed th at his categories were structured by “grapes”^™ thus revealed som ething o f Buffon’s “em bodied” theory.^'" U nlike Lin­
an orientational m etaphor.^» A t the beginning o f Travels through France and Italy, naeus, Buffon understood hum an beings to be one species, diversified primarily
SmoUett presented himself,hs “down”: he was “persecuted,” “overwhelmed, and through geography and climate (“physical causes” in w hich Smollett was particu­
com m anded to write (Smollett had begun by recalling, “You laid your larly interested) .5“ A lthough Smollett m ight have perceived th at certain French
upon me”) H e also seems to have understood him self as “low-spirited -with a people resembled “baboons, ” or even Yahoos, he w ould have perhaps w anted
“stooping posture” and “sunk” pulse.^’^ In contrast (and as a c o r o lk f y ) > e French to resist (as did Lemuel Gulliver an d Buffon himself) the logical conclusion that
were conceived as “up”: they “preserve a certain ascendancy over us, Smollett they could degenerate into apes. Nevertheless, like his fellow Scottish physicians,
„ p U „ . d , a„d ara W k a b k fo , a na.und In “ Smollett continued to narrow the Cartesian divide. H is account o f his travels may
believed themselves “polished above the natives o f any other country, presente have been b oth irritated and irritating, b u t it was also a form o f “empiricism that
“High-flown professions o f friendship”^™ and were n ot “susceptible o f deep im ­ m ade him m ost fully “a physical gentleman.”
pressions.”™'Thomas Reidwould later w rite th at the term s “h ig h an d low were
“applied to m en as well as to material objects”; it is such a sense o f m ateridity that
inform ed Smollett’s observations. Given his “low” position, it was "^aturd A at he
should associate the French w ith images o f “force”™^ and im position. Smol­
lett’s category o f the “French people” could therefore include a best example (a
quack as a symbol o f false authority) since it derived from his bodily experience in
the world he had observed. r
U nderlying Smollett’s thoughts about character were some o f the ideas ot
Georges-Louis Leclerc, com te de Buffon (whom Smollett had listed am ong e
“philosophers” o f France).™^ In his natural history, Buffon (1707-1788 had
explained th a t an observer “viendra a juger les objets de I’Histoire Naturelle par
les rapports qu’ils auront avec lui.” H e continued, “Ceux qui lui seront les plus
necessaires, les plus utiles, tiendront le premier rang, par exemple, .1 donnera la
preference dans I’ordre des animaux au cheval, au chien, au boeuf, &c. & il con-
L i t r a tofijours m ieux ceux qui lui feront les plus familiers.”™« Irs Travels through
France and Italy, Sm ollett seemed to distance him self from other (more abstract)
systems o f classification (such as that developed by Linnaeus).™" Contem plating
his own “natural history” o f Nice, Smollett explained,

I have no books to direct my inquiries. I can find no person capable of

giving me the least information or assistance; and I am strangely puzzled
by the barbarous names they give to many different species, the descrip­
tions of whichI have read under other appelations; and which, as I have
never seen them before, I cannot pretend to distinguish by the eye. You

[44]
 2
A G O O D C RI T I C

Tlius, though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly, if not en­
tirely the same in all men; yet few are qualified to give judgment on any
work of art, or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty.
—David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” {Essays, 241)

D.......................
lett’s translation of Don Quixote. In his essay Of the Standard of Taste (1757),
Hume retold the story of Sancho’s hereditary “judgment in wine.’ * Two of San-
cho’s kinsmen had been “called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was
supposed excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of them detected a
small taste of leather” in the wine; the other distinguished “a taste of iron.” Both
critics were “ridiculed for their judgment until the hogshead was emptied and
“there was found at the bottom, an old key with a leathern thong tied to it.
For Hume, it was the “great resemblance between mental and bodily taste that
allowed him to interpret this story. In the first place, it showed that there were
“certain qualities in objects” that produced “particular feelings” in people (such
as a sensation of sweetness or bitterness). The notion that there might be a cer­
tain quality” corresponding to the idea of beauty will be discussed in the second
section of this chapter. Smollett’s interests in such “physical causes” reflected the
concerns of Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid (both, in their turn, professors
of moral philosophy at Glasgow). As Hume noted, the fact that a key with a

I leathern thong” could be produced meant that it was easy to silence the bad
critic, who might always insist upon his particular sentiment, and refuse to submit
to his antagonist.” However, Hume also observed that it was not always possible

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C H A P T E R 2
to empty the metaphotical hogshead of wine. In such cases, the proWem of iden­
tifying a “good critic” became both more important and more difficult. In his
articles for the Critical Review, and also in Travels through France and Italy, Smol­
lett intended to demonstrate that he was one of the “few” whose “judgment an
“sentiment” could be trusted. His efforts responded to the work of Adam Smith,
whose theory of an “impartial spectator” will be discussed in the third section of
this chapter. Hume emphasized the importance of experience in qualifying a crjqc- -
“to pronounce an opinion with regard to any object presented to him ; to begin
with, I will therefore assess Smollett’s involvement in the growth of the hne arts
at Glasgow.
Smollett and the Fi ne Ar t s
In 1774, Thomas Reid presented a series of lectures on the fine arts to students at
the University of Glasgow. Accepting that “all the objects of human ^ovdedge
may be divided into two kinds: those of body and those of mind, Reid began
by dividing the “arts and sciences” into “two great branches, concerning t mgs
material and immaterial.”^Sciences such as logic were thus directed at the mind,
and astronomy, medicine, and physics were directed at the body. Notably, all
the arts of human life” derived from and addressed the body. Reid then observed
another division: “But there is a third branch under which are comprehended
music, poetry, painting, eloquence, dramatic teptesentations, &c. They are m ^
immediate state between the two; they are more connected with matter than the
former, and more with mind than the latter.” The “third branch” thus contained
what Reid called the “fine arts.” Since the fine arts held a “middle state, their
principles were not to be found in “sciences which relate to mind or body, but
from the connection which subsists between them.” Reid therefore made use
of the concept to explore the relationship of two “unlike” systems On the one
hand, this could be seen as an anticipation of the Critique of Judgment { 79 )
by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804),'* but there is also a more immediate inference.
When Reid associated “all the arts” with the body, he was working with a defini­
tion of “art” that incotporated both “craft” and “artisan.”^ He therefore reflected
something of the commercial environment in which he lectured. In the 1760s
the Univetsity of Glasgow had been increasingly criticized for being out of touch
with the merchants who surrounded it.« Reid’s concept of the “fine arts niay
have provided a way of connecting not only body and mind but also the unh e
systems of university and town.
[48]
A GOOD CRITIC
In some respects, Reid’s concept of the the fine arts was not new to Glasgow.
In 1753, Robert Foulis had established a “School for the Art of Design” with
official approval from the university.^ Foulis used the school to provide illustra­
tions for his books (he had been appointed printer to the university in 1743)
and thereby equated “material” forms of beauty with “immaterial” knowledge.*
Although the school was later seen as “an academy for Painting and Sculpture,”
its main emphases remained the “practical” arts of drawing and engraving (a sales
catalog of 1776, for example, listed “ornaments” for use by Ghasers, Stuccomen
and Goldsmiths” alongside prints and copies of paintings).** The development of
the “academy” was in fact largely due to the financial support of the town, and its
students seem to have been paid a wage commensurate with mechanical employ­
ment.”'* The kind of “middle state” demonstrated by Foulis’s school was reflected
in the proceedings of the Glasgow Literary Society (established in 1752). Pre­
dominantly a university club, its members also included Foulis and a number of
city merchants." It is notable that the fine arts were discussed by this society more
than any othet subject;'^ Reid probably presented a form of his Lectures there in
the 1770s.'^ In 1755, just a couple of years after Foulis had begun his academy, the
society discussed James Moor’s essay “On the Influence of Philosophy upon the
Fine Arts.” Moor (1712-1779) was a professor of Greek at Glasgow and his essay
celebrated Euripides as “the philosopher of the theatre,” as well as Socrates, who
was really “the secret cause of this useful co-operation of Philosophy and Poetry.
For Moor, the theater and poetry were “arts” in the Greek sense of crafts and his
interest was in what “advantage” philosophy might make of them. ^He began his
essay by speculating upon the role of philosophy in regard to the arts of poetry,
painting and music”: “If, therefore. Philosophy had the choice what impressions
they shall make, and the full direction of these powerful movers of the human
soul, then would the triumph of the fine arts be, indeed, complete, and, [tic] what
a noble triumph this would be, one may easily imagine. For Moor, as for Reid,
the “triumph of the fine arts” involved some kind of mediation between mind and
body. Moor also seems to have shared with Robert Foulis (whose project he might
have been promoting) a conception of the fine arts as crafts that are properly
directed by “philosophy” or “science,” or under the auspices of the university itself.
Smollett’s views on fine art are certainly not as thought out as those of
Thomas Reid. There are, however, good reasons for bringing them together.
Smollett’s medical interests provided him with a similar background in the physi­
ology of perception and the relationship of body and mind.'^ His discussion of
the fine arts in Travels through France and Italy thus reflected Reid’s approach in
[49]
 A G O O D C R I T I C

c h a p t e r 2

issue. Smith had submitted a review of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the EnglEh
his lectures. He also seems to have known Robert Foulis and approved of his Language. His criticisms, based on its lack of systematic ordering, found their
“academy.”'®In the Critical Review^ Smollett’s account of an edition of the Iliad complement in his later praise of the “new French Encyclopedia.”3» Such concerns
(1757) by James Moor and George Muirhead (1715-1773) (and published by about language and translation probably originated in the lecture series Smith was
Foulis) gave more space to the encouragement of a proposed edition of Plato than
giving at the time in Glasgow, and their expression in the Edinburgh Review ytas
it did to Horner.'^ Smollett’s display of insider information (he knew that “col­ to be, short-lived.^' Nevertheless, Smollett was incorporating these interests into
lations of all the MSS. of Platfo” had been procured from “the libraries at Rome, his journalistic projects in London, even going so far as to run an eighteen-month
Paris, and Vienna”) and his suggestion that Robert Simson should assist with
“lecture” series on the “Belles Lettres.”
Plato’s geometry indicate how he sought to present himself as part of Glasgow Ihe series of articles titled “On the study of the Belles Lettres” appeared
society.^ Smollett’s articles on sculpture, painting, and engraving^supported such
in the British Magazine between July 1761 and January 1763.“ They were
an ambition. Although Smollett’s plans for an English Academy have been seen
probably written by Oliver Goldsmith (ca. 1730-1774),“ although, as Samuel
as the origin of the Critical R e v ie w ,it is likely that Smollett also remembered Richardson (1689-1761) pointed out in an early letter to the magazine, Smol­
the Literary Society at Glasgow. Soon after establishing his journal, for example, lett was “to be supposed accountable” for every article that appeared.’ The
Smollett attempted to widen his circle of contributors to include university
essays share some characteristics with Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles
academics.^ Smollett’s attempt failed, but he was able to praise Fouhs’s edition
Lettres (transcribed by a student in 1762-1763): this can be discerned in the
of Homer for precisely this union of university and town: “The public will now
general connection between aesthetics and ethics, as well as in the more par­
learn to distinguish between the productions of the university-press under the
ticular applications of principles of “sympathy” or historical method.” Even
sanction of the society, and the lame-school books (particularly in Greek) which
though Goldsmith separated “poetry and eloquence” from “painting, sculpture,
some presses in Glasgow have sent abroad, with a negligence, that but very ill
music, and architecture,” which “cannot be perfectly attained without long
suited with the beauty and elegance of their paper and print.”''^ By adding his
practice of manual operation,”” his practice (like Smith’s) implied that he
own sanction to the production, Smollett shared in the “sanction of the society
considered “polite literature” to be a similar craft.” Smith’s lectures may not
at Glasgow. Such connections with the “fine arts” in Scotland were pursued by
have been an immediate influence on the “Belles Lettres” series (Smollett and
Smollett in a number of other ways. Goldsmith would have been unaware of their exact contents); however, it is
The first issue of the Critical Review was published a month late in March
possible that Smollett hoped to draw attention to them. In other
1756 It coincided with the publication in Edinburgh of the second (and final)
British Magazine reflected Smith’s interest in the relationship of the arts and
issue of the Edinburgh Review?^ Smollett may well have had some close links with
the mind. Creative works appeared side by side with theoretical essays, reviews,
this journal. In 1753, while in Scotland, he had visited Alexander Garlyle, whose
and illustrations.” The article that Richardson happily assigned to Smollett,
circle of friends included members of the “Select Society” responsible for the Ed­
for example, compared the music of Pergolesi to Raphael and Seneca.” Smith
inburgh Review}^ Later, Garlyle would help to solicit contributions to the Critical
no doubt would have been pleased with such comparisons because they were
Review from the same circles.^^ In 1756, Adam Smith’s letter to “the Authors of the
translated freely from the fifth volume of the Encyclopedie (1755).'“’ Notably,
Edinburgh Review" proposed “in the name of several of [their] readers” (undoubt­
the British Magazine was well received in France (articles were reprinted regu­
edly including Carlyle) that its plan should be “enlarged.”''^The proposals reflected
larly in Journal encyclopedique [1756-1793]) and it seems to have^had some
the aims of the new Critical Review: an extension of coverage to the literature of
kind of “special relationship” with the Scots Magazine in Edinburgh.
Europe (the first number of the Critical Review had been delayed while awaiting Goldsmith’s essays on the Belles Lettres were written ostensibly to correct
“foreign articles”)^®and an implication that it should regulate the world of letters.^’
“false taste.”“ In the fourth volume of his Continuation of the Complete History
In his letter. Smith gave an example of the kind of review he would like to see by
of England (1762), Smollett revealed what he understood by this. Noting that
translating sections of DEcours sur I’origine et les fondemens de I’lnegahte parmi let
“litde progress” had been made in historical painting, Smollett suggested that
hommes (1755) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Similarly, in the previous
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[50]
CHAP T E R 2 A
“essays of this kind were discouraged by a false taste, founded upon a reprobation
of British genius.”"*^This remark was undoubtedly meant to be contrasted with
the “encouragement given to merit,” later in the paragraph, by the Society for the
Improvement of Arts. In the British Magazine, Smollett presented himself visiting
this society to dispute the “opinion that Britons are utter strangers, or but slight
proficients, in the art of sculpture.”
t that nation, and we hope to entertain the public with many curious and pleasing
A few days ago, at the elegant assembly-room of the society for the ^^
encouragement of arts, commerce, and manufactures, a gentleman
shewed me some history-pieces, containing groupes of figures in basso
relievo, executed by youths to a very suprising degree of perfection, and
rewarded with the premiums by the society.'*'*
Smollett’s endorsement of a society that promised, he thought, “more effectual
and extensive advantage to the public, than ever accrued from all the boasted
academies of Christendom” was a further reflection of his hopes for the Critical
Review and British Magazine.*'^ His reviews of contemporary art have been seen as
highly original;^® it is possible that the creation of the Society for the Improvement
of Art was pardy responsible for such innovation. In a description of the society,
in the Continuation, Smollett emphasized the commercial nature of the “ingenious
arts of drawing, engra'ving, casting, painting, statuary, and sculpture,” listing them
along with planting, husbandry, and the manufactures of “hats, crapes, druggets,
mills, marbled paper, ship-blocks, spinning-wheels, toys, yarn, knitting, and weav-
ing.”^^ Such a view of the fine arts seems to carry with it an implicit refutation
of “false taste.” In the Critical Review, for example, Smollett praised the engraver
Robert Strange (1721-1792), partly because he had “chosen rather to live on a
moderate income, earned by the industry of his own hands,” than by “prostituting
his name and genius to the indiscriminating choice of ignorant employers.”'** It is
also notable that Smollett preferred to observe the “accuracy” of a print, or, in the
case of “the ingenious Mr. [Thomas] Frye” (1710-1762), the general “improve­
ment” brought upon the “fine art” of mezzotint, since these “arts” often produced
copies of “foreign” paintings."*’ Smollett’s promotion of drawing and engraving in
the Critical Review and British Magazine may well have been another attempt to
support the activities of the Foulis “academy” in Glasgow.’**
Smollett’s work on the Critical Review and British Magazine has been seen
as the defining aspect of his life as a writer; Smollett presented himself in this way
in Humphry Clinker?^ Accordingly, noting the deterioration of Smollett’s health
in 1763, James Basket has written that Smollett’s literary career was “wrenched
[52]
GOOD CRITIC
from its course.”’*^However, the publication of Travels through France and Italy in I
1766 showed that Smollett had not forgotten the concerns of the seven years from )
1756. In the first place, foreign correspondence was always an intended feature
of both periodicals.” This may well have been inhibited by the Seven Years’ 'War: *1 I
the British Magazine, for example, printed a map of France after peace had been
.n ■
agreecHnl763 and remarked, “Many of our countrymen, doubtless, will now visit
t
anecdotes from thence.”” Smollett may well have thought that Travels through
France and Italy provided such a correspondence. Second, Smollett directed the
letters of the Travels to a “society,”” a term that alluded to the “society of gentle­ I N
men” that constimted the Critical Review}^ It seems that Smollett may also have
had another society in mind since, on more than one occasion, he asked to be
remembered to “our friends at A—’s.”’^It is likely that Smollett meant the Ander-
ston Club,’*an allusion that would have confirmed his association with the literary
societies at Glasgow. Finally, Smollett’s discussion of art in the Travels continued
his practice of reviewing for the Critical Review and the British Magazine. Basket
has.,described how Smollett was at pains to make the Critical Review accessible
to the general reader;” in many respects, the Travels represented a further step in
such popularization. It is easy to see how Smollett’s “reviews” of art in the Travels
shared some of the more nationalistic concerns of the Critical Review, but they
should not simply be read through the eyes of Laurence Sterne.^** Trying to win
support for the Foulis “academy,” the Scots Magazine had struggled with “what
is too frequent among mankind, a prepossession against every new attempt, and
against every production of their own country, compared to what is brought with
more expence from a distance.”^* Supporting the Society for the Improvement of
Art in the Critical Review, Smollett had done the same. In Travels through France
and Italy, he returned to the struggle, and, in doing so, readdressed the interests of
his “society” in the world of “fine art.”
Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Re i d
Francis Hutcheson held the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow between 1729
and 1746.^-^ Smollett probably experienced some of his teaching in the late 1730s.
Adam Smith, who was a student at Glasgow at the same time as Smollett, became
a professor of moral philosophy in 1752; Thomas Reid followed Smith in 1764.®
The following section will explore some of the connections between Smollett’s
views of art and the aesthetic philosophies of Hutcheson and Reid; the subsequent
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C H A P T E R 2
section will then examine Smollett’s relationship to the work of Adam Smith.
Both Hutcheson and Reid presented theories of beauty based on perception, al­
though what they understood by an act of perception was not the same.^ While
Smollett’s position might have been closer to Reid’s, there are many aspects that
he shared with Hutcheson. Hutcheson’s focus on the act of perception (and not
the object of perception) seems' Strangely appropriate to the reviewing culture of
which Smollett was a part. Michael Baxandall’s more recent view, for example, that
critics do not discuss pictures but “remarks about pictures,” is particularly relevant-
in the eighteenth century when objects of art were not always accessible.^^ Smol­
lett’s insistence on the material production of the fine arts may therefore be seen
as an attempt to return attention to the art-object itself-Shiollett, of course, was
not a philosopher, and, in some respects, considering him alongside Hutcheson
and Reid is problematic. However, in very general terms, it seems that Smollett’s
understanding of the fine arts resembled Reid’s reworking of Hutcheson: both, in
different ways, asserted the materiality (or “objective existence”) of principles of
beauty.
Hutcheson published his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty
and Virtue in 1725. The first part of this book was titled “An Inquiry concerning
beauty, order, harmony, design” and began by observing that “in the following
papers the word beauty is taken for the idea raised in us, and a sense of beauty
for our power of receiving this ideal^ For Hutcheson, the first implication of this
notion was that a “real quality” in an object must “raise” the “idea” of beauty;
the second implication was that there was an “internal sense” with the “power”
to perceive such “qualities.”®^Hutcheson was quick to point out that an “internal
sense” of beauty was not the same as an "innate idea” (as Smollett later explained
in the Critical Review, “we have all within us the seeds of taste,” not a ready-made
conception of it).^®Although Hutcheson was clearly using the language of Locke,
his understanding of an “internal sense” differed markedly.^’ Hutcheson wrote,
“This superior power of perception is justly called a sense because of its affinity
to the other senses in this, that the pleasure does not arise from any knowledge
of principles, proportions, causes, or of the usefulness of the object, but strikes
us at first with the idea of beauty.”^° For Hutcheson, unlike Locke, the “internal
sense” was not a rational principle.^' Even the pleasure derived from mathemati­
cal theorems was “distinct from prospects of any further advantage.”^^ Similarly,
Hutcheson dismissed the ideas of “Grandeur” and “Novelty” (two concepts fre­
quently associated with beauty in the eighteenth century) presumably because
they involved comparison and reflection. For Hutcheson, beauty could be felt
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1
A G O O D C R I T I C I
“without knowing what is the occasion of it”; it did not “depend directly upon
1‘
our will” and was therefore “necessary” and “immediate.”^^Although Hutcheson i »
i!
proposed another kind of beauty (“relative beauty”) in order to account for the
pleasure derived from “objects commonly considered as imitations or resemblances
J’
I )
of something else,” this was not his main emphasis.^^ It seems that Smollett, trav­
eling through France and Italy forty years later, shared Hutcheson’s predilection
for “original beauty.” In part, this was because his time was restricted: viewing
the “capital pieces” in the Palais-Royal, Smollett complained that one is “hur­
ried away before there is time to consider one piece with any sort of delibera­
tion”;^®in Rome, he similarly had to make do with a “superficial glimpse.”^^Such
“glimpses,” however, provided a way for Smollett to distinguish himself from the
“connoisseurs” whose “nice discernment and delicate sensibility”^* was undoubt­
edly an exercise in “relative beauty.” Thus Smollett wrote how the “celebrated
Venus” in Florence was “rather agreeable than striking, and will please a connois­
seur much more than a common spectator.”^’ Similarly, he discussed the “torso, i
or mutilated trunk of a statue,” in somewhat ironic terms: “I had not time to s
consider it attentively; nor taste enough to perceive its beauties at first glance.”*®
For Smollett, what was important was the pleasure that “strikes us at first with the
idea of beauty.” Noting the “vast collection” of art works in the Campo Vaccino,
Smollett wrote, “I saw them but once, and then I was struck with the following
particulars”;** in the church of St. Luke, he explained, “I was not at all struck by
the picture of that saint, drawing the portrait of the Virgin Mary, although it is
admired as one of the best pieces of Raphael.”*^In the same way, Smollett did not
mention “the two equestrian statues” at St. Peter’s because, he observed, “there is
nothing in them which particularly engaged my attention.”** It should be noted
that this was also the basis of the Critical Review, which aimed to “point out the
most striking beauties.”*®
The quality that Hutcheson believed was responsible for raising the “idea”
of beauty was “uniformity in variety.” Hutcheson explained, “in the mathematical
style,” that “what we call beautiful in objects .. . seems to be in compound ratio of
I
uniformity and variety: so that where the uniformity of bodies is equal, the beauty
is as the variety; and where the variety is equal, the beauty is as the uniformity.”**
Hutcheson suggested that even in Gothic architecture (which was noted for its
irregularity), the same principle adhered.*® 'With this in mind, Smollett visited
the churches and palaces of Italy. Smollett was looking for what he called “the
inexpressible EYE’VNOIITON”*^ (a word that connoted the two Hutchesonian
principles—“taken in at a glance” and “harmony in perspective”)** and found that
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it was largely absent. The churches were apparently “crowded With petty orna­
ments,” and Smollett observed that, generally, “nothing great or uniform remains
to fill the view.”®’ However, while visiting the church of St. Peter in Rome, Smol­
lett was able to confirm the universality of Hutcheson’s principle:
Notwithstanding all the carving, gilding, basso relievo, medallions, urns,
Starnes, columns, and pictures with which it abounds, it does not, on the
whole, appear over-crouded with ornaments. When you first enter, your
eye is filled so equally and regularly, that nothing appears stupendous;
and the church seems considerably smaller than it really is.’“ -
y ''
Perhaps it was this glimpse of what Hutcheson had called “real beauty” that in­
formed Smollett’s description of the churches at Pisa as “tolerably ornamented.”’'
Smollett transferred the principle to painting when he considered Michelangelo’s
“The Last Judgment.” Finding "single figures” and “separate groupes” pleasing,
Smollett described the “whole together” as a “mere mob” and added, “A painter
ought to avoid all subjects that require a multiplicity of groupes and figures; be­
cause it is not in the power of that art to unite a great number in one point of view,
so as to maintain that dependence which they ought to have upon one another.”’^
What the Italians seemed to have lacked, as Smollett explained, by referring to the
sculptures with which they “encumber[ed]” their gardens, was not so much an
understanding of the “excellencies of art” as an “idea of the beauties of nature.”’^
It was the principle of “original beauty” that had remained underappreciated.
Smollett probably thought that English artists had understood the prin­
ciples of “original beauty” by reading the work of William Hogarth. In his Con­
tinuation of the Complete History, Smollett had written that “Hogarth excelled
all the world in exhibiting the scenes of ordinary life; in humorous historical
designs.”’"*This followed the promotion of his work in the Critical Review?'^ In
the British Magazine, Goldsmith wrote that the “line of beauty discovered by the
celebrated Hogarth” was a “mathematical curve,” and went on to describe its ef­
fects in Hutchesonian terms: “the charms of painting, sculpture, and architecture,
that strike the spectator’s eye with irresistible energy, are no other than a happy
symmetry of parts, that may be resolved into mathematical relations.”’^Although
Hogarth had attempted to distance himself from “lately published treatises,”
which digressed onto the “more beaten path of moral beauty,” the mathematical
language of his Analysis of Beauty (1753) was shared by Hutcheson’s Inquiry^ To
a certain extent, Hogarth was simply involved in making Hutcheson’s somewhat
vague principle a little more tangible. At the beginning of the Analysis of Beauty,
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GOOD CRITIC
for example, Hogarth claimed a “practical knowledge of the whole art of paint­
ing” and noted that he had included prints “in order to assist the reader’s imagi­
nation, when the original examples in art, or nature, are not themselves before
him.”’®Similarly, his thought experiments (such as the “scooping out” of objects,
in order to consider them “as shells composed of lines”) had been designed to
heJp^tbe reader visualize the “line of beauty” (and its three-dimensional counter­
part, “the line of grace”).” While Hogarth was somewhat disparaging of the “pic­
ture copier” (in favor of “the original he copies”),"”’ his exposure of hidden “lines
of beauty” reflected the engraver’s art. The view was persuasive. Reviewing An
Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760) by Daniel Webb, Smollett disagreed
with his author’s “too sanguine” praise of color and observed that “all the pas­
sions and affections of the soul, all the grace of attitude, all the beauty of design,
may be expressed by simple lines, without the help of colouring.”"" Interestingly,
Hogarth seems to have translated color into line: red, for example, was seen in
terms of gradations of “redness,” and such gradations, as Hogarth had shown
elsewhere, expressed “the beauty of the waving line when it cannot be seen as a
line.”"’^Although Hogarth called the “waving line” the “art of varying well,”"”
this was just another term for “uniformity in variety.” Smollett occasionally
picked out such a line in Travels through France and Italy. Surveying the bridge at
Lyon, for example, he wrote, “This bridge, as well as that of St. Esprit, is built,
not in a strait line across the river, but with a curve, which forms a convexity to
oppose the current. Such a bend is certainly calculated for the better resisting the
general impetuosity of the stream, and has no bad effect to the eye.”"’'*Similarly,
the “semi-circular sweep” of the “double colonnnade” at St. Peter’s contributed to
an effect that was “altogether sublime.”"’^
Locke had listed color among the secondary qualities of objects."*® In his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he had explained that secondary quali­
ties were “nothing in the Objects themselves” but derived from primary qualities
(such as “Solidity, Extension, Figure, and Mobility”) that were “utterly inseparable”
from the object. Thus Locke wrote that “what is Sweet, Blue, or Warm in Idea,
is but the certain Bulk, Figure, and Motion of the insensible Parts in the Bodies
themselves, which we call so.”'®^ Such a thought may well have formed the basis
of Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty. His translation of color into line, for example, re­
turned a secondary quality to its primary origin. Locating the idea of “beauty” in
“Solidity, Extension, Figure and Mobility,” Hogarth emphasized its “real” existence
in the objects he contemplated. This is confirmed, for example, by his interest in
anatomical disection."*® While it might seem that Hutcheson shared this view.
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Thomas Reid, writing in the 1770s, believed that he did not. In his Lectures on the
Fine Arts, Reid explained.
Dr. Hutcheson has published a treatise on this subject where he con­
ceives it to arise from a uniformity joined to a certain variety. He con­
ceives it however merely p a feeling in the mind and nothing in body, in
the same manner, adds he, as heat, &c., are merely ideas in our minds,
not any qualities in body. If there was no mind to contemplate the ob- _ --
ject, says he, it could not be beautiful.'®^
According to Reid, Hutchesons “idea” of beauty has been-“raised” by a second­
ary quality and consequently, in Lockes terms, did not “resemble” anything
that might “really exist.”““ This is, in fact, evident in Hutcheson’s account, as
he often conceived of beauty simply as “pleasure.”"' However, as Peter Kivy has
shown, Reid was committed to a concept of beauty that existed in such a “strong”
sense."^ As Reid put it, in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), “[I]f
we hearken to the dictates of common sense, we must be convinced that there
is real excellence in some things, whatever our feelings or constitution be.”"^ It
is notable, then, that he referred to the “ingenious observations” of Hogarth in
his Lectures on the Fine Arts, apparendy admiring his unphilosophical work that
sought to ascribe “certain ingredients” to beauty."'* Smollett would have shared
Reid’s respect for what Hogarth attempted. In Travels through France and Italy,
Smollett looked for beauty among things that “really” existed (such as extension).
For example, he noted that “A great edifice, to have its full effect, ought to be isole,
or detached from all others with a large space around it”"’ and recommended
that St. Peter’s should be “detached entirely from the buildings of the Vatican.”"^
Similarly, faced with the “celebrated transfiguration, by Raphael,” he observed that
it was something that “if it was mine, I would cut in two parts.””^ Like Hogarth
and Reid, Smollett hoped to redirect discussion of the fine arts onto their more
“material” qualities.
There are other ways in which Smollett promoted the “materiality” of
beauty. In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett noted the “innumerable cop­
ies and casts” of “Laocoon’s snakes” and expected his readers to be familiar with
“the description of it in Keyslar, and twenty other books of travels.”"® Similarly,
discussing the “Arrotino, commonly called the Whetter,” Smollett assumed that
his readers “know he is represented on one knee.”"® Smollett thus indicated how
“remarks about art” in the eighteenth century were often remarks about “remarks
about art”; in each case, Smollett reminded his readers of the “real” existence of
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A G O O D C R I T I C
the art work and the fact that he “really saw” it at Rome.'“ In this way, Smol­
lett contemplated “the Aurora of Guido” and pointed out that “the print of this
picture, by Freij, with all its merit, conveys but an imperfect idea of the beauty
of the original.”"" Despite his praise for the “English painter” who was copying
Raphael’s “Madonna de la Seggiola,”'^* Smollett may have believed that “remarks
about Sn” had become increasingly distant from their material origins. Reviewing
Daniel Webb’s Inquiry, for example, Smollett had agreed with “the absurdity of
estimating pictures by the general reputation of painters.”'^’ Similarly, his account
of the Venus de Medicis may have been inspired by Hogarth’s description of the
‘Sblind veneration” bordering on “a sort of religious esteem, and even bigotry, to
the works of the ancients.”'^^ Hogarth had asked, “Who but a bigot, even to the
antiques, will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living
women, that even the Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate?”"'’ Smollett’s
description in Travels through France and Italy upheld Hogarth s point. In fact
(although Sterne would not have agreed), Smollett’s infamous “use” of the Venus
de Medicis is somewhat diminished when the “real” presence of the sculpture is re­
called. Michael Baxandall has noted the difference between the same critical terms
used independently and “in tandem” with the objects they describe."^ Smollett’s
opinion that “there is no beauty in the features of Venus” must therefore be un­
derstood to be an expression of what he found interesting about the statue (while
looking at it) rather than a more generalized statement with no material referent."^
Smollett’s description of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa (“the man­
ner is dry, the drawing incorrect, the design generally lame, and the colouring
unnatural”),"® his displeased view of Michelangelo’s Piet^ (“the figure of Ghrist is
as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption”)'^® and his declarations
that there were few “capital pieces” at Genoa or Nice'’®were similarly designed
to remind his readers of the material existence (or nonexistence) of works of art.
In the same way, Smollett wrote that he was “much disappointed at the sight of
the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit,
open at the top”'®' (another view misrepresented by Sterne). Something of Smol­
lett’s practice can be gleaned from his review of The English Connoisseur (1766),
written after his return from France.'®' Apparently, Smollett had “long wished to
see a work of this kind executed by the hand of a master” but, since this work was
“rather a collection of catalogues,” his hope had remained unfulfilled. Notably,
in Travels through France and Italy, Smollett resisted producing a “huge list” of
pictures and marbles, limiting himself to those that “actually fell under my own
observation.”'®®When it came to choosing extracts from The English Connoisseur,
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Smollett made it clear that he had “selected these passages, because the originals
are accessible to every reader.” The selection therefore included Rubens’s ceiling at
Whitehall, the study of which had been recommended by Hogarth in his Analy­
sis'^ A related project to find a place to exhibit contemporary works of art also
involved Hogarth and Smollett’s friend Francis Hayman (1708-1776).'^’ Smollett
seems to have supported this by advertising Hayman’s “historical picture” at Vaux-
hall Gardens in the British M a g a z in e Such an emphasis on viewing works of
art was intended to counter the “connoisseurs”'^^ and “false enthusiasts”'^®whose
view of “beauty” did not seem to include a strong sense of its “obiective” existence.
Thomas Reid held that “beauty” existed as a quality,in'“body” and not just
in “mind.” As I have suggested, this implied that “be^ty” was a “primary quality”
in Locke’s sense of the term. However, in his Lectures, Reid also described how the
“quality which excites sensation” was “separate from sensation” in a more funda­
mental way. He explained (with an allusion to Hutcheson), “This remark I make
more particularly because it is become a custom with modern philo[sophers] to
resolve everything into feelings; as that there is not heat in fire but in the mind,
so that there is no distinction in a poem between the quality and the sensation
produced in us.”'’’ By asserting the distinction between a “quality” and a “sensa­
tion,” Reid introduced a rational element into his theory of perception. In his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke describes perception as the “sen­
sation,” or “idea,” of a “quality.” In his Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764),
Reid developed this theory to include the simultaneous “belief” in the (objective)
existence of such a “quality.”'"" Since his thoughts on the fine arts derived from
his understanding of perception, Reid’s theory had important implications. In
his Lectures, Reid describes how “in every operation of taste there is an act of the
judgement,” and explains, “In the perception of beauty, for instance, there is not
only a sensation of pleasure but a real judgement concerning the excellence of the
object. It is the same in poetry[,] painting, eloquence, and music, dcc.”'"*^Smollett
also observed that “judgement” might be needed in the appreciation of beauty. In
Travels through France and Italy, he confesses.
After all, I do not set up for a judge in these matters, and very likely I
may incur the ridicule of the virtuosi for the remarks I have made; but
I am used to speak my mind freely on all subjects that fall under the
cognizance of my senses; though I must as freely own, there is something
more than common sense required to discover and distinguish the more
delicate beauties of painting.
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For Smollett, the meaning of “common sense” seems to have been related to “the
cognizance of [his] senses” and was probably associated with the (immediate)
views of the “common spectator”'^ as opposed to the (reflective) “connoisseurs.”
Holding such a definition, Smollett perceived the need for a more rational (or dis­
cursive) treatment of the fine arts. Of course, this was not exactly what Reid meant
by an-“act of the judgement”; for Reid, “judgement” was an immediate constituent
of “common sense” itself.'^’ However, as Smollett demonstrated in his account of
the effect of Hogarth’s picture of Richard III (1745) (in which he substituted the
word “denote” for “impresses”),'^® Smollett may have been attempting a similar
reconciliation of reason and feeling. Such a reconciliation was, in part, as Peter
Kivy has put it in his account of Reid, a way of strengthening “our grasp on the
‘material world.’”'^'’
One seemingly paradoxical effect of Reid s approach was his insistence that
“beauty” consisted in qualities of mind. Returning, like Hutcheson and Hogarth
before him, to the discussion of triangles and squares, Reid noted that regular­
ity and uniformity are the marks of design; nothing produced by chance can
possibly be regular.”'^®While beauty existed independently from the perceiver,
it was also strongly associated with mind or intelligence. Hogarth had similarly
observed the beauty of “fitness to purpose” and gave the example of the great
weight chairmen often have to carry” as an illustration of the propriety and fit­
ness in the tuscan order of their legs, by which they properly become characters
as to figure.”'^’ Smollett found a practical application of this principle when, in
Travels through France and Italy, he dismissed the four giants holding up the
old wooden chair of the apostle Peter” because “supporters ought to be suitable
to the things supported.”'” Similarly, Reid reiterated Hutchesons view that
the beauty of tapering columns lay in the “intention that they may not seem
top-heavy and in danger of falling. '’' Reid s discussion of the fine arts there­
fore joined what Hogarth had called “the more beaten path of moral beauty”:
“Beauty,” he explained, “in material objects arises from those actions & qualities
of mind which excite our esteem, in a secondary manner, as signs.”'” Although
Kivy regards this “substitution” of mind for the material aesthetic objects of
the fine arts” as something that is “patently false,”'” it is possible that it made
more sense to a philosopher from the city of Glasgow. Reid s speculation about
how “grandeur is ascribed to the work, but is properly inherent in the mind that
made it” had similarities with Hutcheson’s description of the Great Architect
of original beauty.'” Both views reflected the artisan attitude to the fine arts of
the city in which they worked. Accordingly, Smollett not only emphasized the
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material qualities of the fine arts but also encouraged people to consider the
“authors” behind their production.
In the Critical Review, Smollett described a visit to see the works of the
sculptor Joseph Wilton (1722-1803). “A man who visits Mr. Wilton’s perfor­
mances,” he wrote, “can hardly help imagining himself in the spyacmipiov [ergas-
terion] of a Grecian artist.” He explained,
There we see the elegance of the Belvidere Apollo starting from the block-"
that seems to have inclosed him. There we view the Venus de Medicis
emerging from the marble, with all the graces of feminine beauty. There
we behold an admirable colossal bust of Alexander the Great. There we
admire the dancing fewn, copied from the original statue of Florence,
and executed with such a tender chisel, with such delicacy, taste, and
precision, rhat we cannot conceive it inferior to the figure from which
it was delineated.'^’
Smollett had not yet traveled out of England to view these art works but his de­
scription implied that he did not have to. Like his preference for Michelangelo’s
“antique” Bacchus, in the T ra vels,Smollett’s praise for such copies was intended
to encourage modern artists.'’^ In addition, his description had the interesting ef­
fect of returning well-known works of art to the moment of their “execution” (in
this case with “a tender chisel” in a London workshop). When he traveled to Italy
in 1764, Smollett visited the workshops of other artists. In Rome, after observing
some “copies of good pictures, done in Mosaic to great perfection,”'’®Smollett
wrote, “I went to see the artists at work, in a house that stands near the church,
where I was much pleased with the ingenuity of the process.”'” In Florence, he vis­
ited the “second story” of the Uffizi Palace, which was “occupied by a great number
of artists employed in this very curious work of marquetry, representing figures
with gems and different coloured marble, for the use of the emperor.”'®"This was a
glimpse of the dynamic “art” pursued by the Society for the Improvement of Arts,
the Foulis Academy, and William Hogarth (who made the point by hanging a sign
outside his house).'®' For Smollett, even the sight of a bridge in France or Italy was
a reminder of such crafismanship: he recalled the recent creation of Westminster
Bridge'®^ and the ongoing construction of the bridge at Blackfriars (designed by
a Scot and possible acquaintance).'®’ In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett
observed how the English had been compared to the ancient Romans; “Like the
English of this day,” he recounted, “they made a figure in poetry, history, and ethics;
but the excellence of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, they never could
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attain.”'®^Smollett’s articles in the Critical Review and British Magazine thus played
a “supportive role” in a transitional period for British art.'®’ Describing Hogarth’s
“altar piece at i?e^/^Church at BristoT (1756), for example, Smollett wrote that
“if this noble ornament should make its way into our churches, it will be the likeli­
est means to raise a British school of painters.”'®®Likewise, he believed that Robert
'StfShge would “infinitely surpass” his foreign rivals, “if his merit meet with due
encouragement.”'®^ Encouragement clearly necessitated a wider appreciation of
the fine arts: Smollett, for example, wished rhat “some of [their] admirals” would
provide “a victory at sea” for a ship painting by Samuel Scott (ca. 1710-1772).'®® In
Travels through France and Italy, however, Smollett attempted a victory of a different
sort. As John Moore observed in his memoir, Smollett’s apparendy controversial
remarks “exposed” him to the “connoisseurs.”'®” But while Sterne proclaimed his
defeat, Smollett’s insistence on the empirical qualities of beauty necessarily pro­
moted the interests of native art. In doing so, he mediated between the concerns of
the mind and the body in a way that his Glasgow friends would have recognized as
the “triumph of the fine arts.”
Adam Smith
Smollett could be seen to have more in common with Adam Smith than with
Francis Hutcheson or Thomas Reid. Although Reid published his Inquiry into the
Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in 1764, when Smollett was in
France, his thoughts on the fine arts belonged to a later period. Hutcheson’s major
work predated Smollett’s Travels through France and Italy by forty years. Smith,
however, was Smollett’s almost exact contemporary. He had arrived at Glasgow
University in 1737 when he was fourteen years old.'^° Smollett, then age sixteen,
was already there. It is possible that they would have remembered each other in
later life; certainly they recalled the “Logick Class” of John Loudoun (d. 1750) and
the teaching of Natural Philosophy by Robert Dick.'^' When Smollett returned
to Glasgow in 1753 (after fourteen years of absence), he followed Smith’s own
return (two years earlier) as the professor of logic (and, shortly afterward, of moral
philosophy).Smollett probably met Smith during this visit; they may even have
dined together at the Anderston Club.'” Another possible meeting would have
occurred in 1761 when Smith visited London (following Smollett’s second visit to
Glasgow).'” In spite of these points of contact, it is difficult to establish the extent
of their relationship. Smollett was clearly familiar with Smith’s ideas (an article on
Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759] was published in the Critical Review)'^^
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and Smith may well have seen in Smollett’s journalistic work some of his own lost
hopes for the Edinburgh Review. By 1761, Smollett was involved in an edition of
the works of Voltaire, another project with which Smith would have agreed. It is
notable that both Smollett and Smith were in France by 1764: Smith spent most
of 1765 in Toulouse and then, like Smollett’s friend John Moore, visited Voltaire
at Ferney.'^^ During his journey. Smith may well have developed his theories about
the fine arts (first articulated at the Glasgow Literary Society and later the basis
of a posthumously published e s s a y ) . H e may also (like Smollett) have gathered
material on the republic of Genoa for his forthcoming An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).'^® By 1766, when'Smollett published
his Travels through France and Italy, Smith had returned to Paris. He was, however,
assured of a somewhat kinder reception than the recent work of his fellow travel­
ing Scot.’^^
The article on Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in the Critical Review
has sometimes been attributed to Smollett.'*” It has also been argued that it was
the work of David Hume.’®' Since Hume was in London at the time (and had
made other contributions to the Critical R e v ie w ) ,it is perhaps likely that he
was the author. Even so, Smollett’s hand can still be discerned: for example, the
article was given first place in the issue of May 1759 and Smith’s tide, “professor
of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow,” was clearly marked.'®® Accept­
ing the authorship of Hume leads to some interesdng interpretations of the text.
The reviewer, for example, clearly sought to promote Smith’s ideas: he explained
that Smith’s “obvious, yet ingenious, theory” accounted for the “amiable” and
“respectable” virtues;'®^ sympathy (or “fellow-feeling”) was a “principle in human
nature” and the “pleasure” that attended it was a form of moral “approval.”'®®But
the reviewer also selected Smith’s discussion of the principle of “utility” for special
attention.
Our author subjoins many irrefragable arguments, by which he refutes
the sentiments of Mr. Hume, who founded a great part of his moral
system on the consideration of public utility. The compass to which we
are confined, will not allow us to explain them at full length: but the
reader, who will consult the author himself, will find, that philosophy
scarce affords any thing more undeniable and conclusive.'®”
For Hume, this would have been a highly ironic (but not untypical) statement: it
perhaps suggests something of the cultural dislocation also experienced by Smol­
lett. It is conceivable that Hume may have thought that a review based, in part, on
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a refutation of his own work was the best way to promote Smith’s book.’®^David
Raynor has suggested that Hume’s experience of publishing A Treatise of Human
Nature (1739-1740) lay behind his support of Smith. Thus the observation, in
the review, that “renown and reputation” were seldom acquired by philosophical
writers “in their own time” should be read as an allusion to Hume’s own early
disappointment.'®® The review continued, “Men of a philosophical turn alone
are the proper judges of such performance; and as these are but few in all ages,
profound reasonings make their way but slowly with the public, and are often
overlooked, till the author can no longer reap pleasure or advant^e from the
reputation which he acquires by them.”'®” Although this may have been an allu­
sion to the Treatise, the reviewer (and this perhaps strengthens the suggestion that
he was Hume) clearly had in mind a more recent publication. This was Hume’s
essay “Of the Standard of Taste.” Smith had developed some of the ideas of this
essay in his Theory of Moral Sentiments-, to a certain extent, they were also the basis
of Smollett’s Critical Review.
The notion that a “proper judge” was difficult to find had been popularized
by the work of Joseph Addison in the Spectator. Hume’s essay would have had
cleat generic links with Addison’s “papers”; the work of Smith and Smollett also
developed aspects of Addison’s language of “civic virtue.” As I have noted, the
Spectator had been republished by Smollett’s friend Robert Urie at Glasgow; it was
also printed at Edinburgh earlier in the century.'”” Addison’s well-known account
of the “Pleasures of the Imagination or Fancy” no doubt inspired the work of
Hutcheson and Reid (Addison, for example, emphasized the sense of “sight” and
distinguished between “Primary” [present] and “Secondary” [absent] pleasures).'”'
His conflation of “mental taste” with “that Sensitive Taste which gives us a Relish
of every different Flavour that affects the Palate” was the basis of Hume’s quotation
from Don Quixote. For Addison, as for Hume, it seemed possible to hypothesize
a kind of test by which those possessed of a “fine taste” could be known.'”®How­
ever, both writers confessed the difficulty of recognizing a “good critic.”'”®In the
Critical Review, Smollett similarly described how “O f those who affect to read the
Belles Lettres, one half do not presume to judge for themselves, and at a moderate
computation, two thirds of the other half, judge amiss; and yet they shall be all
professed critics.”'”^ Smollett’s “professed aim” of “reforming the judgment and
enlightening the understanding of these pretenders” was the literary equivalent of
revealing Sancho’s “key with a leathern thong.” For the reviewer of Smith’s Theory
of Moral Sentiments, it was therefore important to establish the validity of his
judgments. Distancing himself (and Smith) from the “sentiments of Mr. Hume”
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C H A P T E R 2

passage praised by the Critical Review), Smith may also have thought that another
may have seemed an easy way to do this. The praise for Smiths strict regard of
“great judge and arbiter” was needed to clarify his work.^®^ It is possible that this
the "principles of religion " and the view that “it ought no less to be established as
inspired Hume to write a review of Smith’s ideas. Certainly, it was a view with
a certain principle, that every topic, however specious, which leads into impiety
which Smollett, engaged in developing his own concept of a good critic, would
or infidelity, should be rejected with disdain and contempt would ^a^" ^een
have entirely agreed.
perfectly in keeping with the author of The Natural History „Smollett had begun the first issue of the Critical Review by remarking that
Hume may well have seen 'such a “principle” as one already established by the
its authors did not “pretend to infallibility in criticism, or presume to decide
uniform consent and experience of nations and ages” and th,^ as a kind of key
with dogmatical authority.” His idea of a critic thus avoided the kind of reductive
to his views of Smith’s work.'^^ However, such a promotion of Smith also revealed
procedures criticized by Hume and Smith: They have delivered their sentiments
the “prejudices” (perhaps shared by Addison) from which, Hume'believed, the
as opinions only,” he explained, “and these they have supported with reasons on
mind of the critic should be entirely free.'^^ This kind of self-conscious criticH
which every reader may exercise his own understanding. Much like Smith,
procedure would have been readUy appreciated by the author of the work, as wel
Smollett refrained from casting critical “sentiments” as rules. Smith believed
as the editor of the Critical Review. . ,„ . , that such “systems” actually discouraged moral behavior, and Smollett probably
In his essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume had hoped to min^e some
saw them as putting new works of art at risk (for example, he quoted the view
light of the understanding with the feelings of sentiment. It is nota e t at
of Joseph Warton that “in no polished nation, after criticism has been much
the questions he asked concerning critics (“where are such critics to be foun .
studied, and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinary work
by what marks are they to be known?”) were conceived as “questions ever appeared”).^^ Smollett emphasized this practice by allowing differences of
of sentiment.’”55 in a similar way. Smith’s concept of “sympathy in The eory
“opinion” to exist between reviewers, a marked change from the policy of Ralph
of Moral Sentiments provided a way of rationalizing Hutcheson’s account of im­
Griffiths at the rival Monthly Review.^°^ Smollett also limited himself to pointing
mediate sense and feeling” (for Smith, “sympathy” was a way of expl^ning moral
out what Addison (and then Hume) called the beauties and blemishes of a
behavior not a motive for it).^»“ Smith’s emphasis on the plurality of mord senti­
work of art (rather than presenting an overall evaluation) The review of Smiths
ments” thus had something in common with Hume’s insistence on the variety
Theory of Moral Sentiments concluded by identifying two kinds of merit ;
of taste”; both resisted the formulaic approach of Hutcheson’s umformity m
similarly, Smollett observed the “little blemishes” in his review of Hume’s His­
variety” (Smith similarly observed the reductive practice of Epicurus, who sought
tory of England (1759).^" Accordingly, James Basker has written how the Crincal
“to account for all appearances from as few principles as possible”).^"' Noting t at
Review was “a quarry from which could be mined material to support critical
“different benificent actions” can “draw different ways,” Smith explained that the
views ranging from strict neoclassical conservatism to lively preromantic sym­
attempt “to determine by any precise rules in what cases we ought to comply w i*
pathies.”^'^ At the same time, it became one of the “arbiters of literary merit.”^'^
the one, and in what with the other, is, perhaps, altogether impossible. Insmad, Basker has noted how provincial societies made use of the Critical Review to
he suggested that actions “must be left altogether to the decision of the man within
determine the composition of their libraries.^*^ In this respect, Smollett s journal
the breast, the supposed impartial spectator, the great judge and arbiter of our
enacted the process described by Hume (and Smith) in his theory of a good
conduct.” Smith’s theory therefore joined what has been called Humes searc^
critic.” Robert Spector put it this way: “Although, like their contemporaries,
for good critics.”“ 5 As Smith explained, most of the rules of virtue (like Humes
the Critical reviewers were unable to solve the complicated problems of taste or
“principles” of beauty) are “loose, vague, and indeterminate”: only * e rules
even provide a simple definition, they offered descriptions that maintained the
of justice” are “precise and accurate” and suitable for a grammarian. Moral
audience’s dependency on the review.”^'^ In other words, the descriptions in the
rules were thus comparable to “those which critics lay down for the attainment
Critical Review suggested to people that its reviewers could define the standards
of what is sublime or elegant in composition.” Smith may well have seen himself
of taste. It is likely that Smollett (if not Hume and Smith) saw the Critical Review
as embodying some kind of “critic” in this sense. However, since he also showe
in precisely this way.
that his theory coincided with the variety of “Systems of Moral Philosophy (in a

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had met with misfortunes in life,” before noting that he “afterwards found him
The kind of self-consciousness demonstrated by Hume in his writing on
mercenary, mean, and rapacious.”“ ^ In a similar way, Smollett described his em­
religion (including his possible remarks in the Critical Review) was encouraged by
barrassing misinterpretation of “a man of fashion” from Auxerre^^^ and how the
Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith explained,
English abroad kept “without the sphere of each other’s attraction, like two bodies
When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to endowed with a repulsive power.”“ ^Smith had noted that while shared sentiments
pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident may be “concords,” “they will never be unisons.”“ ^Although Smith believed that
that, in all such cases, ,i divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and this was “all that is wanted or required,” Smollett took a particular interest in the
that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that implied disharmony of acts of “sympathy.”
other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of. The In his Theory, Smith wrote that “the bitter and painful emotions of grief
first is the spectator, whose sentiments with regard to n^.own conduct and resentment more strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.’
I endeavour to enter into, by placing myself in his^ situation, and by Beginning his travels “persecuted by faction, abandoned by felse patrons, and
considering how it would appear to me, when seen from that particular overwhelmed by the sense of domestic calamity,”^^’ Smollett would no doubt have
point of view. The second is the agent, the person whom I properly call agreed. All the same, he noted that he only met with one “instance of sympathy,
myself, and of whose conduct, under the character of a spectator, I was compassion, or goodness of heart” among the publicans of France (this was from
endeavouring to form some opinion.^'^ a woman who, he wrote, “took me by the hand at parting, and even shed tears,
praying fervently that God would restore me to my health ).^^”The French people,
Smith expressed a similar opinion in his letter to the Edinburgh Review in 1756:
Smollett concluded, were “the least capable of feeling for the distresses of their
he translated Rousseau’s belief that the “man of society” lives “always out of
fellow creatures.”^^’ However, the French were perhaps justified in not finding
himself” and “cannot live but in the opinion of others.”^*^ In some respects, the
Smollett a suitable object of sympathy. Smith had already explained the difficulties
very existence of the Edinburgh Review and Critical Review in 1756 aptly demon­
involved in sympathizing with “those passions which arise from a certain situation
strated Rousseau’s theory. Their attempt at “impartiality” (a word with particular
or disposition of the body”; Smollett’s ill health (like Smith’s “violent hunger”)
importance for Smith) also implied the dividing in two of their contributors.^’*
would have been a good example.^” In addition, Smollett’s expression of what
Smollett’s awareness of the popular view of a “physician contributed to such a
Smith called “small vexations” meant that he should have expected to “seldom
division in Travels through Erance and Italy. The tendency of Smiths theory, how­
meet with much sympathy.”^” The redundancy of Smollett’s position is suggested
ever, was toward unity (for example, he noted the “natural disposition toward
by his fellow-feeling for the silkworms at Nice (he described how some were in-
the “assimilation” of our own sentiments with the sentiments of others)^’* and
tranced in the agonies of casting their skin, some languishing, and some acmally
this was something that Smollett’s work also shared. Although Laurence Sterne
fjpad, with a litter of half eaten faded leaves about them, in a close room, crouded
might be seen as the true “sentimental” traveler (he had made this clear in the title
with women and children, not at all remarkable for their cleanliness ) ^ and the
to his book), Smollett’s journey also contained attempts at narrative “sympathy.”
Campania of Rome (which produced “emotions of pity and indignation ):^^’ ac­
Smollett thus finds himself meeting Joseph for a second time (the latter shedding
cording to Smith, animals (and especially inanimate objects) were “far from being
“tears of joy”),^“ relieving the necessides of an Irish Recollet,^^’ and wishing, on a
complete and perfect objects” of sentiments because they were unable to return
projected journey to the Alps, for “a companion and fellow-traveller, whose con­
them.^^^ Smollett may have understood himself in precisely these terms. Smith
versation and society could alleviate the horrors of solitude.”“ ^ Even so, Smollett
also described the “paroxysms of distress” that attended the attempts of the “wisest
encouraged Sterne’s hostility by exposing the other side of Smith’s theory. Sterne
and firmest man” to bring his feelings into line with the “impartial spectator
himself would later suggest, in the persona of Yorick, how his celebrated moments
such distress can be glimpsed in Smollett s violent passions that concluded in his
of intimacy remained fanciful and unresolved.^^^ In Travels through Erance and
agreement to “become the dupe of imposition. All the same, Smollett s experi­
Italy, Smollett made this particularly clear: for example, he wrote that he “began
ence of an absence of sympathy informed the writing of Travels through Erance
to im a g in e” that the “patron” of a “felucca” was “a person of good family who

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and Italy (as it had perhaps informed Hume’s ironic style in the Critical Review).
Smith had written that a lack of fellow-feeling had inspired Pope’s Dunciad (what
he called “an everlasting monument of how much the most correct, as well as the
most elegant and harmonious of all the English poets, had been hurt by the criti­
cisms of the lowest and most contemptible authors”) . I n a similar way, it also in­
spired Smollett’s work for the Critical Review, Smollett (like Hume) may have been
simply responding to the neglect of his early writing by “contemptible authors.
For Smith, an act of “sympathy” was always incomplete."^' The kind-of'
alienation (and internal division) his theory described was particularly appropriate
to the work of Smollett and Hume. In some respects, it descrihecfa Scottish experi­
ence."^" In his account of the fine arts. Smith also emphasized a form of division.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, for example, he observed.
In all the liberal and ingenious arts, in painting, in poetry, in music, in
eloquence, in philosophy, the great artist feels always the real imperfec­
tion of his own best works, and is more sensible than any man how
much they fall short of that ideal perfection of which he has formed
some conception, which he imitates as well as he can, but which he
despairs of ever equalling."^^
Smith’s understanding of a “real imperfection” formed the basis of his own theory
of beauty. In his essay “O f the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what
are called the Imitative Arts” (1795) Smith explains how the pleasure derived from
a painting or a sculpture is “founded altogether upon our wonder at seeing an
object of one kind represent so well an object of a very different kind, and upon
our admiration of the art which surmounts so happily that disparity which nature
had established between them.”"^“This was the basis of what Hutcheson had called
“relative beauty”; the disparity between a painting and a landscape thus reflected
how far it fell short of “ideal perfection.” But Smith described how an artist should
welcome such anomalies:
In Painting, a plain surface of one kind is made to resemble, not only
a plain surface of another, but all the three dimensions of a solid sub­
stance. In Statuary and Sculpture, a solid substance of one kind, is made
to resemble a solid substance of another. The disparity between the
object imitating, and the object imitated, is much greater in the one art
tha[n] in the other; and the pleasure arising from the imitation seems to
be greater in proportion as this disparity is greater."'**
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If sculptors were to avoid art works that were “insipid, tiresome, and not worth
the looking at,” Smith believed that they should emphasize the “disparity” in their
work."^^ In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett also noticed such incongru­
ous acts of “relative beauty.” Like Smith, he admired the portrayal of “wet linen.”
The drapery of statues, whether in brass or stone, when thrown into large
""masses, appears hard and unpleasant to the eye; and for that reason the
ancients always imitated wet linen, which exhibiting the shape of the
limbs underneath, and hanging in a multiplicity of wet folds, gives an
air of lighmess, softness, and ductility to the whole."*"
At the Camp Santo in Pisa, Smollett therefore admired the sculpture of a “figure of
a woman lying dead on a tomb-stone, covered with a piece of thin drapery.”"*®He
was not simply “struck” by her original beauty (Smollett observed the Hogarthian
“swellings and sinuosities of the muscles”) but he also noted the artist’s increase
of disparity: “Instead of stone,” he explained, the drapery “looks like a sheet of
wet linen.” In a similar way, Smollett described how a rope (held by one of the
two brothers of the “Toro Farnese” at Rome) was so surprisingly chizzelled, that
one can hardly believe it is of stone”;"** he also recounted the “mattrass, executed
and placed by Bernini, with such art and dexterity, that to the view, it rivals the
softness of wool, and seems to retain the marks of pressure, according to the figure
of the superincumbent statue.”"*" Smith stressed the “affinity” of the different arts
with regard to his theory of “imitation” but he also noted that both “instrumental
Music” and dancing could “produce very agreeable effects, without imitating any
thing.”"*' It was perhaps the lack of “sympathy” implied by these arts that led
Smith to complain against their appearance in a social setting: for example, he
wrote that a person “may show a very agreeable tone of voice” but “if he appears
to listen to the sound of his own voice, and as it were to tune it into a pleasing
modulation, he never fails to offend as guilty of a most disagreeable affectation. "*"
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett may have understood the affectations
of the French (which included learning “to dance and to fence’ as well as playing
irresistibly “upon the flute or the fiddle”)"** to be similar examples of misplaced
music and dancing.
Smollett also shared Adam Smith’s interests in language. At the beginning
of his Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres, Smith had emphasized that the
English language needed special attention (since it “laboured” under “a defect” of
being “compounded of a great number of others”)."** Smith may well have had
in mind the list of (avoidable) “Scotticisms” Hume had compiled in his Political
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Discourses (1752), not to mention Smollett’s work for the Critical ReviewP^
In his own account of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, he described how in this
country, the usefulness of it will be soon felt, as there is no standard of correct
language in conversation.”^’^ In this way. Smith exposed some of the contradic­
tion involved in being “a good critic” (Smollett similarly observed the “elegance
and purity of language” of Hugh Blair’s Critical Dissertation on the Poems ofOssian
[1763], something that “some readers of South Britain would not expect to find -
in the works of a Scotch professor”).^”’ But Smith also developed other features of
his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Discussing the syntax of a sentence, for example.
Smith suggested that whatever was “most interesting in the sentence, on which
the rest depends, should be placed first and so on'thro’ the whole.”^’®He thus
articulated a kind of “Unity of Interest” (a phrase he later applied to his discus­
sion of drama); this has been seen as a “Newtonian” or “engaging” approach to
beauty in writing (not one based on the formal aspects of rhetorical figures).^”
Like Hutcheson- before him, Thomas Reid also acknowledged the engaging (or
“sympathetic”) power of speech: he concluded his Lectures on the Fine Arts, for
example, by observing that eloquence was “the noblest of all the fine arts, for it
unites the beauties of them all.”^®“ In the preface to Roderick Random, Smollett
revealed a similar attitude when he noted the improvement that was possible “in
the course of an interesting story.”^^* It is notable that Smith projected “a sort of
I had glimpsed at Nice, as he was later to do in the Uffizi gallery at Florence,
Philosophical History of all the different branches of Literature, of Philosophy,
Poetry and Eloquence” and formed close ties with the Literary Club in Lon-
don.“ ^However, by the time Smith was moving in these circles, Smollett was no
longer part of them.
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett alluded to some of his earlier
writing on language. Viewing the busts of Caracalla in the gallery at Florence,
for example, Smollett was reminded of his article on James Macpherson’s “transla­
tion” of Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem (1761). In this article, Smollett explained
that Macpherson had derived the word “Caracalla” from the “Irish word, signify­
ing terrible eye! Smollett noted the implausible practice of “clearing up antient
history” by depending upon “a similarity of sounds and expression,” and suggested
that the word “may as naturally be derived from Kapaxolot), pulchrum caputP^
In Traveb through France and Italy, Smollett confirmed this interpretation:
In the language of the Highlanders caracuyl signifies cruel eye, as we are
given to understand by the ingenious editior of Fingal, who seems to
think that Caracalla is no other than the Celtic word, adapted to the
pronunciation of the Romans: but the truth is, Caracalla was the name
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A G O O D C R I T I C
of a Gaulish vestment, which this prince affected to wear; and hence he
derived that surname.^®
Smollett was interested in the derivation of other words while in France: at
Boulogne, for example, he speculated about the origins of wheat-ears and
“samphire”;^^ at Nice, he considered “Melanzana”^^ and “Lebeche.”^^’ Smith also
explored what he called the “origin and progress of language” his historical
1I
approach is perhaps reflected by Smollett’s account of Provencal in the Travels.
In some ways, Smollett also followed the practice of Macpherson, who had, as
Smollett observed, appended an “Erse specimen” to his edition of Temora (1763)
(in Travels through France and Italy, Smollett included the only printed specimen
I could find of the modern Provencal”) . T h u s Smollett’s interest in a language
that was “no other than the ancient Provencal,” and that “rose upon the ruins of
the Latin tongue,”^^^ was twofold. First, he was curious to see how “every word
of the Patois may still be found in the Italian, Spanish, and French languages . I
this was a version of the linguistic instability that informed Smollett s English
Academy project.^^'* Second, since the “first legends of knight-errantry were writ­
ten in Proven5 al,”^^’ Smollett may have been reminded of some of the equally
“extravagant adventures” related by Macpherson. He perhaps thought that he
something of the “antient inhabitants of North-Britain.”"^^ In the Theory of Moral
Sentiments, Adam Smith had suggested his own affinity to the lost Highland cul­
' I
ture in which the “Chieftain used to consider the poorest man of his clan, as his
cousin and relation.”^^^ Significantly, he located the virtues of self-denial among
such “rude and barbarous nations”: for example, he noted that the “magnanimity
and self command” of the “savages in North America” were “almost beyond the
conception of Europeans.”^^®It is possible that Smollett understood the people at
Nice to be part of such a primitive culture. He observed that the “Nissards (who
“piqued” themselves, among the French, “on being Proven9 al”) were surprisingly
“established between two enlightened nations”^^’ and spoke a language that was
“neglected, as the language of the vulgar.”^®"Smollett’s criticisms of their “uncouth
phraseology” and “extremely vitious” pronunciation^^' thus demonstrated his own
self-contradictory attitude toward Scotland (where he had listened, in his youth, to
Ji
the “schelachs, or tales, of the modern Highland bards, or senachies")?^^ No wonder
Smollett was so unsettled by a patois-speaking physician.^®’
Smith’s concerns about language and the fine arts were, like Smollett’s,
related to his wider interests in commercial society. In his Lectures on Rhetoric
and the Belles Lettres, Smith showed that improvements in prose were associated
' t
^ t
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A THEATRICAL DIVINE
with commercial developments.^®'* His theory of “sympathy” also had similarities
with his well-known concept of the “invisible hand.”^®^ Notably, Smiths Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was inspired, in part, by his
visit to France; Smollett also showed himself aware of such issues. In his Inquiry,
Hutcheson had written that people were “ravished” by the first discovery of a
theorem, and Smith also obseryed a “love of system” and the “beauty of order.”^®®
Hogarth’s theory of the line of beauty was beautiful itself in these terms. In his
Theory of Moral Sentiments, however. Smith noted that the “happy contrivance^
of any production of art” was often “more valued, than the end for which it was
intended.”^®'' In doing so. Smith hoped to distinguish his cojicept of “utility” from Joseph Addison, Esq; was certainly drunk, when he laid it down as a
Hume’s account (as his reviewer noticed), but he also suggested a way of reading maxim, in one of his Spectators, “that a perfect tragedy is the noblest
his own theory. Smith stressed that the pleasure of utility followed the pleasure production of human nature.”
derived from other acts of sympathy.^®® As such, Smith made his own theory su­
—^Alexander Carlyle, An Argument to Prove that the
perfluous to the moral sentiments themselves.^®® Smollett may well have admired
Tragedy of Douglas Ought to he Publickly Burnt by the
such a strategy in returning attention to the object of discussion. While he would
Hands of the Hangman (189)
have agreed with Hutcheson about the pleasures inherent in talking about beauty,

Smollett also pointed out its “real” existence in the art works he contemplated.
Like Reid, he was interested in the minds behind these productions. Smollett’s ap­
proach to the fine arts thus mediated between the observer and observed in a way
that proved him to be a “good critic,” and a suitable companion (and promoter)
of the Glasgow philosophers themselves.
q
L, J mOLLETT h a d a t t e m p t e d a “perfect tragedy” before
leaving Glasgow in 1739. In fact, he may well have been drawn to London by
Addison’s words. While Alexander Carlyle had his tongue in his cheek when
describing Addison as drunk, he nevertheless reflected the view of the majority
in the Church of Scotland. Carlyle himself was prosecuted for his attendance at
the rehearsals and performance of John Homes tragedy Douglas (1756) in 1757.
His ironic pamphlet An Argument to Prove that the Tragedy of Douglas Ought^ to
he Publickly Burnt by the Hands of the Hangman (1757), in which he felt an ir­
resistible inclination to write against the favourite tragedy of Douglas" (and which
was taken seriously by many of its readers), did not help his case. In Glasgow,
John Witherspoon (1723-1794) repeated Carlyle’s views without irony (Car­
lyle, for example, had written that it was necessary for him “to have it taken for
granted, that stage plays, and all dramatic entertainments are absolutely unlawful,
and directly contrary to the word of God ).^ Witherspoon thus articulated the
hostile attitude to the theater Smollett would have encountered in his youth: he
addressed, for example, those “who are not content with seeing the world as it is
ordered by a wise and holy God, but must see it over again, in a vile imitation, by

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that he was “not very sorry for the Dissapointment [sic] of Hume [Home], whom
a sinful man” and derided the environment of the theater.^ Witherspoons general
[he] love[d] exceedingly.”” Smollett met Home again in 1753 when he visited
view was deliberately opposed to the particularity of Adam Ferguson’s argument
Scotland; they would also meet in 1755 when Home returned to London with
in support of Home’s play. Ferguson had insisted in his pamphlet The Morality
Douglas.'^ In 1753, Carlyle introduced Smollett to some of the ministers among
of Stage-Plays seriously considered (1757) that the grave and sober should attend
whom Home’s play would circulate the following year.'^ Although Smollett was
the theater, an implication that followed from the growing commercialism of the
notrpresent at the reading in 1756, he would have felt close to the project. By
stage and that earned him the title of doctor Mandeville. ^In the first section of
then, Smollett was confirmed in what he had called his unjust Exclusion from
this chapter, I will consider how Smollett shared these views about the stage; I will
the Theatre.”” The performance of Home’s play at Edinburgh in December 1756,
then show how they informed his novel writing and his journey through-France
after its rejection by David Garrick in April, was thus a success in which Smollett
and Italy. A ccord in g to Carlyle, Home was an “audacious theatrical divine” and
this was certain ly how Witherspoon conceived of Ferguson'.* But it was also how could legitimately share.”
Home may well have been inspired to write Douglas by reading Smollett’s
Ferguson represented the apostle Paul and how Carlyle probably understood him­
Regicide in 1749. Smollett’s play was based on George Buchanans account of the
self^ While Smollett was not a minister, his relationship to the moderate literati
death of James I.^“ The promotion of a national history, not to mention the name
in Edinburgh (and his experiences in Glasgow) led him to a similar combination
of Douglas (Smollett’s heroine, Eleonora, was a Douglas), are important aspects
of the discourses of theater and religion.
of both worb."' Home would not have found many other precedents for his
play: a tragedy by Gabriel Nesbit, titled Caledon’s Tears, or Wallace, a tragedy and
Smollett and the Theater published in Edinburgh in 1733 (only a few years before Smollett took his play
to London), has been seen as “the earliest effort by a Scot to mine the rich ore
In November 1756, John Home took part in a reading of his play Douglas. He
of national history and legend for dramatic subject matter.”^ Both Smollett and
was accompanied by other members of what came to be seen as the Moderate
Home appear to have been influenced by the work of Allan Ramsay (1686-1758):
Party” in the Church of Scodand: William Robertson and Adam Ferguson (play­
Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd (1729), for example, which featured a hero ignorant
ing Lord and Lady Randolph), Hugh Blair (as the maid), and Alexander Carlyle
of his birth (a motif later developed by Smollett in Humphry C lin k er),might
(as Norval).* On the periphery of this group were David Hume (here taking the
account for some of the perceived artificiality of Smollett’s writing.^^ Although
part of Glenalvon) and Adam Smith (not participating in this reading but with
Charles Churchill (1731-1764), in his long poem TheApology (1761), questioned
theatrical interests of his own).’ Smollett was also acquainted with what he called
Smollett’s “tragic Ha! and no less tragic Oh!” the blank verse of the Regicide (as
the “hot-bed of genius” in Edinburgh. Alexander Carlyle had met Smollett in
in Home’s play) aspired to the kind of pathos demonstrated by Ramsay.” Both
London in 1746 and later recalled that he had been shown Smollett’s “Tragedy
Smollett and Home also turned to Shakespeare for inspiration: Glenalvon, with
of James the 1st of Scotland, which he never could bring on the Stage.”” Carlyle
his “ironical derisive counsel,” would have reminded his audience of lago, Smol­
seems to have approved of Smollett’s play, and their ensuing correspondence fo­
lett echoed Henry TV, Hamlet, and, more generally, Macbeth.^^ Perhaps most
cused on his experiences in the London theaters.” Within three years, Carlyle was
significantly, both Douglas and The Regicide focused on a woman’s relationship to
writing to Smollett to introduce him to John Home.*^ As Smollett had hoped.
a “Reduc’d Usurper.”” In Home’s play. Lady Randolph’s allegiance was clear; for
Home inquired after him on his arrival in London in 1749. Home would have
Smollett, however, the Douglas heroine, Eleonora^ was torn between the bng and
already been aware of Smollett’s failed attempts to stage The Regicide (Smollett
the rebel, Stuart. If Douglas’s condition (“Clouded and hid, a stranger to myself,
had been forced to publish it by subscription earlier that year), as well as his work
/ In low and poor obscurity I liv’d”)” was suggestive of the Jacobite cause, then
on a “farce,” a “Comedy,” and a “Tragedy on the Story of Alceste.”” Probably, he
in Smollett’s play it found even clearer expression. The name of Smollett s rebel,
did not hold very high hopes for his own first play (which he attempted to
“Stuart,” was particularly resonant: claiming, for example, that the bng retained
stage while in London).'^ In a letter to Carlyle, Smollett later commented on the
“by Fraud / The Sceptre he usurps,” Stuart announces, “Thou [Eleonora]—thou
“Stolidity” that “prevail [ed] among the audience of [their] Theatres, and reflected

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art chang’d—but Stuart still the same!”^“ Later in the play, Eleonora addresses
Stuart’s rival, the loyal Dunbar, and describes her situation with similar ambiguity:
I know that Stuart sinks into Reproach:
Immers’d in Guilt, and, more than once, subdu’d
By thy superior Meri| and Success:
Yet even this Stuart,—for I would not wrong
Thine Expectation,—still retains a Part
Of my Compassion—nay, I fear, my Love!-— ,-
Would’st thou, distinguish’d by th’ Applause of Kings,.-
Disgrace thy Qualities, and brook the Prize
Of a divided Heart?—
John Cleland (1709—1789), in the Monthly Review, responded to Eleonora,
“distracted between her passion and her duty,” as “a character both natural and
well-touched.”^^ In many respects, she was a symbol of a divided Scotland and
her indecision complemented the play’s uncertain closure.^^ Home may well have
toned down such Jacobite sympathies; it is unclear how far Smollett would have
followed the implications of his words.^^ Nevertheless, as Alexander Carlyle ob­
served, Smollett had “the Feelings of a Scotch Gentleman, on the Reported Cruel­
ties that were said to be exercis’d after the Batde of Culloden,”’^and it is notable
that his ensuing poem “The Tears of Scodand” (1746) seems to have developed a
line from his play.^^
The charged language of The Regicide may have meant that it was unsuitable
for an English audience. In his preface to the play, Smollett noted that James Lacy,
while manager of Drury Lane in 1746, had rejected The Regicide in favor of the
more anti-Jacobite sentiments of King Henry VII, or the Popish Imposter by Charles
Macklin (ca. 1697—1797).^^ Smollett probably encountered similar prejudices
when he first attempted to find an audience for his play in 1739. Smollett arrived
in London during the summer of 1739; in March, Gustavus Vasa (a play that
lent itself to Jacobite interpretation) by Henry Brooke (1703-1783), and James
Thomson’s Edward and Eleonora (which incorporated other political innuendos),
had been banned.^® Both of these plays had followed the February production of
Mustapha by David Mallet (ca. 1705-1765) and, like Mallet’s play, were perceived
to be part of a theatrical campaign by the so-called Patriot Opposition.^’ It is
likely that Smollett moved on the outside of these circles when he first arrived in
London: he may well have met Thomson in 1739 and was certainly friendly with
him by 1747 (when he observed in a letter to Carlyle that Garrick "has served
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Thomson in the selfsame manner”) Since Patriot drama made particular use of
tragedies and, in the case of Mallet’s Eurydice (1731) and Thomson’s Tancred and
Sipsmunda (1745), could be interpreted along Jacobite lines, it is possible that
Smollett’s Re^cide-v/zs understood in this way.^' Smollett would have inherited the
additional problem that his heroine shared the same name as Thomson’s banned
“Eleonora,” a name later associated with the Princess of Wales when Thomson
printed the play in May 1739.''^ It is also notable that Smollett was to follow the
practice of Henry Brooke, who, after the banning of Gustavus Vasa, printed the
play by subscription with an explanatory preface.'*’ Thus, in spite of Smollett s
insistence on his play’s intrinsic “Merit,” he would not have been able to avoid
the suspicion of a “faction raised in its behalf” (later, for example. Home’s
was understood to be such a “rank Party, Piece ).** It is probable, then, that the
Licensing Act of 1737, which had caused the tragedies of Brooke and Thomson
to be banned (and to which Witherspoon later referred in an effort to ban Home’s
D ouglas),proved an effectual block to an early production of Smollett’s play.
, Although The Regicide had some of the hallmarks of Patriot drama, it was
not fully an opposition play. It seems that George Lyttelton (1709—1773), secre­
tary to the Prince of Wales from 1737, read The Re^cide and rejected it (he may
have suggested that Smollett should vreite a comedy, and then rejected that too).*®
While Smollett later attacked Lyttelton in Peregrine Pickle (noting his “desertion”
of Frederick and his relationship with Thomson),*^ it was unlikely that his play
could have been applied coherently to the political scene. Smollett would therefore
have found himself without the support of a “faction” while being implicated in
its activities (hence the “fear” of Gharles Fleetwood, the manager of Drury Lane
when Smollett presented his play to him in 1742, that Smolletts interest was not
sufficient to support it in the representation”).*®In his later preface to The Regcide,
Smollett thus blamed the patentees of the theaters (who were, he noted, “often
more difficult of access than a Sovereign Prince”) for their “Abuse of Prerogative.”*’
He alluded to the number of alterations he had to make to his play (alterations
that he only “hope[dj” were emendations) and perhaps implied that the publica­
tion of what he called “this unfortunate production” was an example of a ruined
work.” In this respect, his allusion to John Rich (ca. 1692—1761), the manager
of Covent Garden from 1732 to 1761, as “the Vaticide” (a term he had also
employed against Rich in his verse satire Reproof [YjAl)), could well have served
as an alternative tide to the project.’' The progress of emphasis from “Regicide”
to “Vaticide” is an emblem of Smollett’s experience with the London theaters: it
transformed the story of a Scottish rebellion into an account of the usurpation of
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the poet. In doing so, Smollett retained his Jacohite pretensions in an attack on
the false authorities of the English stage.
While Smollett complained about the number of alterations he had to make
to his play, it was unlikely that he, or John Home, had much experience of the the-
ater.^^ By 1750, writing to Francis Hayman with a revised copy of his “Comedy,”
Smollett was clearly angry that he could be supposed “so ignorant of the Stage.”^^
However, neither Smollett .nor Home would have seen many plays in Scodand and
their experience of the theater in London would have been limited by the laeeris-
ing Act of 1737.^'* A reviewer of Smollett’s later play The iS^m<?/,commented that
“the author does not seem to be so well acquainted with the'y^w de theatre as some
of his contemporaries”;^^with regard to the failure o i lhe Regicide, even Alexander
Carlyle reflected that the “Managers could not be blam’d.”^'^In many ways, Smol­
lett’s plays suited an outmoded style of acting. Joseph Reed, in A Sop in the Pan
for a Physical Critic (1759), declared The Regicide to be “the greatest Burlesque on
Nature, that [he] ever had the Pleasure of perusing,” and favored the text’s medici­
nal qualities (as an emetic) to its poetical ones.^^ It is possible that David Garrick,
developing a more lifelike (less rhetorical) acting style, influenced Rich to rejeCT
Smollett’s play on this basis.^* Certainly, James Thomson thought that Garrick’s ri­
valry with the more traditional actor, James Quin (1693-1766), accounted for the
rejection of his own play, Coriolanus (which was presented to Garrick in the same
season as The Regicide)?'^ Smollett, like Home, was thus forced into numerous revi­
sions of his early work.®” He also attempted a number of other plays. In letters to
Carlyle, Smollett referred to a “Farce” and a “Comedy”:®' the farce was probably
The Israelites; or, The Pampered Nabob, advertised as an afterpiece to Home’s Doug­
las in 1785;®^ the comedy was probably The Absent Man (and may have been the
comedy encouraged by Lyttelton).®^ It is possible that the farce was written in col­
laboration with James Hunter (1715-1743) (a brother of William Hunter) while
in Glasgow, but this collaboration might represent a further play.®^ Smollett also
worked with Handel on the masque Alceste, a story with similarities to Thomson’s
banned Edward and EleonoraN All of these projects failed and Smollett’s work was
not seen on the stage until 1757, when Garrick produced Smollett’s afterpiece.
The Reprisal.^ Notably, this was staged in the same season as the first production
of Home’s Douglas at Covent Garden (and ran for more performances).®^ While
The Reprisal featured a highlander excluded “from his own country on account of
the late rebellion,” Smollett’s play presented a less oppositional form of patriotism
in the face of the war with France.®® It also reflected his involvement in musical
entertainments: the Scottish musician James Oswald, who probably provided the
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music for three of the four songs in The Reprisal, had previously set at least four
of Smollett’s poems to music (as well as a song by Carlyle).®^ Unsurprisingly, the
production of Smollett and Home’s plays in 1757 marked the beginning of an
improved set of relationships with the manager of Drury Lane.*'®
The Reprisal, however, was Smollett’s last attempt to write for the stage. By
1257, unquestionably dismayed by his experiences with the London theaters,
Smollett had set about their reform. Witherspoon, writing in 1757, believed that
“none, so far as I have heard or seen, have been so bold as to lay down a distinct
plan for the improvement of the stage”; he thought that a regulated stage was an
idea so abstracted, that. . . there is reason to believe it never can exist.”^' But in
1756, Theophilus Cibber (1703-1758), presenting his “Two Dissertations on
Theatrical Subjects,” made it known that he had heard of a “laudable Scheme to
“prevent the Depravity we are falling into, by rescuing sound Sense, and Morality,
from the barbarous Attacks of Ignorance and Gothism.”^'' The scheme was a plan
for an “Academy” and it seems likely that its instigator was Smollett.^® In the CriH-
calReview, Smollett reviewed Cibber’s “Dissertations and observed that [Cibber]
says, what we are afraid is too true, that ‘the greater number of spectators, go to
the theatres merely as an idle amusement—to while away the hours, or dissipate
the spleen,—as humour, leisure, indolence, or fashion lead them. Smollett also
endorsed Cibber’s opinion that applause was generally “most lavishly and mdiscri-
mately bestow’d,” and wondered “whether patentees, and players, have not joined
in laying a foundation for a false disgraceful taste?” Although—as Witherspoon
would have expected— Smollett’s hopes to regulate the stage foiled, something of
them remained in his work for the Critical Review. As his comments on Cibber’s
“Dissertations” suggest, this also involved him in the kind of anti-theatrical writ­
ing associated with Home’s opponents in Scotland.
It is fitting that the first play Smollett reviewed for the Critical Review was
The Apprentice (1756) by Arthur Murphy (1727-1805). Noting that the apparent
success of the play was due to its actors (not its “intrinsic merit”), Smollett never­
theless had some praise for Murphy’s intentions.
The professed aim of the author was to reform a set of apprentices, who
(it seems) assemble at a certain alehouse, and instead of conversing like
other mortals, spout tragedy, or in other words repeat fragments of plays
with great vociferation, to the manifest prejudice of their masters, the ut­
ter perversion of their own understandings, and the grievous disturbance
of the neighbourhood.^^
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Although Smollett believed that this was a “laudable undertaking,” he no doubt
suspected that the play participated in the culture it sought to reform (namely, “a
petty beerhouse in one of the avenues of Covent Garden)]^ Nor would he have
appreciated Murphys reference to The Regicide, which seemed to imply that he
too was “infected with the itch of acting” (Smollett complained that the Scottish
character who had “enacted in the Reegeceede” was misrepresented because “few
or no north Britons are firec^ with the ambition of becoming actors”). In review­
ing Murphys play, Smollett was confronted with his own ambivalent relationship '
to the world of the theater. He thus attempted to distinguish between plays as
literary productions and as performances. In a later review o f George Colman’s
TheJealous Wife (1761), for example, Smollett noted, “From the thundering peals
of applause with which this performance hath beeh received in the theater, we
flattered ourselves with the hope of enjoying it with rapture in the closet”; he
then added, "[W]e cannot help owning ourselves disappointed.”^^ In a similar
way, Smollett’s review of The School For Lovers (1762) by William Whitehead
(1715—1785) clearly indicated that it had not been seen on the stage. Observ­
ing that Whitehead had “preserved the unities of time and place with the most
scrupulous exactness,” although ironically commenting (in an allusion to his ex­
periences with The Regicide) that “we have lived to hear this censured as a defect,”
Smollett noted that the reader’s eye will not “be entertained with a variety of
shifting scenes, nor the imagination transported by a hurry of business,” in spite
of the fact that “these are the articles in which the success of a modern comedy, in
a great manner depends.”^®What could well be criticism here was most probably
praise, since Smollett was responding to the prologue of the play, spoken by Gar­
rick (and reprinted in the British Magazine). In the prologue, Garrick explained
Whitehead’s practice to the audience:
He shifts no scene—But here I stopt him short—
Not change your scenes? said I,—I’m sorry for’t:
My constant friends above, around, below.
Have English tastes, and love both change and show.
Garrick then concluded.
Still he persists—-and let him—entre nous—
I know your taste, and will indulge e’m too.
Change you shall have; so set your hearts at ease:
Write as he will, we’ll act it—as you please.^^
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Like Witherspoon, Smollett probably thought such commercialism precluded the
possibility of a moral stage.®” Witherspoon even claimed that it was a “contradic­
tion” to represent Christian virtues in a theater (they lent themselves rather to
“narration”) and it is significant that the account of Douglas in the Critical Review
stripped the play of “the glare of dress, the force of action, and every other orna-
menunerely theatrical.”®’ While Smollett distanced himself from some of the criti­
cisms in this review (which may have simply redressed the controversial praise of
David Hume),®^ he must have agreed with its practice more generally. He probably
believed, with Witherspoon, that the theaters had been (prematurely) “exalted”
into “schools of virtue.”®®His reviews of their productions thus tended to remain
literary and therefore, in this context, somewhat anti-theatrical (he recommended,
for example, improving the relationship of the prologue to the play, the propriety
of tragedy and comedy, and the “keeping” of the principal characters).®'* Smollett s
emphasis on reading a play in his closet was his way of maintaining a role as one
who lived “at a distance from the theatre.”®®
Like Henry Fielding, whose career as a playwright was curtailed by the
Licensing Act, Smollett turned to novel writing in the wake of his experiences
with the theater.®® In many respects, like Theophilus Cibber s company of snuff
merchants that rehearsed plays in public, this new direction represented a way
of circumventing the censor:®^ it was a short step from printing The Regicide as a
book to presenting more theatrical material in narrative form. Smollett referred
to Roderick Random, published a year after The Regicide, as his Performance,
and it is notable that at least one of the songs in the novel, if not all three, had
been set to music before its publication.®® Like his other novels, Roderick Ran­
dom had many theatrical qualities (Walter Scott [1771—1832] was later to refer
to Smollett’s writing as a “delightful puppet-show ),®® and these will be con­
sidered in the following section of this chapter. However, Smollett’s interest in
prose fiction also revealed his distrust of the stage. His novels clearly responded
to the world of Restoration drama (for example, by adopting such characters as
Earl Strutwell and Lord Quiverwit) but they were equally an attempt to expose
it in a “closet,” not a theater.®” Thus Smollett’s references to Shakespeare,®’ or
to more recent playwrights such as Nicholas Rowe (1674—1718) and William
Congreve (1670-1729) (their plays. The Fair Penitent [1703] and The Mourn­
ing Bride [1697], became firmly associated with the acting of David Garrick),®^
must be seen as highly ambivalent. Like Alexander Carlyle, whose pamphlet in
support of Home was sometimes understood to be against him, Smollett, writ­
ing his novels in the 1750s and 1760s, and constructing a fictionalized version
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of himself in Travels through France and Italy, also discovered the depth of his
Presbyterian past.
Novels and Performances
Adam Smith shared Smollett’s predilection for the theater. His spectatorial model
of conscience (“We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour, and
endeavour to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us”)’’ , -
is reflected in the dialogic writing of Smollett’s novels. Smith’s work har been
considered in the light of the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin (who eitiphasized the
theatrical, multi-vocal nature of discourse);’'*Smollett’s novels can be approached
in a similar manner.” For both Smollett and Smith, the notion of a performative
aspect to experience was probably inspired by their literati friends. Smith, argu­
ably, hoped to limit such theater: he stressed, for example, the total identification
of the “actor” and the “impartial spectator.” In doing so, he perhaps followed the
Stoic ambition for the resolution of “nature” with “reason.”’^But, as I have noted
in chapter 2, such acts of “sympathy” were always incomplete.’^ Smith’s theory
therefore sustained a dynamic moral theater. In Smollett’s novels, there is a similar
interplay of reason and “passion,” observer and observed. Smollett’s charaaers
are seen in the act of performing their own stories, reconciling their actions with
other people’s (impartial) words. On the one hand, Smollett sought, like Smith,
to preserve the unity of his writing; on the other, he exposed the precariousness of
such an endeavor. He therefore suggested something of his continued aspirations
to write a “perfect tragedy.” According to Hume, a “well-written tragedy” inspired
“passions” that were “in themselves disagreeable and uneasy”; in many respects,
Smollett’s narratives (including Travels through France and Italy) preserved his
dialogue with this “singular phaenomenon” of the stage.”
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett described the horrors of his
journey to Florence at night. When he arrived at the house of Mrs. Vanini, he
apparently “ate with great satisfaction,” pardy because he believed that the events
(and his fear) had “repaired” his constitution, but mainly because he had “happily
survived the adventure.”” Four of Smollett’s five novels were called “adventures.”
Samuel Johnson defined an “adventure” in his Dictionary as an “accident,” or an
“event over which we have no direction,” and it is likely that Smollett experienced
adventures as Johnson defined them. Such a notion of adventure may account for
the view that Smollett’s novels lack structure;'” it also suggests that they were a
performance. Notably, Smollett understood the series of chance events in Italy to
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be an “adventure” only when he had survived them. Eating dinner in Mrs. Van-
nini’s house, Smollett acquired a certain self-consciousness."" His evening thus
became something more than an accident: like the reported catastrophe of the
stage, it turned into an adventure in the act of being recounted.'” Smollett had
shown how “adventures” were constructed in his (autobiographically inspired)
first novel. The Adventures of Roderick Random}°^ For example, it was Roderick
who named an otherwise nameless “young lady” “Narcissa,” a name that he had
intended to be temporary but that informed the rest of his stoty (the “young lady”
is also seen as “Celia,” “my Narcissa,” and “My generous bedfellow”)."" Similarly,
Roderick recast his loyal friend Strap as “the poor barber,” “this faithful adherent,”
“this affectionate shaver,” and “Monsieur d’Estrapes.”"" The novel contained many
other examples of periphrasis: “my own castle” (for Roderick’s room), “my fellow
lodger” and “the messenger” (for Miss Williams), “the Cambro-Briton” (for Mr.
Morgan), and “My hoary Dulcinea” (for Miss Sparkle).'” It also used quotations
and proverbs to interpret events: Roderick, for instance, cites Paradise Lost to de­
scribe “Narcissa.”'” Like Don Quixote (who renames both his lady and his horse),
or Miss Williams in Roderick’s story (Miss Williams interprets the world through
all she “had read of love and chivalry”), Roderick was shown to appropriate the
words of other people in order to have an “adventure” of his own.'”
Smollett continued to expose moments of theater in his other novels. Thus,
in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Peregrine is referred to as “our young Adonis,”
Trunnion as “old Hannibal,” and various women become Peregrine’s “Amanda”
or “modern Dulcinea.”"” Similarly, Cadwallader risks being like “Orpheus,” Pal­
let like Rubens, and a Mosquetaire like “Hector”; in a certain way. Peregrine also
encounters the “iEsopus of the age” (James Quin), the “ring of Gyges” (Cadwal­
lader), and the “Gorgon’s head” (a nameless woman)."’ In The Adventures of Fer­
dinand Count Fathom, Ferdinand “was with justice likened unto Hercules in the
cradle” and mistaken for the “young pretender”; like Roderick, he encounters an
“Urganda,” an “Amanda,” “The Delphic Sibyl,” an “amazon” or two, and, perhaps
more favorably, “Helen.”"' In addition, the waters of Bath and Tunbridge appear
as the streams of Lethe, and a dispute in a coach becomes “the Eleusinian myster­
ies.”"^ In The Life and Adventures ofLauncelot Greaves, Launcelot is “set up for a
modern Don Quixote,” but also for “Hercules” and “Mercury” while Mr. Syca­
more becomes “Polydore.”"’ In the same way, Lismahago and Bramble’s servant
in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker “might have passed for the knight of La
Mancha and his ‘squire Panza.’”""' There are other acts of “metamorphosis” in this
novel; for example, Scotland becomes a Gothic “land of congyration” and even
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strawberries are seen as gifts from the Greeks."’ Smollett’s novels dins presented
a world of endless performative potential. Such a world could be highly unstable;
Peregrine, for instance, pursues Emilia and his rival for she pages before discovering
that the Clarissa-like elopement was truly somebody else’s story;"^ even Smollett,
in Travels through France and Italy, meets Joseph and is almost drawn into a pica­
resque romance.*" Rather thap presenting (what can appear to be) a linear account
of one story after another, Sidollett was interested in re-creating the (chance) mo­
ments when different narratives meet.’*®
Walter Scott’s description of a puppet show, during which SmpJlert does not
thrust his head “beyond the curtain,” has perhaps led to the vitw that Smollett is
“absent” from his novels.**^ However, Smollett can clearly be seen to participate
in the acts of appropriation undertaken by his “adventurers.” In the preface to
Roderick Random, Smollett hoped that “every impression” of the novel would have
a “double force” on the imagination of his readers.*^" What he meant by this was
that those readers who “sympathised” with Roderick “in distress” would be doubly
receptive to moral instruction. In this way, Smollett (like Roderick) “reaccented
words that were not strictly his own.*^*
That the delicate reader may not be offended at the unmeaning oaths
which proceed from the mouths of some persons in these memoirs, I
beg leave to premise, that I imj^ined nothing could more effectually
expose the absurdity of such miserable expletives, than a natural and
verbal representation of the discourse with which they are commonly
interlarded. *“
Smollett’s novel thus represented a kind of script that only he could perform cor­
rectly.*^’ The theatrical nature of such writing necessarily led to difficulties. In
1755, for example, Smollett added an apologue to the fourth edition oi Roderick
Random, no doubt in an effort to maintain authorial control.*^^ In 1753, he
described some of his experiences in the dedication to Ferdinand Count Fathom:
“We live in a censorious z%e.” he wrote, “and an author cannot take too much
precaution to anticipate the prejudice, misapmehension and temerity of malice,
ignorance and presumption.”*» Although su<ffi precautions were often sUent and
belated (for example, Smollett’s revisions of Peregrine Pickle in 1758),*^^ Smollett’s
anticipatory voice sometimes surfaced in his texts. In Ferdinand Count Fathom,
the narrator exclaims.
Perfidious wretch! thy crimes turn out so atrocious, that I half repent me
of having undertaken to record thy memoirs: yet such monsters ought
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to be exhibited to public view, that mankind may be upon their guard
against imposture; that the world may see how fraud is apt to overshoot
itself: and that, as virtue, though it may suffer for a while, will triumph
in the end; so iniquity, though it may prosper for a season, will at last be
overtaken by that punishment and disgrace which are its due.*"
This-outburst has been seen as an “unconvincing authorial intrusion” and “tech­
nically clumsy,” but it is actually consistent with Smollett’s narrative practice.*^®
Smollett was always in dialogue with the voices of “prejudice” and “presumption”
and if such passages seem “unconvincing,” it is only because the voices are difficult
to hear.*^® In a similar way, in Travels through France and Italy, Smollett presented
a kind of corrective to English views of the French; as with his novels, “misappro­
priations” followed.*’"To a certain extent, Smollett must have enjoyed the range
of meanings opened up by his words: it probably reminded him of the theater (de­
scribed by the magician Cadwallader, in Peregrine Pickle, as “altogether without the
sphere of his divination, being intirely regulated by the daemons of dissimulation,
ignorance and caprice”),*’* and it reflected the performances of the “adventurers”
he created. But Smollett distrusted these aspects of the stage; as in his plans for
an English academy, he also aspired to regulate the interpretations that it entailed.
In Humphry Clinker, George Dennison confides to Bramble that he
“dreaded the long winter evenings.”*’^Apparently, these were eased by his friend
Mr. Wilson, who “presided,” Dennison explains, “over [his] pastimes.”
He taught me to brew beer, to make cyder, perry, mead, usquebaugh,
and plague-water; to cook several outlandish delicacies, such as olios,
pepper-pots, pillows, corys, chahohs, and stufatas.—He understands all
manner of games, from chess down to chuck-farthing, sings a good song,
plays upon the violin, and dances a hornpipe with surprising agility.*”
Smollett’s novels were full of such entertainments. *’"*Even Bramble’s letters, like
Smollett’s in Travels through France and Italy, were “sedentary amusements,” de­
signed to keep the long winter evenings at bay.*” Games similarly formed part of
the education of Ferdinand (himself “an exquisite actor”)*’®and Launcelot (who
was “confessed to be, out of sight, the best dancer at all wakes and holidays”);*’*’
notably. Peregrine’s games with Commodore Trunnion led the latter into an en­
tirely fictional existence.*’®In the same way, in Roderick Random, a stranger con­
sents to hold up a wagon merely “for the sake of diversion” and Roderick pretends
not to understand French in the hopes of gaining some “amusement or advan­
tage.”*” But Roderick is careful not to take such amusements too far. In the midst
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of the endless tricks played on Doctor Wagtail, for example, Roderick notes that
“the poor creature was so harrassed with fear and vexation, that [Roderick] pitied
him extremely, and sent him home in a chair, contrary to the inclination of every
body present Similarly, Roderick restrains his entertainment at the expense of
Strap. He tells Strap that he has lost his watch and diamond and then continues.
Poor Hugh, who had been already harrassed into a consumption by
intelligence of this sort, no sooner heard these words, than, unable to
contain himself, he cried with distraction in his looks, “God in heaveli
forbid!”—I could carry on the farce no longer, but laugHng in his face,
told him everything that had befallen, as above recited.
One of the reasons for Rodericks charming “laugh in the face” was that he had
glimpsed the kind of “dread” such games were intended to divert. When Mmgan,
believing Roderick to be dead, reaches a similar point of “distraction (he stared
like the picture of horror”), Roderick tells us, “I was concerned for his situation,
and stretched out my hand.”'^^ This is a technique to which Smollett often re­
turned: the “spirit of play” Ferdinand describes as “having overspread the land,
like a pestilence,” both hides and exposes the “long winter evenings” his characters
would rather forget.
Smollett sought amusement himself in France and Italy. Although he later
wrote that he was “mortified at the detention of my books,” he evidendy en­
joyed his time at the customhouse in Boulogne. Because Smollett observed that
“a dozen teaspoons” were “luckily in [his] servants pocket,”^^ it seems likely that
he was engaged in some performances of his own (the Monthly Review thought
that it was Smollett’s “want of management” that resulted in the confiscation of
his books) .Li ke the characters in his novels, Smollett traveled through France
by creating diversions for himself: at Buon Covento, for example, he refused to
pay the hostler, who “in revenge put two young unbroke stone-horses in the traces
next to the coach, which became so unruly,” Smollett wrote, “that before we had
gone a quarter of a mile, they and the postilion were rolling in the dust.”'^^ Near
Genoa, Smollett enjoyed arming himself with his sword and cane m order to ask
an innkeeper for his bill;’'® he also recounted the “adventure” of his servant rep­
resenting him as “a lord.”’« In a similar way, he jm^ined traveling to Genoa in a
feluca (while he actually traveled hy gondola)’5° ^^d postulated other journeys, to
Rocabiliare,’^’ Tivoli,’” and Turin,’” which never actually took place. But Smol­
lett’s games were more measured than, for example. Peregrine’s entertainments in
France. In Peregrine Pickle, it is Pallet who pays the price for Peregrine’s confine-
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ment, “without any sort of communication or entertainment,” for three days in
the Bastille.’” Peregrine tells him that he will have to remain in the Bastille for life
and, unsurprisingly, “[tjhese tidings aggravated the horrors of the painter to such a
degree, that he roared aloud, and skipped about the room, in all the extravagance
of distraction.”’” Having masterminded Pallet’s escape from prison. Peregrine
begi_ns-to fear that Pallet’s “hrain would not bear a repetition of the same joke,”
and so “permitted him to gain his own lodgings, without further molestation.”’”
While Smollett’s amusements did not extend so far, they were similarly balanced
on the edge of “distraction”: certainly, the innkeeper to whom Smollett brandished
his cane and sword complained that Smollett’s “major-duomo” had “almost turned
his brain.”’” Like Roderick and Peregrine, Smollett drew back in the ftice of such
disorder.
Only Ferdinand seems to be unafraid of the implications of his perfor­
mances. Even though Monimia is “worn to a shadow with self-consuming an­
guish,” Ferdinand continues to deceive her.’” In many respects, his narrative is a
tr^ic extension of the sequences of practical jokes in Roderick Random and Per­
egrine Pickle. Ferdinand refuses to laugh in anyone’s face, and it is up to Monimia’s
landlady “to decoy her attention to those sublunary objects from which it had been
industriously weaned.”’” In the attempt to recover Monimia from distraction, two
stories unfold simultaneously. In one, Monimia is not “diverted”: she dies.’^” In
the other, this event becomes a diversion in itself, a “stratagem” of Madam Clem­
ent, through which she is reunited with Renaldo (it is now Renaldo’s turn to be
diverted from “those interesting ideas, which, by being too long indulged, might
have endangered his reason”).’^’ Otherwise, it is really Smollett who saves Moni­
mia through a somewhat awkward marriage plot (this is arguably part of the an­
ticipatory maneuvers that occasionally result in an outburst at Ferdinand). Smol­
lett also shows that Ferdinand’s acting is quite poor. In Peregrine Pickle, the college
of authors describes how James Quin, with the "ridiculous grimace of a monkey”
and “dexterity of dumb shew,” turned Edward Young’s The Revenge (1721) into a
pantomime.”’® Ferdinand, who always “performed his cue to a miracle” (appear­
ing, for example, almost “accidentally” in the middle of a “well-acted scene”), also
adopts “superfluous mummery.”’® Riding in a coach with Elenor, for example, he
resolves to “ingratiate himself, if possible, by the courtesy and politeness of dumb
shew, and for that purpose, put his eyes in motion without farther delay.”’” Later
he “acted a very expressive pantomime with this fair buxom nymph, who com­
prehended his meaning with surprizing facility.”’® It is not, of course, much of a
surprise; Smollett was clearly using Ferdinand’s acting style to undercut the sinister
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nature of his conquests. While this might undermine the more sympathetic side of
the novel (for Renaldo’s speech at Monimia’s grave sounds rather like Ferdinand’s
address to Wilhelmina)d“ Smollett must have thought that it was worth it. Many
of his readers remained convinced of the novel’s “cruelties” (although it has more
recently been seen to contain “only the rough draft of a tragedy and Smollett
may have exposed it as d “pantomime” in order to recover some of his authorial
control. --
While Ferdinand Count Fathom remained a novel which was, as Monimia
famously exlaims, “too much!” Smollett’s later narrative Laudcelot Greaves re­
turned to more cautious performances.The way in.which Monimia is restored
to Renaldo was reconsidered: the appatently dead “young Oakley is restored to
his mother “in such a manner as might least disturb her spirits, already but too
much discomposed.”*^^This compares to “the most interesting way” in Ferdinand
Count FathomF^ Aurelia too is handled with care. On their way to the madhouse,
Dolly, Clarke, and Launcelot “agreed upon the method in which they should
introduce themselves gradually to Miss Darnel, that her tender nature might not
be too much shocked by their sudden appearance.”'^' In Roderick Random, Strap
is told about Roderick’s good fortune in a completely different manner: he is sent
for without knowing why and then experiences a variety of emotions resulting in
a rapture never “more ludicrously expressed.”'^^ It is therefore possible that Smol­
lett became increasingly suspicious of such tricks and performances: in Ferdinand
Count Fathom, they were almost out of control. By the time of Humphry Clinker,
Bramble is speaking for everyone when he chastises Sir Thomas Bullford for one
of his practical jokes: “Have a litde patience,” he says, “we are not yet come to the
catastrophe-, and pray God it may not turn out a tragedy instead of a farce.”'^^ For
Smollett, performing his stories on an almost equal footing with the characters he
created, this was a sentiment with which he would have entirely agreed.
Tike Bullford’s practical joke, there was always the possibility that Smollett’s
narratives would end in “distraction, ” not diversion. In Travels through France
and Italy, Smollett explains that it is “a moot point whether I shall ever return.
But it was not just sickness that threatened his performances: commenting on
the mules in Piedmont, Smollett noted, “You must let them take their own way;
otherwise you will be in danger of losing your life”;'^^ similarly, leaving an inn on
his way to Italy, Smollett wrote, “I was very glad to get out of the house with my
throat uncut.”'^^ Following Barazzi’s route to Florence, Smollett pointed out the
places where his “adventures” almost ended: “If the coach had not been incredibly
strong,” he observed at one point, “it must have been shattered to pieces”;*''^ later.
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the horses “pulled the coach to the brink of a precipice.”'''®Although Smollett
(on his return journey to Paris) “ran the risque of being set on fire three or four
times a day,”'^’ such tragedies remained purely speculative.'®" The “precipice” in
Italy, Smollett confessed, was “rather a kind of hollow-way”*®* and its ex^geration
was simply part of his narratorial practice.*®^ In Launcelot Greaves, for example,
-tairncelot sees Aurelia “on the brink of being precipitated among rocks, where
her delicate limbs must be mangled and tore assunder,”'®^but the image remained
hypothetical. Similarly, Ferdinand became so ill in Ferdinand Count Fathom that
Smollett commented, “[I]n all likelihood, the world would never have enjoyed
the benefit of these adventures.”*®'* The very existence of Smollett’s novels was
thus itself seen as fortuitous: “these memoirs would, possibly, never have seen the
light,” Smollett explained, had Ferdinand been more susceptible to “sympathy”;'®’
both Launcelot Greaves and Humphry Clinker would have been somewhat shorter
if only Launcelot had asked the name of the lady in the coach and Winifred had
not forgotten Wilson’s true identity.'®* In the same way. Pipes’s proclamation that
Peregrine “has only hanged himself for love,” like Grubble’s divination of death
for Launcelot, projects an alternative ending to the “adventure.”'®^The revelation
that Dolly is Clarke’s sister, at the end of Launcelot Greaves, is a similar glimpse of
the precipice that always appeared below the entertainment of Smollett’s work.'®®
Since Samuel Johnson understood that an “adventure” involved “an enter­
prise in which something must be left to hazard,” he may also have appreciated
that authorship was such an adventure. But it was Smollett who truly discovered
the uncertainties of writing. Faced with the endless possibilities for tragedy and
misinterpretation, Smollett also showed how his “adventures” were constructed
out of coincidences. Roderick, for example, fashions his story out of chance re­
unions with Strap, Miss Williams, Thomson, Miss Lavement, Melinda, Jackson,
Bowling, Morgan, and, of course, Narcissa and his father.'®’ Just as Smollett met
Joseph for a second time, in Travels though France and Italy (an event that followed
the pattern of his novels), each reunion is attended with suitable “tears of joy.”*’"
Thus, in Peregrine Pickle, Trunnion stumbles across “Ned Gauntlet’s son,” and
Peregrine reencounters Pipes, Mrs. Hornbeck, and Cadwallader.*’* In Ferdinand
Count Fathom, Ferdinand remeets Ratchkali (as does Renaldo), Sir Stentor Stiles,
Giles Squirrel, and Renaldo; Renaldo, meanwhile, encounters Major Farrel and, of
course, Don Diego’s family (as does Ferdinand).*’^In Launcelot Greaves, the more
limited geography encloses Launcelot’s repeated chance encounters with Clarke,
his old nurse, and Aurelia (for whom Dolly coincidentally becomes a compan­
ion).'” Similarly, it is the coincidence of meeting Wilson’s father in Humphry
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Clinker that reveals Humphry to be Bramble’s son and Wilson (after coincidentally
meeting his namesake) to be George Dennison;*^'* however, Wilsons irregular
appearances, along with the failure of Lismahago to reappear in Dumfries, also
hint at the problems of such a narrative structure.'” All of Smollett’s reunions are
counterbalanced with the threat of separation. Bramble, for example, writes that
he shall leave Bath “with regret; because [he] must part with some old friends,
whom, in all probability, [he] shall never see again.”'” When Renaldo rediscovers
Monimia, he is emphatic: “Oh! I am all amazement, joy and fear! thou wilrTiot
leave me! no! we must not part again: by this warm kiss! a thousand times more
sweet than all the fragrance of the east! we never more will part. In the same
way, Roderick provides Narcissa with an ambrosial kiss, a thousand tunes more
fragrant than the breeze that sweeps the orange grove” in order to confirm that he
“never more will leave [her].”'” As in Travels through France and Italy, in which
Smollett is exiled from his country and from his daughter, an irretrievable loss
underscores all of Smollett’s narratives."'''' Once more, it is a sign of how close
Smollett’s performances came to what was unacceptable and feared.
At the end of Travels through France and Italy, despite projecting a journey
home, Smollett actually remained “divided” from his friends by an invidious
straight.”"*" In many respects, this was a feature of Smollett’s other “adventures”
that were also unfinalizable."*’" On the one hand, each novel can be seen to end
with “true happiness on earth,” a perfect felicity, and all parties as happy as good
fortune could make them”;"''^ animosity is “so happily extinguished,” and all the
“widgeons” arc enjoying “the novelty of their situation.”"''^ But, as Jery suggests in
Humphry Clinker, it is always possible that the “widgeons” will change their note
“when they are better acquainted with the nature of the decoy.”""^Thus all the end­
ings of Smollett’s novels have an ominous side. Roderick projects another adven­
ture when he reveals that, if Narcissa had nor been growing “remarkably round,”
he “would have set out for London immediately.”"''^At the end of Peregrine Pickle,
Emelia ceremoniously receives the “management of her own houshold afi^rs in
an uncomfortable parallel with the first Mrs. Pickles assumption of the reins of
government.”"*'" Ferdinand, similarly, dies (when he came round after his illness
he believed himself to have “now arrived at the land of departed souls ) and then
reappears as Grieve in Humphry Clinker (just as Peregrine had met Rodericks
friend Morgan in Peregrine Pickle) In Launcelot Greaves, Ferret performs Rod­
erick’s desire and returns to London (a reminder that the city where “there would
be always food sufficient for the ravenous appetite of his spleen has not disap­
peared into a rural paradise)."'"’ Finally, in Humphry Clinker, Bramble foresees,
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am id the general happiness, “that when the day of separation comes, there will be
abundance of sorrow on all sides.”"'" In a way, Smollett’s happy and conventional
endings were his way of laughing in the face of the disorder they concealed. Such
laughter has been seen as the “aggressive acceptance of defeat,”"" and it is likely
that Smollett viewed his novels uneasily as they made their mark on those long
winter evenings” associated with “distraction” and “tragedy.”
It is notable that Ferdinand in Ferdinand Count Fathom is not only an
“exquisite actor” but a musician."'" His “masterly airs,” however, hke his act­
ing, also have sinister aspects: Ferdinand’s “harp of Aeolus,” for example, while
pouring forth “a stream of melody, more ravishingly delightful than the song of
Philomel, the warbling brook, and all the concert of the wood,” was designed to
seduce Celinda."'^ Similarly, Roderick, Launcelot and Renaldo are all discomposed
by the “seraphic voices ” of their beloved ones."'^ In his essay Of the Imitative
Arts,” Adam Smith notes that music was distinguished by “peculiar powers of
imitiation”: for example, he notes that “even the incomplete Music of a recitative
seems to express sometimes all the sedateness and composure of serious but calm
discourse, and sometimes all the exquisite sensibility of the most interesting pas-
sion.”"'5 A ccord in g to Smith, the music of Ferdinand’s “masterly air” would have
been more “complete” and thus able to imitate those almost endless repetitions
of passion.” As I have noted, Smollett also participated in the musical entertain­
ments of London: like other aspiring librettists, he attempted to join his words
to Handel’s recitatives; he then introduced popular refrains (such as “The Boat­
swain’s Whistle” and “Thepigs they lie with their arses bare”) into his novels."'^ In
some respects, Smollett’s writing resembled a kind of opera: Morgan, for example,
in Roderick Random, frequently bursts into Welsh songs instead of speaking; in
Humphry Clinker, Jery observes that Quin put Bramble “in tune,” adding that,
“like treble and bass in the same concert, they make excellent music together.”"'"
For Smith, opera was a deeply affective combination of poetry, music, and acting;
Smollett may well have been attracted to such an ideal."'® But if Smollett’s novels
were seen as musical compositions (Smollett was also sensitive to musical events,
such as how, in Humphry Clinker, Liddy sobbed, "Win Jenkins cackled. Chowder
capered, and Clinker skipped about”),"'’ they must also have been treated with
suspicion: Liddy, for example, listening to vocal performers at Vauxhall, developed
a headache “through excess of pleasure,” and Renaldo, listening to Monimia, saw
the whole world “tottering on the brink of misery.”"""
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett observed the Improvisator!
of Italy who recited verses “extempore” and drew “their rhimes, cadence, and
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C H A P T E R 3

annotation for such performances (including, for example, in Humphry Clmker,

turns of expression” from Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrarch.^^' While contact with the
the letters of Tabitha and Winifred), Smollett perhaps hoped to undermine them.
“Improvisatore” led Smollett to refer to his signature as “the old burden of my
But he may also have been hinting that they transformed such disorder and im­
song,” he would already have been aware of the musical qualities of his narratives.
propriety. In the same way that Mrs. Gobble in Launcelot Greaves thanks God that
In Peregrine Pickle, the college of authors discussed “the delightful lullaby of the
she has “noblemen to stand by [her], with their privilegs and beroguetifs,” Smollett
stage,” by which they meant'“an established recitative, which seems to have been
also voiced uncertain words.«^ In doing so, he showed how he not only enjoyed
composed on the suppositipn that the sentence is always concluded at the end of
but reformed the passions (and tragedies) of the stage.
the line.”“ ^Peregrine thus shows how James Quin altered the meaning of Thom­
sons Coriolanus by misapplying a pause.“ ^ In the same way, in Humphry Clmker
Bramble explains that “every language had its peculiar recitative, and it would Carnival
always require more pains, attention, and practice, to "acquire both the words
On his way to Aix in 1765. Smollett stopped to view the amphitheater at Frejus.
and the music, than learn the words only.”“ ^Although Bramble believes that the
Observing that a wall of it had become part of a monastery, Smollett wrote that the
Scots are thus “better understood by learners” because “they spoke the words only
monks “have helped to destroy the amphitheater, by removing the stones for their
without the music,” Lismahago claims that the Scots had their own “recitative or
own purposes of building.”^” On the one hand, such an observation seems to hint
music” that was more “intelligible” than an English pronunciation. In support
at the kind of religious fervor Smollett would have experienced at Glasgow (Smol­
of his argument, Lismahago had shown that the words "wright,^ write, right, rite’^
lett may have been present in the summer of 1753 when the theater at Glasgow
were “pronounced exactly in the same manner” in England but “among the Scots^
was “destroyed” following the preaching of George Whitefield [1^4-1770]).^^^
were “as diflFerent in pronunciation, as they are in meaning and orthography.”^^
On the other, it suggests a way in which the “horrible spectacles Smollett had
Smollett may well have been receptive to these ideas on his arrival in London (like
pondered at Rome had become part of the very fabric of religion in France.'^? in
Roderick, he would have been “unintelligible”) a s I have shown, his EngUsh
many respects, this latter view was a commonplace of anti-theatrical criticism:
narratives reflected such a concern with hidden paradigmatic relationships.
Witherspoon, for example, clearly associated the theater with Catholicism and,
Smollett would have been familiar with the generic problems faced by
while Adam Ferguson had attempted to identify the stage with the beginnings
Handel in the theater.^^^^ Writing his novels, he may well have thought about the
of Protestantism, dismissed any notion of its “imaginary reformed state. In
fashionable oratorios of his friend. Those who attended an oratorio would have
France. Smollett was also interested in the theater before the Reformation; he takes
both listened to the performance and read the accompanying “wordbook.”^'®Like
particular note, for instance, of festivals on saints’ days (these had been banned in
the college of authors in Peregrine Pickle, Handel’s audience would thus have en­
Scotland since 1575).^^^ But Smollett was not entirely critical of such theatricd
countered an interplay of meanings between the performance and the text (just as
practices. Observing the “variety of entertainment” afforded by religious “feasts,’’
Smollett’s readers would have done). In many cases, an audience did not always
“processions,” and “spectacles” at Boulogne (where the “only profane diversions
read what it heard, and its surprise would have been the same as Rodericks when,
were “a puppet-show and a mountebank”) Smollett suggested that the “people
eventually arriving at the light of an inn, he was able to see the bodies belonging
are so fer from being impressed with awe and religious terror by this sort of
to the voices he had traveled with in the dark.^® In many respects, there were a lot
machinery, that it amuses their imaginations in the most agreeable manner, and
of disembodied voices in Smollett’s work, and the audience that turned to Smol­
keeps them always in good humour.”^^ Although Smollett might have ascribed
lett’s wordbook may have been surprised to And that they were not in the world
the “extreme poverty of the lower people” to the “habit of idleness encouraged by
of Horace or Cervantes.^” Smollett’s audience would also have been unsetded by
such “frippery and shew” (another traditional anti-theatrical remark), he also al­
his orthography: in Peregrine Pickle, for example, the Latin phrase Mutato nomine,
lowed that the “spirits of the commonalty” were thereby preserved.^^“ Such a view
de tefabuk narraturvizs shown to be constructed out of English words (“mute aye
(which saw the “pomp and ceremonies” of the people as a way ‘to dimmish the
toe numbing he . . . Deity, fable, honour hate her”) and Mrs. Hornbeck’s address
sense of their own misery”)^« was reflected in Smollett’s theatrical aspirations for
was revealed as “hottail de May cong dangle rouy DoghousetenH^^ By providing the

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the writing of Travels through France and Italy itself. It also supported Smollett’s
understanding of Calvinism as dealing in “the passions of terror and pity.”^'*^While
Smollett only wondered whether he might “be allowed to compare the Romanish
religion to comedy, and Calvinism to t r a g e d y , h e nonetheless implicated those
opponents of the theater (such as Whitefield at Glasgow or the monks at Frejus)
with a certain (ironic) theatricality of their own.^^‘*
In many ways, Smollett seemed to favor the theater of the French. His _
inability to “discover one melancholy face” amid the spectators of a representa­
tion of “the descent from the cross” (“all is prattling, titterings or"laughing,” he
writes, “and ten to one but you perceive a number of them employed in hissing
the female who personates the Virgin Mary”),^^’ despite its “grave” subject mat­
ter, was not negative criticism. For Smollett, “melancholy” signaled fanaticism
(he commented how there will always be “fanatics in religion, while there are
people of a saturnine disposition, and melancholy turn of mind”)^'*^ and this
was implied by the “religious horror” displayed on the faces of a “conventicle of
dissenters.”^^^Smollett speculated that “one reason why the reformation did not
succeed in France” was because it was inhabited by “volatile, giddy, unthinking
people,”^'*®and these words probably held for him a certain kind of praise. Thus,
in Florence, Smollett admired the deceptions of the “disciplinants, who scourge
themselves in the Holy-week” because they supported his observation that amid
“all the scenery of the Roman catholic religion,” none of the spectators were
“affected at heart, or discover[ed] the least signs of fanaticism.”^'*’ It is likely
that Smollett associated what he called “gloomy spirits”^’" with his experience
of popular religion in Scotland (one of the nations “of a more melancholy turn
of character and complexion”).^’* Carlyle later described the clergy of Glasgow
as “narrow and bigoted,” and Smollett probably shared his opinion;^’^ accord­
ing to Carlyle, it was owing to Hutcheson and William Leechman that “a new
school was formed in the western provinces of Scotland.”^” Smollett had left
Glasgow by the time that the eventual opponents of Hutcheson and Leechman
had seceded from the church,^’^ or preached at the evangelical revival at Cam-
buslang,^” but he no doubt glimpsed some of the hostilities the “new school”
had engendered. Even in London, as Smollett established connections with the
“Moderate” successors of Hutcheson, he would have witnessed a version of the
“Popular” revival at Glasgow.^’^ It is therefore possible to see Smollett’s account
of religious practices in France as part of this Scottish context. Just as Hume
associated the “fanaticism” of the Scottish reformation with “the darkest night
of papal superstition,”^’*' Smollett’s remarks about the “melancholic” aspects
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of Gatholicism (for example, the “devotees”**’® and “gloomy” chapels*” and
pictures*®”) were not primarily anti-Catholic (or anti-theatrical). Instead, Smol­
lett was turning what he would have seen as a “fanatical discourse against its
Calvinist proponents.
Reflecting on the comic and tragic aspects of Catholicism and Calvinism,
Smellett also observed that, “in the conversion of the multitude, reason is generally
out of the question.”*®' In the Continuation of the Complete History, Smollett had
also written that the “progress of reason” had not “intirely banished those ridicu­
lous sects and schisms of which the kingdom had been so formerly productive.”*®*
Using the same terms he was later to apply to the “devotees” in France, Smollett
describes how “weak minds were seduced by the delusions of a superstition stiled
Methodism, raised upon the affectation of a superior sanctity, and maintained
by pretensions to divine illumination.”*®’ Although John Wesley (1703—1791),
in a comment on this passage, later wrote that Smollett “knows nothing about
it,” Smollett’s association of early Methodism with the “most extraordinary sect”
of the Moravians was not unfounded.*®^ Smollett probably believed that he had
witnessed such a “species of enthusiasm” at Glasgow (linking Whitefield with
the Wesley brothers, he writes that they “propagated their doctrines to the most
remote corners of the British dominions”)*®’ and he set out to trace it in the reli­
gion of France and Italy. Thus Smollett’s preoccupation with “meagre days” on his
travels was not simply aimed gainst Catholic practices; rather, the way he forced
a landlady at Brignolles to serve “flesh-meat” (in spite of her hints that she had
“heretics in her house”),*®®or carried out an “experiment” on the rowers that were
taking him to Genoa (“by pressing them,” Smollett explained, “to eat something
gras, on a Friday or Saturday”),*®* was his attempt to confront “superstition” with
“reason.”*®®As Smollett put it at Noli, “A murderer, adulterer, or s—m—te, will
obtain easy absolution from the church, and even find favour with society; but
a man who eats a pidgeon on a Saturday, without express licence, is avoided and
abhorred, as a monster of reprobation.”*®’ In pointing out that aspects of the “Ro­
man church” had been built “on the ruins of morality and good order” (such as
its “infemous prerogative” to protect “felons of every denomination ),**” Smollett
sought to uphold his opinion that “Methodists” had similarly “denied the merit
of good works.”**' For Smollett, this was part of the theatrical “habit of dissimula­
tion” (or “hypocrisy”) that such “enthusiasm” had inspired.*** In the same way,
Smollett showed that the education of other “weak minds” at Boulogne,**’ like
the religious intolerance of landlords**'* and clergy**’ throughout France, posed
another threat to the order of society.**® In doing so, he was appealing to the
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principles of the Moderate Party in Scotland, which had been formed around such
issues of “morality and good order.”^^
After returning from France, Smollett’s travels brought him into more
direct contact with the evangelical revivals in Britain. His stay at Bath (where
the Calvinist followers of Lady Huntingdon [1707-1791] had established a cha-
pel)^^® and his visit to Glasgow in 1766 (at the same time as John Wesley)^^® are
reflected in his novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. The ambiguity of Smol­
lett’s presentation of Methodism in this novel has been rightly acknowledged;*®®^
however, Smollett also clearly continued the approach he had adopted in France.
For Bramble, Clinker is essentially an actor, a “quack in sanctity and devotion,”
and this understanding of him seems to be owed to the words of John Locke.*®'
Clinker had already explained to Bramble that “the light of reason, is no more
in comparison to the light I mean, than a farthing candle to the sun at noon”
(which seems to be a paraphrase of Locke’s example of the “way of talking of these
Men”),*®* and Bramble replies by alluding to Clinker’s “weak brain” (for Locke,
this was “a warmed or over-weening Brain”)*®^ and by declaring that he “will be
misled by a Will-i’the-wispj from one error into another” until he is “plunged into
religious frenzy” (a possible allusion to Locke’s account of how “this Light, they are
so dazzled with, is nothing, but an ignisfatutis that leads them continually round
in this Circle”).*®"' The presence of Locke’s views on “enthusiasm” in Humphry
Clinker suggests Smollett’s “reasonable” approach to Christianity (and is perhaps
confirmed by his participation in a group of Freemasons at Chelsea).*®^ Smollett
satirized other aspects of Methodism throughout the novel: for example, Jery nar­
rates how Bramble interrupted the “devotion” of the ladies by “saying, he had par­
ticular business with the preacher, whom he ordered to call a hackney-coach”;*®®
similarly, Tabitha’s faith, which she “professed upon a calvinistical model,” is
revealed to have hidden “designs.”*®* Even so. Clinker is not an unattractive figure
and Smollett may have found his Methodism acceptable through its more Armin-
ian qualities (for example, he acts on “motives of fidelity and affection” and his
relative silence endorses his place in an established order).*®® In fact, Smollett’s
satirical moderation of the “calvinistical model” of Methodism in Humphry Clin­
ker enacted Wesley’s own adaptation of the Moravian tradition. Smollett’s satire
presented the Calvinist emphasis on “faith” to be a lesser aspect of a more “reason­
able” (and Arminian) religion, and this (“Moderate”) position was ironically the
view of those who might have termed themselves “true Methodists.”*®*
One of the ways in which Smollett moderated Methodism “upon a cal­
vinistical model” was through his presentation of it as a performance. Locke had
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written that similes “imposed” on “enthusiasts,” noting that “when what they
say is strip’d of the Metaphor of seeing and feeling,” it did not amount to very
much.**® In a similar way, Smollett exposed the metaphorical language ofTabitha
and Winifred in Humphry Clinker. At the end of the novel, Winifred sends her
“cumpliments” to Mrs. Gwyllim, adding that she hopes they “will live upon dis-
sentTerms of civility.”**' While Winifred means “decent” (this is what the reader
“hears”), the transcription suggested the disorder on which her performance was
based. It also suggested the doctrinal affiliation of her “dissenting” words. For
Smollett, Winifred’s description of Clinker as “pious,” or her own hopes “for grace
to be accepted,” concealed the kind of enthusiasm Locke had perceived: both
phrases share the down-to-earth undertones of “grease” and a “pyehouse.”*** As I
have noted, Smollett’s interests in music underpinned such a technique and car­
ried anti-theatrical implications. However, there was also a sense in which Smollett
enjoyed the enrichment of language consequent upon such a performance. In a re­
cent study of Humphry Clinker, the orthography ofTabitha and Winifred’s letters
has been seen as “synchronic.”**^ In this respect, Smollett is seen to recover “lost
unities” between words (in much the same way that Lismahago discerns “wright,
write, right, rite” within a polysemous sound)**"* rather than simply undermining
their diachronic (or aural) aspects.*** John Warner has called this a kind of “mythic
unity,” and it is reminiscent of the layering of voices and possibilities within Smol­
lett’s narratives as a whole.**® Such a conciliatory practice suggests a way in which
Smollett was able to reconcile Winifred’s peculiarly “dissenting terms” with the
more “decent” tradition of works and holiness. However, it also suggests how far
Smollett sympathized with the theatrical language of “dissent” itself
In his novels, and in Travels through France and Italy, Smollett uncovered
a world of popular “dissent.” While his satirical manner attempted to lift him
above what could be seen as “the object of his mockery,”*** Smollett nonethe­
less included more -lowly aspirations within his comic vision. As such, his novels
expressed what Mikhail Bakhtin has called the “people’s ambivalent laughter” (a
laughter that is “gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding”), and
did not destroy the “wholeness of the world’s comic aspect.”**®In Travels through
France and Italy, Smollett revealed his understanding of satire itself as participa­
tory (and dialogic) when he described the statue of Marforio at Rome— remark­
able, he wrote, for “being the conveyance of the answers to the satires which are
found pasted upon Pasquin, another mutilated statue, standing at the corner of
a street.”*** Returning satire to its popular (and late medieval) origins was typi­
cal of Smollett’s approach in Travels through France and Italy, where he not only
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C H A P T E R 3
contemplated but participated in the “carnival laughter” of the Church of Rome.
According to Bakhtin, carnival is expressed in three main forms (“Ritual specta­
cles,” “Comic verbal compositions,” and “Various genres of billingsgate”) , a n d
these are reflected in the many entertainments, dialects and oaths of Smollett’s
narrative work. While Smollett might have inherited these traditions from his
reading of Cervantes or F i^ 5 ois Rabelais (whom he saw as providing a “pattern
and prototype ofTristram Shandy”),^°' such performances also had, as I have sug- -
gested, a strong contemporary and religious aspect. Thus Smollett’s expression of
a carnivalesque culture was the corollaty of his relationship jwith the Church of
Scotland (not Rome), a relationship that teflected both 'his ambiguous involve­
ment in the English theater and an exploration of popular religious expression. As
such, Smollett’s work did not belong to “the sphere of art” but to “the borderline
between art and life”: as Bakhtin wrote about carnival, “In reality, it is life itself,
but shaped according to a certain pattern of play.”^”^
In many respects, the London theaters were places of carnival. Smollett
experienced them after the Licensing Act of 1737 had contributed to a repertoire
of “pantomime, puppets, dance and acrobatics.”^“^ The Licensing Act had also
emphasized the criminal aspects of play-going: actors, for example, had been trans­
formed into “vagrants,” “rogues,” and “vagabonds” (an association frequently made
in Scodand).^”^ The terms of the Licensing Act were often evaded by presenting
plays “free” within a concert of music, and it is notable that Home’s play Douglas
was premiered in this carnivalesque manner (and also by a company of English
actors whose accents no doubt provided some amusement for their Scottish audi­
ence) Audiences, as a whole, were unruly (in the Critical Review, for example,
Smollett describes how the town “foams, and screams, and slobbers, and whoops,
and hollows, with the most piteous distortion of applause”)^”®and, until 1762
(when Garrick ended the ptactice), mingled freely with the actors on the stage
and in the dressing r o o m s . T h e periodic riots at Drury Lane (provoked in 1763
by Garrick’s reforms) indicate other ways in which the theater moved beyond the
confines of the stage.^°® Notably, Smollett’s play The Reprisal was intended as an
“afterpiece” (to which cheap admittance was highly valued), and this may have
made the criticism of the Monthly Review seem more like a recommendation: in
a short notice, the reviewer dismissed The Reprisal as “calculated for the Meridian
of Bartholomew-Fair; but by some unnatural accident, (as jarring elements are
sometimes made to unite) exhibited eight nights at the Theatre Royal in Drury
Lane.”^°^ Smollett would have been reminded of the “jarring elements” of the
London theater at Nice when he observed the city’s noblesse at a “festin” (where
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A T H E A T R I C A L D I V I N E
they “mingled with an immense crowd of peasants, mules, and asses, covered with
dust, and sweating at every pore with the excessive heat of the weather”)^'” and
at a “masquerade” ball (given at least twice a week in “carnival time”).’" He may
even have associated the “festin” (intended, he speculated, as a “fore-taste of pur­
gatory”) with the religious practices of other “peasants” who danced in the fields
-outside of Glasgow.’'^ In a certain way, Smollett considered his own journey to be
part of such a carnival: traveling between Mauritio and St. Remo in Italy, Smollett
described his company, in the same terms as a “church pageant” or procession, as
forming a “very ridiculous cavalcade.”’”
As I have noted, Smollett paid particular attention to the amphitheater at
Frejus. However, he also found amphitheaters in other places (and not just at
Nimes,’” “Cemenelion,”’” or Rome’”). Approaching Genoa, for example, Smol­
lett wrote that the town “makes a dazzling appearance when viewed from the sea,
rising like an ampitheater in a circular form”;’" similarly, he described the harbor
at Marseilles as an “oval basin, surrounded on every side either by the buildings
or the land”’” and noted that “Aix is situated in a bottom, almost surrounded
by hills.”’” In this way, Smollett suggested the theatrical qualities of the cities he
visited. This was particularly clear in Montpellier when Smollett found that gai­
ety and mirth for which the people of this country are celebrated”: he described
how the “streets were crowded; and a great number of the better sort of both sexes
sat upon stone seats at their doors, conversing with great mirth and familiarity,”
adding that many of the conversations “were improved with musick both vocal
and instrumental.”’^” Notably, Bakhtin cites Goethe (1749-1832), writing on
the amphitheater at Verona, as an example of this kind of carnival effect. Goethe
explained.
Crowded together, its members are astonished at themselves. They are
accustomed at other times to seeing each other running hither and
thither in confusion, bustling about without order or discipline. Now
this many-headed, many-minded, fickle, blundering monster suddenly
sees itself united as one noble assembly, welded into one mass, a single
body animated by a single spirit.’^'
By presenting the shadow of an amphitheater behind Genoa or Marseilles, Smol­
lett achieved a similar effect. As in his novels (in which amphitheaters were pro­
vided in the form of coffeehouses, inns, coaches and baths), the people Smollett
encountered in Travels through France and Italy were astonished at each other.
His own performance (like Tabitha’s or Roderick’s) signaled layers of theatrical
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C H A P T E R 3
4
potential as well as a kind of mythic order that was synchronic, “welded,” and A FRIE ND OF VIRTUE
a “single body.” The image of the body was an important one for both carnival
and Smollett’s work: not only did it form the basis of the “bad taste” Walter Scott
felt that readers of Smollett’s novels had to admit, but it also suggested a kind of
“revival.”^^^Thus while Smollett niight have written his novels and Travels through
France and Italy by threatening' the unity of the carnival body (for example, by
claiming to write satirically), he nonetheless affirmed the “people’s immortal, in-,
destructable character.”^^^The chapters of Travels through France and /6«^,'which
might have appeared to be part of a well-ordered monologue, were'actually letters
in dialogue with a carnivalesque world. In fact, Smollett found that he had to close
But I think it a remark worthy the attention of the speculative, that
one prematurely because the subject of it so interested him that he had begun
the historians have been, almost without exception, the true friends of
“to run riot.”^^^While all this might seem a long'way from Smollett’s friendship
virtue, and have always represented it in its proper colours, however they
with John Home and the ministers of the Moderate Party in Scotland, Smollett
may have erred in their judgments of particular persons.
himself may well not have thought so. For him, the theater was always part of a
Presbyterian tradition: like Carlyle in his pamphlet, as Smollett wrote for it, he —Hume, “Of the Study of History” (Essays, 567)
also betrayed its cause. Smollett’s narratives were an extension of his “Moderate”
aspirations, but they also uncovered a peculiar form of “dissent.” It is this “dissent,”
and its corresponding “revival,” that transformed Smollett himself into another
“theatrical divine.” IJ L N 174 1 , D A V I D H U M E P U B L I S H E D the first edition of Es­
says, Moral and Political, which included the essay “O f the Study of History.”' The
essay may have been brought to Smollett’s attention in 1749, when Alexander Car­
lyle recommended the third edition.^ Notably, “Of the Study of History” appeared
in all subsequent collections of Hume’s essays until the completion of his History
of England (1754—1762). It was then withdrawn. Such an action perhaps implies
that Hume’s views about reading (and writing) history had changed. He had be­
gun his essay by addressing “female readers” (who enjoyed “novels and romances”),
and may have come to believe that, in doing so, he had devalued his own work
(although Hume announced his intention to “handle [his] subject more seriously,”
he was not able to move beyond the “raillery against the ladies” into which he had
found himself “seduced”).^ But Hume might also have been responding to the
completion of another history in 1762. Following the four volumes of Smollett’s
Continuation of the Complete History of England (1760-1762), it may have been
harder to accept (as Hume had suggested) that a historian differed from the “man
of business,” who was “more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have
relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves.”^ By writing contempo­
rary “history,” Smollett indicated that a historian was nor always the “true friend

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C H A P T E R 4
of virtue” (as Hume had described him). Smollett wrote a hirther volume of the
Continuation (published in 1765) while in France, and this will form the basis of
the third section of this chapter. Even so, Hume probably thought that Smollett
had appropriated the role of the friend of virtue. In his essay, Hume had raised
the “judgment” of such a historian above that of a “philosopher” (whose “general
abstract view . . . leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of
nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and
virtue”);^ by the 1760s, Hume may have felt that such remarks had been iriade to
his own detriment. Smollett’s earlier volumes, titled ^4 Complete tiistory of England
(1757-1758), clearly demonstrated the keen “indignadori against vice” and warm
“approbation of virtue” that Hume had praised in ^achiavelli s historical work.
It is therefore possible that Hume withdrew his essay because of the support it
lent to Smollett’s position (at the expense of his own). In the first section of this
chapter, I oudine Smollett’s interests in historical writing; I then go on to explore
his relationship to Hume’s work.
Smollett and Hi s t ory
In 1754, Gavin Hamilton, an Edinburgh bookseller, published the first volume
of David Hume’s The History of Great Britain. The volume, containing the history
of the Stuarts from James I to the execution of Charles I, was to become part of
Hume’s extensive History of England (published in five more volumes over the next
eight years). As Smollett noted, in a review of Hume’s Tudor volumes (published
in 1759), Hume had written his history, like Tacitus, in reverse order for no
particular reason at all.^ While Smollett’s reference to Tacitus may have compli­
mented Hume, the veiled allusion was no doubt to his own Complete History of
England, published in 1757-1758 without “this piece of irregularity.” Smollett’s
remark thus illustrated some of the tensions that existed between these two his­
torical projects. When his initial volume had failed to sell in London, Hume had
suspected a “conspiracy” of London booksellers who would not trade with Ham­
ilton.® An unwitting part of this “conspiracy” was Smollett himself, contracted by
the same London booksellers to write his Complete History in 1755.^ Although
London bookseller Andrew Millar (1707-1768) eventually took over publication
of Hume’s work (in 1756), the competitive aspect of Smollett’s writing remained.
By 1758, all four (quarto) volumes of Smollett’s history had been published and
were being reprinted in weekly numbers (accompanied by engravings that, Hume
later observed, “help’d off the Sale”).'" By the time Hume had completed his His-
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A F R I E N D O F V I R T U E
tory (in 1762), Smollett had brought his work completely up to date in the four
(octavo) volumes of the Continuation of the Complete History (1760—1762).
Hume declared that he was “too old, too fat, too lazy and too rich” to continue
his own History,''^ nevertheless, this was accomplished for him in 1785 (when it
was combined with parts of Smolletts History and Continuation). The eventual
ifffegration of Smollett and Hume’s work may seem awkward but, in many ways,
it was a sign of how their projects had always been perceived. Hume may not
have welcomed such an association of ideas: in 1759, when he was approached
by Louis-Antoine Caraccioli (1721—1803) about translating his history, Hume
“gave him no encouragement to proceed, since he also mentioned his intention
of translating Smollett.”*^ All the same, Hume happily described himself as sit­
ting “near the historical summit of Parnassus, immediately under Dr. Smollett”
(a position of some irony into which, Hume believed, his correspondent ^^illiam
Robertson had “the impudence to squeeze”).
Something of Smollett’s early attitudes to Hume’s History can be gleaned
from the Critical Review. Despite finding “little blemishes” in Hume’s second
Stuart volume, Smollett declared the work to be one of the best histories which
modern times have produced.”'^ However, he was careful to suggest that “Mr.
Hume’s genius shines more in speculation than in description.”'" This compli­
ment was not entirely what it seemed, as Smollett had begun the review by
criticizing the current “rage of reflecting among historical compilers (which
caused histories to be “metamorphosed into dissertations and the chain of
events” to be broken).'^ Although he described Humes reflections in compari­
son as “just” (but “sometimes superfluous”), Smollett was clearly paving the way
for his own more “descriptive” history. The first volumes of A Complete History of
England were published only a few months after this review. In his introduction,
Smollett similarly emphasized how his “purpose was to compile an history, not
compose a dissertation”: “The author, he wrote, has avoided all useless disquisi­
tions, which serve only to swell the size of the volume, interrupt the thread of
the narrative, and perplex the reader.”'®Although Hume had written that readers
of history became “sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a
lively sentiment of praise or blame” (like the historian friend of virtue ), ^Smol­
lett perhaps believed that this was something Hume was not able to achieve. The
Critical Review later emphasized the affective qualities of Smollett s own narrative
in which the “chain of events was unbroken. Smollett s reflections were thus
described as “very scarce, and often conveyed in a single word of the narration.
The reviewer explained, “For example, page 174, speaking of some persons that
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C H A P T E R 4 A
were executed for high-treason, he says, ‘These sacrifices being made to justice,
znA perhaps to faction and revenge.’ Here the word perhaps stands as a beacon to
the reader, and absolutely directs his reflection.” Smollett’s acknowledgment of
Hume’s “speculative” genius thus intimated that his History closed off its readers.
While Smollett found that Hume had “not been very happy in his manner of re­
lating some private incidents . . . which he has endeavoured to throw in by way of
sudden apostrophe, in imitation of Voltaire” (incidents that Smollett would'have
relegated to footnotes), he would have been happy to read of^editerary merits
of his own work (described by the Critical Review as an hnitation of “ Thucydides,
in weight and conciseness of diction; Livy in painting', and Guicciardini in draw­
ing characters”).^* Smollett may have particularly welcomed the following lines
(addressed to him in Lloyd’s Evening Post)-.
But in thy Hist’ry, all thy Genius blooms.
Old England’s battles o’er again we wage.
Tread Cresci’s plain, and follow Edward’s plumes.
And glow with Conquest, Liberty, and Rage.^^
In his review of Hume’s History, Smollett had written that “[njothing is more
agreeable to an English reader, than a battle well told.”^^ By this he meant that
such descriptions “must please, warm and animate every reader of sensibility” (and
in doing so give a clear structure to the work).^^ The implications of this remark
for Hume (that his battles were not “well told”) were therefore somewhat severe.
Smollett would also have hoped that Hume’s work had been supported
by the Critical Review. His articles were part of his promotion of the Edinburgh
literati (a promotion in which Hume also participated). As I have noted, Hume
probably contributed the leading article of the Critical Review for May 1759 (on
Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments)-^ he may also have written a review of
William Robertson’s The History of Scotland (1759) for the February edition.^^ In
this review, Smollett would have found an agreeable definition of a historian: “An
historian is one, who, taking for his subject events of importance and dignity,
traces them to their springs, and unfolds their series, in so clear and interesting
a manner, as to make his readers present to the actions which he records, and to
enlarge their acquaintance with human nature.”^^ The reviewer thus praised the
writing of “general history” (“where the author takes a large compass”) as “a very
magnificent idea of history,” adding that “we have seen it happily executed in the
late Complete History of England^ Even so, the history of a “particular and more
confined period” (such as Robertson’s) was seen to be a more serious endeavor:
[ 10 6 ]
FRI END OF VI RTUE
in this work, the historian “should examine dubious facts with a more critical
eye, and discuss them with more accuracy; and present us with a more minute
inspection into the features of the human heart.”^®All the same, Smollett, who
had met Robertson for the first time in 1758 (when Robertson was impressed by
his “polished and agreeable manners and the great urbanity of his conversation”),^’
would have been pleased to see his work praised (by Hume) in such a context.
Although Hugh Blair would later commend “Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon” for
raising historical writing to “high reputation and dignity” (while reserving his only
reference to Smollett’s History for an illustration of how no language “can be more
puerile”), Smollett may well have seen his own work as playing an equal part in
bringing the “historical genius” to Scotland from Italy and France.®®
One interest Smollett would have shared with Robertson was George Bu­
chanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582). As I have noted, Buchanan’s work
provided the basis for Smollett’s play The Re^cide-^^ Robertson also made frequent
references to it in his History.^^ It is possible that Buchanan’s concept of a “virtu­
ous nobility,” while it might have disappointed Robertson, influenced Smollett’s
historical work as much as his play.®® Certainly, Blair’s comment on Buchanan
(“one cannot but suspect him to be more attentive to elegance, than to accuracy”)
suggests some perceived similarity with Smollett’s “showy and florid” style.®'* Smol­
lett also shared with Robertson and Hume what has been called a “cosmopolitan
sensibility.”®® Like Adam Smith, Robertson had contributed to the Edinburgh
Review, his History of Scotland has been shown to embody similar “cultural as­
pirations” (such as to display, from a provincial position, “a European historical
sensibility”),®®and it is possible that Smollett’s History (through the mediation of
the Critical Review) achieved a similar synthesis. As Hume’s work developed (back­
ward) a European context for British history,®^ so Smollett’s volumes developed
a similar cosmopolitan perspective (in the other direction). Hume affirmed his
cosmopolitan emphasis when he explained in his review that the period Robertson
had chosen for his History was the one in which Scotland “made no small figure
in the history of Europe.”®®The month before this review appeared, Smollett had
opened the Critical Review with an account of the process of such cosmopolitan
history:
When one considers the diversity of the subject, the obscurity in which
the history of so many nations is involved, the variety of languages in
which it is concealed, the infinite number of books from which their
work is compiled, the pains and attention necessary to collect and collate
these materials; the performance will be found altogether stupendous.®’
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Smollett was describing The Modem Part of the Universal History (1759—1766), a
project in which he had participated and that was "not unworthy of the most emi­
nent and learned academy that ever flourished in Europe. Detailed discussion
of Smollett’s possible contributions to the Universal History (including sections
of the histories of France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Italy, and the
German Empire), and his promotion of it in the Critical Review, inevitably falls
outside the scope of this chapter.'" However, Smollett’s encyclopedic approach to
historical writing in the Universal History (he preferred to call it a valuable collec­
tion of materials”)^^ does associate him more firmly with the projects of Robertson
and Hume, along with raising some important questions about his use of source
materials.
In his introduction to his History, Smollett noted that his sources had been
marked in the margins of the text (something that Hume had forgotten about
in his first edition) In doing so, Smollett indicated something of the skeptical
attitude to sources adopted by Hume (and expressed, in its most famous form,
in the section “Of Miracles” m An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).
However, perhaps one of the effects of working for the Universal History was the
adoption by Smollett of a “less” skeptical approach: Owen Ruffhead (1723-1769),
for example, in the Monthly Review, spotted Smollett borrowing (otherwise invis­
ibly) from A Journal of a Campaign on the Coast of France (1758) in the second
volume of the Continuation.^'^ Louis Martz has similarly noted the (generally un­
acknowledged) sources behind Travels through France and Italy.^^ While Smollett
might have demonstrated a skeptical attitude in the Travels (such as when he sus­
pected that the testimony of “the book De Identitate Cathedrae” was refuted by the
miracle of the “old wooden chair” actually belonging to the aposde Peter ), he
also silently incorporated long sections of the guidebook Roma Antica, e Modema
(1750) in his account of Rome.'** In this respect. Travels through France and Italy
was an extension of Smollett’s historical work: it may even have been conceived
as a similar process of “rewriting” (such a process has been seen as an important
development in the concept of “history”).^’ However, Smollett was not limited,
like Hume, to the idea of a historian as a “rewriter” (however “skeptically”) of other
texts. As I will show, Smollett also appealed to an older (more conventional) sense
of a historian, as someone (such as the Earl of Clarendon [1609-1674]) who had
participated in the events he described.^**
Hugh Blair may not have had much to say about Smollett’s historical style,
but he would certainly have praised the title page of Travels through France and
Italy. At the end of his lecture on “Historical Writing,” he observed.
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I cannot conclude the subject of History, without taking notice of a very
great improvement which has, of late years, begun to be introduced into
Historical Composition: I mean, a more particular attention than was
formerly given to law, customs, commerce, religion, literature, and every
other thing that tends to show the spirit and genius of nations.^'
Such a “particular attention” posed a problem as to how such historical works
should be articulated (Smollett, for example, confessed that Hume, in his Tudor
volumes, had successfully managed “minute” observations of police, com­
merce,” and “revenue” without disturbing his narrative).’^ As a “historical com­
position,” Travels through France and Italy (“containing observations on character,
customs, religion, government, police, commerce, arts, and antiquities ) provided
an alternative narrative solution to this problem. Smollett was able to present
historical anecdotes, such as Buckingham’s duels with Shrewsbury and Ossory,”
without putting them in footnotes, while providing a wide European context.
He may also have been aware of the increasing importance of “travel books” for
historical writing in Scodand.^'* As such. Travels through France and Italy repre­
sented Smollett’s continuing efforts to sustain his “provincial” historicism through
appeals to a wider world.’^ Such an act is not entirely innocent and not entirely
in line with the supposed “impartiality of the historical friend of virtue. It is,
however, consistent with Smollett’s work on the Continuation of the Complete His­
tory and his relationship with another Scot—the Earl of Bute.
Davi d Hume and the Stuarts
Smollett may have found in the history of Nice a shadow of the history of Eng­
land: it had been “subdued by the Romans, he wrote, and fell successively under
the dominion of the Goths, Burgandians, and Franks, the kings of Arles, and the
kings of Naples, as counts of Provence.”^®Certainly, he found in the “gallantry and
valour” of the French officers a pattern of the “liberal spirit that had been lost in
England (and revived in France by Henry IV): It had formerly flourished in Eng­
land, but was almost extinguished in a succession of civil wars, which are always
productive of cruelty and rancour.”*^For Smollett (as for Hume), the history of the
seventeenth century was particularly important for understanding the loss of gen­
erous humanity” glimpsed in France. Both Smollett and Hume locate within the
period the origins of those “factious divisions” in which, according to Hume, all
regard to truth, honour and humanity” had been buried.^* Smollett describes the
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C H A P T E R 4

economical, more swift-moving”),®®but Greene seems to resist the inference that

beginnings of the "famous names of \C^ig and Tory and, like Hume, notes that
Smollett was involved in rewriting Hume’s work. However, in a more recent
they “still serve to distinguish the factions of England.”” In some respects, both
study of Hume’s History, Graham Slater suggests that Smollett took Hume’s work
Smollett and Hume would have found themselves living amid another “history”
as his “ur-text,” noting that some of Smollett’s reworkings are “frequently only
of the Stuarts: the aspirations of the historian “friend of virtue” simply enacted
perfunctory.”®^Unlike Goldsmith (who perhaps sought to limit Hume’s “inflam-
the demise of the “liberal spirit” among more “cruelty and rancour.” As Hume
matoty possibilities”), Smollett has been seen as tending to “make overt what is
put it, describing the publication of his History in “My Own Life” (published
deliberately latent in Hume’s History” (such as his description of Charles I as a
posthumously in 1777), “English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman
“primitive martyr”).®® Hume may well have been inclined to accept as inevitable
and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in,their rage
Smollett’s adoption of a more “overt” or “partial” kind of writing (certainly. Slater
against the man, who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles
notes that Hume appeared “to have accepted without demur Smollett s raiding of
I and the Earl of Strafford.”^'’
the History”). It is also possible that, after the publication of Smollett’s Complete
Smollett seems to have incorporated Humes work on the Stuarts into his
History, the direction of influence was reversed: for example, Hume, like William
Complete History of England. Hume’s name appears five times in the margins of
Robertson, might have been inspired by Smollett’s account of Mary Queen of
Smollett’s volumes on the seventeenth century (apparently as a source for the
Scots;®® notably, Hume also revised passages of his History into footnotes, “in order
“extortion” of parliament in 1647, the story of James Naylor, parliamentary and
to avoid, as much as possible, the style of dissertation in the body of his histoty.
royal alliances with Holland and France, and a description of fanatics in Scot­
While Smollett made direct use of Hume’s History, he also adopted his
land).®' Oliver Goldsmith seems to have treated Hume’s History in a similar way
thought in more subtle ways. In the introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature
in his own History of England (1771), taking “word-for-word Humes chapters
(1739-1740), Hump had hinted at the historical aspects of his approach to moral
on the Tudors and Stuarts.®^ Goldsmith has been seen to “trim,” “compress,” and
philosophy. Alluding to what he later called Newton’s “happiest reasoning,” Hume
“tighten” Hume’s writing, a process in which Smollett can also be shown to have
explained, “[W]e must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a
participated. Smollett’s account of the debate over Prince Charles’s visit to Spain
cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common
(in 1623) is a good example of such an abbreviated style.
course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in afeirs, and in their plea­
The prince insisted upon his promise; the marquis upbraided him with sures.”'" Hume thus hoped to establish a “science, which will not be inferior in
breach of faith: Sir Francis Cottington, being consulted, confirmed all certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehen­
the king’s fears: James broke out into a passion of tears and lamentation, sion.” The kind of certainty to which Hume aspired thus differed markedly from
exclaiming he tvas undone, and that he should lose baby Charles. Buck­ more metaphysical approaches to knowledge (while Hume hoped to take things
ingham chid, reviled, and threatened Cottington for his presuming to “as they appear in the common course of the world,” a metaphysician (such as
give his advice in affairs of state; and the king, rather than disoblige his Leibniz) might have attempted to describe them “as they are” outside it). Hume
favourite, renewed his consent to the journey. ®^ probably thought that he had found a competing view of “certainty” in the “lofty
ideas” of the Stuart monarchs.^^ Such ideas were meant to contrast the scientific
For Hume, following Clarendon, these events filled three pages.®^ Hume thus
writing of Hume himself. For example, Hume suggested that the Stuart concept
provided the context for Smollett’s phrase “baby Charles (James had introduced
of kingship had been derived a priori (from former established precedents )
Cottington to “baby Charles and Stenny”), a context Smollett missed by (per­
and observed the “imprudence” of allowing Henrietta Maria the education of
haps) jumping to the last sentence of Hume’s paragraph (“The king threw himself
her children till the age of thirteen.”^^Notably, Smollett also wrote that Charles I
upon his bed, and cried, I told you this before-, and fell into a new passion and new
“had the misfortune to be bred up in the high notions of the prerogative, which
lamentations, complaining that he was undone, and should lose baby Charles ).®®
he thought his honour and his duty obliged him to maintain”;” he similarly ob­
Donald Greene has compared other passages of the histories of Hume and Smol­
served that James I, “with very little experience and judgment, had gleaned some
lett and reached similar conclusions about Smollett’s style ( much leaner, more

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CHAfiTER 4
knowledge from books, which rendered him extremely self-conceited and laid
him open to the arts of adulation.”^* For both Smollett and Hume, the incautious
views of the Stuarts were matched by other seventeenth-century ideas (such as the
principle, “which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history
and experience. That the people are the origin of alljust power’) P They might also
have thought that the factional politics of the eighteenth century (which united
against Hume’s historical approach) shared a similar metaphysical origin.
Smollett had begun his History with a dedication to William Pitt (1708—
1778) (who had expressed his disapproval of Hume’s Stuart volumes).^® However,
he made it clear that he was addressing himself “not to the minister, but to the
patriot”: “My veneration,” he wrote, “is attached to..permanent qualities: qualities
that exist independent of favour or faction.”^^'For Smollett, the description of
“permanent qualities” was related to his attempt to be an “impartial” historian.®“
In this respect, they were not a priori principles but empirical deductions. In “An
introductory reflection,” Smollett reinforces his interest in the stability of ideas.
The first and most important effort of human genius appears to have
been the art of transmitting and perpetuating ideas; and this shines in
nothing more conspicuous than in the labours of historians, which not
only present us with a review of all those mighty events which influenced
the fate of nations, but also communicate to our inquiry the whole prog­
ress of improvement, the whole circle of knowledge and experience.
Smollett thus indicated that historical writing became the subject of its own in­
quiry. His view reflected Hume’s opinion in his “Essay on History” that “history
is not only a valuable part of knowledge, but opens the door to many other parts,
and affords material to most of the sciences.”®^Without history, Hume thought,
“we should be forever children in understanding”; it was the invention of history
that extended “our experience to all past ages, and to the most distant nations;
making them contribute as much to our improvement in wisdom, as if they had
actually lain under our observation.” A historical text thus imparted knowledge
and provided a way to understand how that knowledge was imparted: it was an
experience of the “circle of knowledge and experience” itself Smollett explained:
The faculties of the mind are opened and enlarged in the contemplation
of such an expanded field: the humane passions are interested in the for­
tune of the remotest nations, because humanity is everywhere the same;
and howsoever divided by mountains, rivers, and seas, severed by policy,
dispersed by accident, or distinguished by a difference of laws, language.
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A FRIEND OF VIRTUE
climate, or complexion, we are all the children of one parent; all the
brethren of one family. The understanding unfolds and ripens in pro­
portion to the exercise it undergoes; the memory retains the reflection,
profits by the example, and the heart glows with a laudable emulation to
rival the practice of recorded virtue.®®
The^notion that “humanity is everywhere the same” enabled Smollett’s veneration
of “permanent qualities.”®^By foregrounding the experience of the reader, he was
able to suggest how those qualities might be perceived (independently of “favour
or faction”). Ihe reader’s participation in Smollett’s history was thus, in many
ways, an important part of its subject. It allowed Smollett to explore the “faculties
of the mind” (Hume had noted that he was writing for those “who are curious of
tracing the history of the human mind”)®®and identify himself with the “friend
of virtue.”
Both Smollett and Hume hoped to redirect the attention of their readers.
Both adopted skeptical attitudes to historical sources (thus problematizing those
eighteenth-century beliefs that rested on historical “facts”—such as the Popish
Plot).®® They also began their historical work by emphasizing its “obscurity, uncer­
tainty, and contradiction.”®^ Opening with an account of the ancient “Britons,”
Smollett (like Hume) quickly noted his disgust:
Yet, how interesting soever the subject may be, the task is not to be
performed without difficulty and even disgust arising from the obscu­
rity that veils the origin of this as well as of all other nations, and the
perplexed though elaborate discussions of those who have fondly en­
deavoured, by wild conjectures, to trace it backwards into the shades of
ignorance and allegory of fable.®®
Although Smollett might have been encouraged by his reading of the Phihsophi-
cal Transactions (he observed, for example, that the time of Caesar’s landing was
“the 26th August in the afternoon, as the learned Hally has demonstrated from
the circumstances of the history, and the ebbing and flowing of the tides ),®®he
remained suspicious of what he called “monkish imposition.”®®Hume s relation­
ship to the Royal Society was perhaps less enthusiastic (he praised Boyle and
Newton as men “who trod, with cautious, and therefore the more secure steps,
the only road, which leads to true philosophy”);®* however, the anecdote with
which he opens his history of the Stuarts seems bold when compared to Smol­
lett’s version. In Smollett’s account, the journey of James I concluded with the
following speculation (my italics): “Perhaps he was ashamed of his ungracious
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figure, and aukward address; and in all probability, he did not think himself safe
in the midst of so many strangers. Whatever were his motives, he certainly issued
a proclamation, forbidding all strangers to approach his person.”^^ Hume may
have seemed too confident in assigning motives; Smollett’s strict limitation of
tvhat was “certain” upheld the Humean ideal. Smollett’s approach thus contrasted
sharply with the acts of over-interpretation he occasionally described (these were
perhaps exemplified for Hume by the parliamentary oath “which contained an
et caetera in the midst of it”).^^ For example, Smollett noted that a “stream of
prejudice” had attributed the fire of London to “malicious desigif^^'* he similarly
observed that a “ridiculous asseveration” of Walter Raleigh (concerning an “in­
fallible cure for fevers”) led to the idea that Prince Heiiry had been poisoned.^^
Such interpretative acts were part of the religious beliefs Hume saw as “the great
spring of men’s actions and determinations” in the period.^® They were also fun­
damentally opposed to the kind of experience both Smollett and Hume hoped
their writings would provide.
The reader of Smollett’s history would also have experienced a dissociation
of ideas. Hume had described how “all simple ideas may be separated by the imagi­
nation, and may be united again in what form it pleases”; such an “association of
ideas” could be (but did not have to be) “guided by some universal principles,
which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places.”^^In
their histories, both Smollett and Hume sought out such “principles of connex­
ion.” Hume, for example, may have thought that this was what James I had inad­
vertently revealed when he tore the “sacred veil” from the “English constitution”;^®
he later observed that the people “always take opinions in the lump.”’^ Smollett
similarly described the lumping together of ideas on the death of Charles II: “This
sorrow and surprise,” he wrote, “co-operating with the terror of his successor, and
the detestation of popery, ingendered a suspicion of his having been taken off by
poison; but this, upon enquiry, appeared without foundation.”’”” But for both
writers it was Cromwell who represented (in Smollett’s words) “the strangest com­
pound of villainy and virtue, baseness and magnanimity, absurdity and good sense,
that we find upon record in the annals of mankind.”'”’ In many respects, he was
the embodiment of the “cement” (upon which Hume speculated at the beginning
of the Stuart volumes) that was able to “unite men of such discordant principles in
so dangerous a combination.”’”^As a “principle of connexion” in himself, Crom­
well generated incomprehensible ideas: Hume, for example, observed that Charles
I “entertained no apprehension of a judicial sentence and execution; an event, of
which no history hitherto furnished an example”;’”^Smollett described Cromwell’s
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FRIEND OF VIRTUE
elocution as “so harsh, vulgar, confused, tedious, and obscure, that he was not, for
two years heard with any attention.”'”^ By demonstrating the constituent “simple
ideas” of Cromwell’s discourse, Smollett and Hume were able to suggest how the
rfeader might make other (more natural) combinations. For example, they pointed
to the behavior of Lucius Cary, viscount Falkland, who had “constantly opposed
the-nroWn” and then “espoused the cause of his sovereign in distress.”’”^Notably,
Smollett referred to Cary as “the pattern of consummate virtue”: in other words,
he mapped out a “principle of connexion” that Smollett hoped to recommend.
Smollett described how Charles I, “in his private character, exhibited a shin­
ing example of virtue, piety, and moderation.”’”” But he also noted that he “paid
too much deference to the opinions and solicitations of the queen, who, though an
accomplished princess, was bigotted to her religion, and violent in her counsels.”
The marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria thus represented another forced com­
bination of ideas: in some ways, it paralleled the case of Cromwell, who could be
seen as an example of how the “illusions of fanaticism prevailed over the plainest
dictates of natural morality.”’”'' Hume (later) made a similar association of women
and religion: he observed, for example, that “the fair sex have had the merit of
introducing the Christian doctrine into all the most considerable kingdoms of
the Saxon Heptarchy” (beginning, notably, with Bertha, daughter of Carlbert,
“king of Paris”);’”®he also found that the king of Northumberland was “unable to
resist those allurements, which have seduced the wisest of mankind.”’”” Despite
the “tenderness” exhibited by the letters of Charles to his wife (a correspondence
that, Smollett observed, “must impress every impartial reader with a very favour­
able idea of his conjugal affection”), Henrietta Maria was seen to complicate such
“natural” sentiment.”” In much the same way, Smollett described how James II
was “brave, steady, resolute, diligent, upright, and sincere, except when warped by
religious considerations” (in other words, by his wife and his mother).”’ Hume
accounted for Charles II’s “prepossession in fiivour of the French Nation” by not­
ing that “our notions of interest are much warped by our affections.””^ It was
precisely this deviation of “natural morality” that made the Stuart monarchs (and
Cromwell) into “objects of compassion.””®Smollett probably hoped that such
compassion would be the guiding principle in any recombination of ideas. Like
Hume, he presented Charles I as entangled in an “inextricable labyrinth” of opin­
ions and prejudices (both in his “private character” and in the public sphere).”'*
His trial and execution only confirmed his mythic plight: Smollett described how
the “populace who still retained the feelings of humanity, expressed their sorrow
in sighs and tears,” adding that “they waited in silent horror, as if they expected
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C H A P T E R .4
the dissolution of nature.”"^ In narrating this event, Smollett (and Hume) sought
to inspire more “feelings of humanity” and thereby sustain a “natural morality” in
the very moment of its demise.
The historian who befriended virtue also befriended “sentiment.” Accord­
ing to Hume, virtues were not a priori principles (such as those held by Henrietta
Maria); in some respects, they expressed the relationship between other “impres­
sions” (much like the “idea’ of “causation”)."* In his Enquiry concerning the
Principles of Morals (1751), Hume defined a virtue as '‘whatever mental action or
quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approhationl'^'^^^i. thus hinted
at the importance of literary “effect” for describing the idea of virtue. Both Smol­
lett and Hume, for example, observed how Charles Jninderstood his experience
in terms of a psalm (“Have mercy. Lord, on me, I pray; For men would me de­
vour”)."® In giving an account of how Charles asked for this psalm to be sung at
Newark, both writers noted that the audience responded with “compassion” and
“pity” (Hume similarly found that Cornelius De Wit repeated an ode by Horace
that “contained sentiments suited to his deplorable condition”)."® Throughout
his History, Smollett returned to his more novelistic work: for example, he in­
corporated narrative detail into his account of the flights of Charles II (whose
borrowed boots were “so uneasy to his feet, that, after he had travelled in them
a few miles, he threw them away and walked in his stockings”)'®” and the Duke
of Monmouth (who was discovered “with raw peas in his pocket, which he had
gathered in the fields to sustain life”).'®' Smollett’s version of the “rebellion” in
Ireland was also meant to fill “the mind with horror”: the “spectacles of distress
and misery” included “the shivering, the dying, and the dead; the old and infirm,
fainting with cold and hunger; the children clamorous for food and shelter; the
mother weeping over her expiring infant; the wife shrieking with terror and dis­
may; the husband groaning with unutterable woe.”'®®By far the most “literary”
events, however, were executions. Referring to the executions of the regicides,
Hume wrote that, contrary to the “indignation” and “joy” of the “people,” a
“mind seasoned with humanity, will find a plentiful source of compassion and in­
dulgence”;'®®similarly, Smollett observed (with regard to the Popish Plot) that the
“humane reader cannot, without horror, reflect upon the fate of those unhappy
persons, who fell a sacrifice to the savage prejudice of the multitude, excited by
the villainy of the most abandoned miscreants; and inflamed by the arts of a ma­
lignant faction.”'®'* Both Smollett and Hume narrated Strafford’s short journey to
Tower Hill (“as he passed by the apartments of the archbishop [Laud], he spoke
to him at the window, intreating the assistance of his prayers”)'®® and described
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A F R I E N D O F V I R T U E
how Montrose turned his experiences at the hands of a miserably deluded and
deluding people” into a poem (“a signal monument of his heroic spirit, and no
despicable proof of his poetical genius”).'®* For Smollett, the executions of Staf­
ford and Russell called for similar literary transformations.
JIhe populace were melted at the meekness, piety, and resignation of this
antient nobleman, whose character had been always untainted, till the
date of this accusation. When he repeated his protestations with regard
to his innocence, they cried aloud, “We believe you, my lord—God
bless you, my lord.” Even the executioner was softened: he could not
perform his office without hesitation and marks of sympathy; and when
he held up the head, according to custom, exclaiming, “This is the head
of a traitor,” no expression of assent was heard: all was still, silent and
sorrowful.'®®
Hume had also described the crowd’s “profound silence,” a sign of the natural
sentiments of “pity, remorse and astonishment.”'®®In this way, Smollett and Hume
appropriated their reader’s own “still” and “silent” spectatorship. Smollett achieved
a similar effect when he described the conversation between James II and the fa­
ther of Lord Russell (who told him that he once had a son who “if now alive could
serve [his] majesty in a more effFectual manner”): James was apparently “so struck
with this reflection, that he could not answer one word.”'®®It was perhaps such
a sympathetic reverie that marked Smollett’s description in Travels through France
and Italy of the executions and barbarities of ancient Rome: he commented that
“some of this sanguinary spirit is inherited by the inhabitants of a certain island
that shall be nameless—but mum for that. '®“
In his history of the Stuarts, Smollett followed Hume’s emphasis on the
mind; but he also incorporated a complementary account of the body. On the
one hand, this reinforced (in a more “overt” way) the empirical aspects of Hume’s
thought; on the other, it was a development of his narrative interests. Thus Smol­
lett’s description of the “composition” of the “person” (not mind) of James I trans­
formed him into a kind of caricature:
James was in his stature of the middle size, inclining to corpulency:
his forehead was high, his beard scanty, and his aspect mean. His eyes,
which were large and languid, he rolled about incessandy, as if in quest
of novelties. His tongue was so large, that in speaking or drinking he
beflabbered the by-standers. His knees were so weak as to bend under
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C H A P T E R 4
the weight of his body. His address was awkward, and his appearance
slovenly There was nothing dignified either in the composition of his
mind or person.'^’
For Smollett, James clearly had a carnivalesque quality. His portrait might have
been intended to accompaqy the many engravings included in the History}^^
Although most of these attempt true likenesses, others (such as the engraving of
Cromwell) verge on parody: Cromwell appears in profile (unlike the royalists), pre---
sumably in order to emphasize his double chin and lack of aristocratic cheekbones
(not to mention lips).'” In a similar way, Smollett included^arreductive account
of the body in his narration of the execution of Charles I. While Hume, on the
death of the king, turned to a “fresh instance of hypocrisy,” Smollett continued:
The body was put into a coffin covered with black velvet, and removed
to an apartment in Whitehall; then embalmed, and exposed for several
days at the palace of St. James’s. At length, the duke of Richmond, the
marquis of Hertford, the earls of Southhampton and Lindsey, obtained
permission to bury it in the church of Windsor; where it was privately
interred, without any funeral ceremony.'”
Smollett thus described the transition of Charles to an it. He later recalled the
process when he noted that, in the reign of Charles II, “the bodies of Cromwell,
Ireton, Bradshaw, and Pride” were “dug out of their graves, and d ra p d through
the streets to Tyburn, where they continued hanging a whole day.”'” Such de­
scriptions perhaps expressed Smollett’s medical interests: he noted, for example,
that Cromwell’s “guilty conscience” and “continual agitation of his spirits” had a
“violent effect” on his body (a “tertian ague”);*” he also found that Titus Oates
had been lying because (contrary to Oates’s report on a letter by George Water­
man) “nothing could be more absurd than to prescribe a milk-diet with the use of
the Bath-water.”'” But the body was also an important part of his concept of his­
tory: Smollett gave some sense of this in his account of Miles Prance (a goldsmith
intimidated into giving evidence as part of the Popish Plot) when he observed
that “he hazarded his soul rather than endure the hardships to which his body was
subjected.”'^®
Smollett may have thought that his unique form of empiricism was a sign
of health and vitality. Hume, for example, had clearly associated a preoccupation
with the “inward life” with a Presbyterian “mode of worship” (‘the most naked
and most simple imaginable” and “one that borrowed nothing from the senses”).*”
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A F R I E N D O F V I R T U E
Like Hume, Smollett praised the attempt by James I to “infuse chearfulness into
this dark spirit of devotion” by issuing a “proclamation to allow and encourage,
after divine service, all kinds of lawful games and exercises.”'^" In fact, such a
proclamation may have reminded Smollett of his own experiences in the theater.
He therefore seems to have admired the expression of a more “outward” life. For
example, he noted with some irony that the soldiers in Scotland were “pleased
with the sight of their sovereign [Charles II]”: the ministers apparently “removed
him to a greater distance, declaring that the soldiers were too much inclined to
put their confidence in the arm of flesh, whereas their hope and dependence ought
to be in the prayers and piety of the church.”'^' In contrast, Smollett had found
that those Scots who handed Charles I to Parliament had acted from principles
of “resentment, interest and fanaticism,” a form of internalization that differed
markedly from the “generosity and compassion” to which they should have “given
way.”''*^For Smollett, the “faction” that opposed the king was “composed of those
whom the court had personally disobliged”; the motives of revenge and “hatred”
distinguished them from those whose “minds were enlarged by a liberal education
and who “glowed with ardour in the cause of injured royalty.”'” Smollett thus
described how Charles I perceived himself (in Miltonic terms) as “fallen from the
highest pinnacle of envied monarchy to a state of the most abject dependence.”'”
Nevertheless, Smollett must have been aware of how his own writing achieved a
similar internalizing effect. Following Hume, his history of the mind implicated
its author in another form of “inward life.”
In a letter to John Clephane, Hume wrote, “My views of things are more
conformable to Whig principles; my representations of persons to Tory prejudices.
Nothing can so much prove that men more commonly regard persons than things,
as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.”*” Smollett’s regard
for “persons” (not minds) may have led his readers to a similar interpretation.''*^
All the same, the Critical Review described Smollett (in a phrase reminiscent of
Hume’s remark) as "so far a tory, as to love and revere the monarchy and hier­
archy; and so much a whig, as to laugh at the notions of indefeasible right and
non-resistance.”*” For the Critical Review, at least, Smollett had “steered happily
through the quicksands of party.”'” In his History, Hume noticed that such a
position had its own kind of “factional” origin: although he described how the
distinction between beliefs “gradually became quite uniform and regular,” he also
suggested that they were gradually moderated.'^® For Hume, the “paradoxical prin­
ciple and salutary practice of toleration” depended on the existence of religious
sects and heresies and schisms.”'” Smollett would no doubt have shared such a
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“paradoxical” view. In a letter to William Hunter, he wrote that he would never be
persuaded that he was a Jacobite or had “exhibited the outward Signs and Symp­
toms of that Infection.”'^' After wishing long life to his accusers (and that they
would “become Saints in Heaven”), he continued.
For my Part, even after their Canonization, I shall rather than trouble
them on their Thrones of Beatification, address my Prayers to the spirit
of honest George Macaulay, who I know will do me all the service in
his power, notwithstanding the Discrepancy betwkt my notions of
Government and those of hiS learned spouse, who, I am tpld, is now all
masculine above low water mark.
Smollett was alluding to The History of Englandfrofn the Accession of James I to that
of the Brunswick Line (1763-1783) by Cathatine Macaulay.'” Since this work
was perceived to be an “answer” to Hume’s H is to r y ,it is likely that it would
have influenced the reception of Smollett’s own “impartiality.” Notably, Smollett
traveled to Bath with the Macaulays in 1 7 6 5 , and the letter to “Mrs. M— ” in
Travels through France and Italf^'^ was dated the very month that the first volume
of Macaulay’s History was published (October 1763). Smollett’s remarks in the
Travels about the “cruelty and rancour” of “civil wars” (and the loss of the “liberal
spirit”) were significandy addressed to “Madam.” Thus, while Smollett maintained
a “scientific” form of moderation in his History, he would also have been aware of
how it had been drawn into dialogues with a widet world.
George III
The serialized publication of the Complete History of England was completed in
1759. Over the next three years (as Hume worked on his medieval volumes),
Smollett prepared and published four volumes of his Continuation of the Complete
HistoryT^ This work covered the years from 1748 to 1762, from the “Peace of
Aix la Chapelle” to the teign of George III (which began in 1760, about halfway
through the fourth volume). Since these volumes brought Smollett’s historical
writing completely up to date, there seems to be good reason to consider the
fifth volume, published in 1765 (with its own preface and index), as an entirely
separate project.'” There is some evidence that Smollett’s contemporaries also saw
it this way: in 1767, George Canning dedicated his attack on the Critical Review
to “Tobias Smollett M.D. Unifotmly tenacious of the Principles he was nursed
in—famous for his stories. Histories, and his continued Continuations of Com-
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plete Histories.”'^®As a “continued Continuation,” the fifth volume had aesthetic
links with its predecessors: Smollett saw the “short interval” (1762—1765) that it
contained as producing “what may be called the catastrophe, or completion of
all the transactions contained in the four preceding volumes However, it also
appeared to tell a different history from what had gone before: “We will venture
tcrsay that, from the events it describes, the system of Europe presents us with
a new face; and that both the military and civil genius of Great Britain have as­
sumed appearances different from those they formerly have, in their most glorious
periods.”'^®The sense that this might not have been the most “glorious” of catas­
trophes was confirmed by Smollett’s suggestion that, surveying the events of 1762,
“one would be apt to believe that the human mind had begun to degenerate, and
that mankind was relapsing into their original ignorance and barbarity.”'®' Such
a degeneration provided the context fot Smollett’s opening remark that “to give
materials their due use and arrangement, is the chief property that distinguishes
History from Compilation; and no period, perhaps, ever required a forming hand
more than that which is contained in the following volume.”'®^Although Smollett
once more claimed “the character of a just and dispassionate historian,”'®^ he also
implied that, in this petiod at least, his role was uniquely participatory.
Some of the difficulties of writing contemporary “history” had been empha­
sized by the Critical Review. In a review of the final part of the Complete History of
England, the reviewer suggested that these problems pertained to the historian as
a “friend of virtue.” He explained (by quoting Smollett),
This, of all others, is the most unfavourable aera for an historian. A
reader of sentiment and imagination cannot be entertained or interested
by a dry detail of such transactions as admit of no warmth, no colouring,
no embellishment; a detail which serves only to exhibit an inanimated
picture of tasteless vice and mean degeneracy.'®*
In the Continuation, Smollett found such “sentiment and imagination” in faraway
lands (such as the “common calamity” of the privateer ship, the Lord Clive, and
the massacte of the “little tribe” of “harmless Conestaga Indians”).'®®His punctua­
tion of the “dty detail” of the period with emotive episodes was thus his solution
to the problem: the reader, for example, moved from Smollett’s account of how
planters in America “were cut in pieces bit by bit, and the most ftvoured had a
spike drove through their bodies,” to a description of the Bank of England.'®® But
this was not the only difficulty noted by the Critical Review. The reviewer of the
fifth volume of the Continuation observed, “There is not perhaps a more difficult
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change in the constitution.”'” Smollett’s hypothetical thoughts about the “differ­

province in literature than that of writing the history of our own times, especially
ent competitors for the regency” in France'^^ clearly related to events in England
when the great agents, who either embellish or disgrace them, are still in being.
(Smollett includes substantial details about the Regency Act at the end of his fifth
While this may have accounted for some detailed digressions in Smollett s work
volume).'” He thus revealed a way in which his Travels, published a year after
(for example, the inclusion of Major-General Barrington’s response to Smollett’s
the fifih volume of the Continuation, could be read as another “continuation”
earlier “acco u n t of the expedition to Martinique and Guadalupe”),'^® it also sug­
oflan— already continued “complete” History. In a similar way, Smollett alluded,
gests the extent to which Smdllett turned his “impardality” to political ends. This
in his reference at Nice to a protestant minister “hanged about two years ago, in
was posed as a particularly English problem and not applicable to histories written
the neighbourhood of Montauban” to his account of Francis Rochette (and John
under “arbitrary governments” (such as France) that did not involve their authors
Galas) in the Continuation.^^'^ His interests in the “Indian chiefs” (in the letter to
in a “combustion of enmity.”'^^Voltaire, for instance, was seen to write the history
Catharine Macaulay) and “the gallantry and courage of Paoli” (at Genoa) also
of a “united people”; even “sentiment” was available to him (“The modern history
formed part of the fifth volume.'^" Smollett even noted that he lodged in the same
of such a people, is simple, easy, and interesting”).H o w ev er, as the reviewer of
place as Monsieur Nadeau d’Etrueils (at Cannes),'*' “the unfortunate French gov­
Smollett’s History maintained, “every British historian since the reformation, has
ernor of Guadeloupe,” whose island had been the focus of debate in the third and
expressly written as a partisan of some particular faction. The reviewer had
fourth volumes of the Continuation. Smollett may thus have intended his Travels
in mind Clarendon and Edmund Ludlow (ca. 1617-1692), but he also implied
to provide a complementary volume to his “historical” work. The combination of
that Smollett had joined their ranks. He wrote, [Wjith all his desire of guarding
subjects included in Smollett’s fifth volume (such as an account of a scheme to
against prejudice, he [a historian] will hardly be able to represent with candour
provide London with fresh fish,'*^ the discovery of a method for measuring longi­
those scenes in which he himself acted a part; and what author is so inconsider­
tude,'*^ sightings of whales off the coast of England,'*^ calculations on the national
able or neutral in a community, as not to have interested himself at some time or
debt,'*’ and a report of lightning striking a “powder-m^azine” in Jamaica)'*® had
other in the disputes of his country?” After completing the fourth volume of the
a lot in common with the encyclopedic scope of his Travels (and his model, the
Continuation, Smollett interested himself fully in the disputes of his country. In
many respects, the fifth volume of the Continuation was more a “continuation” of Philosophical Transactions).
Smollett may also have found in the Continuation a version of his own
his work on The Briton than his earlier H i s t o r y Smollett’s apparent lack of “can­
journey in the Travels. Turning, in his fifth volume, to a “scene of a different and
dour” may have contributed to a later rumor that this volume was suppressed (it
a more pleasing nature” (than a parliamentary session), Smollett had provided
was notably not included in the combined Hume and Smollett History of 1785).
an account of the “tour” of the Duke of York.'*^ Like Smollett, the duke had
The “suppression” of Smollett’s volume has been put down to his description of
begun his journey across Europe in 1763 and adopted (under the tide of the
the illness of George III, but it might be more reasonably explained by his ongoing
“earl of Ulster”) a fictional persona.'®* Smollett may well have seen the duke at
support for the Earl of Bute.
Nice, where their paths crossed on August 20, 1764; since Smollett was about to
In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett referred to the faction by
retrace the duke’s steps to Genoa (arriving only a month after the duke left), it is
which he was “persecuted” in 1763.'^“ He also alluded to disputes of 1765,
likely that the duke’s journey made some impression on him. Smollett indicated
among which he published his new volume of the Continuation on his return
the publicity surrounding the duke’s “tour” in the Continuation'. Hitherto, he
from France. These disputes concerned the “regency bill” and were the real rea­
wrote, “the public of Great Britain were gready divided in opinion, whether a
son Smollett had provided an account of the king’s illness: he was afraid of what
British prince would visit the capital of Italy, which was the residence of a person
would happen “if it should please God to put a period to his life whilst his suc­
who bears his illustrious title, and of the pretender to his brother’s crown and
cessor was of tender years” (not that he was “mad”).'” Smollett found a parallel
dominions.”'*’ Smollett’s account of his own visit to Rome (six months later) was
to these events in the situation of the government in France: “There is at present a
perhaps intended to balance such interests. In the Continuation, he revealed his
violent fermentation of different principles among them,” he wrote, “which under
own experience of some of the places the duke had visited: he noted, for example.
the reign of a very weak prince, or during a long minority, may produce a great

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defense of the Earl of Bute. At the end of the Continuation, Smollett stressed how
that Genoa was a “magnificent city, one of the most shewy perhaps of any in the
Bute had “entirely resigned himself to the duties of a private life.”
world,” and commented that, since the “neighbourhood of Florence is perhaps
the most delightful spot in Italy, it is no wonder his royal highness remained there This inoffensive conduct, however, was far from protecting his character
till the 2d of April.”*’'’ Similarly, Smollett’s allusions, in Travels through France from the shafts of envy and malevolence, and every day produced from
and Italy, to Sir Horace Mann (the “British minister at Florence”)” ’ or to horse the press fresh informations to the public, that he still had underhand
racing at Rome,”” or even his incorporation of a letter from Turin,”^ indicated a the direction of all the great movements of state, but without any
way in which the duke’s journey had informed his own narrative. For Smollett, ^ particular instance of his influence being specified, otherwise than by
such a “tour” emphasized the European nature of a “British prince and the his­ surmise and suspicion.”'”
tory in which he participated. Throughout the Continuation, Smollett traces such
Bute had resigned his office in April 1763,”°’ and Smollett had similarly given
a journey, moving repeatedly between events in Europe (for example, in Portugal,
up The Briton and “fled” to France. To a certain extent, the very publication of
France, Spain, and Prussia)”^and events at home; Travels through France and Italy
his activities since 1763 provided evidence of the kind of “private life” to which
was, in some respects, a confirmation of this approach. In addition, Smollett s ac­
Bute, and his supporters, were meant to have retired. Thus Smollett’s claim to
count of Russia in the Continuation (also referred to in the Travelsf^^ suggested
have “no share whatever in any of the disputes which agitate the public” was
that he hoped such writing would reach back into British history itself. Noting
probably meant to uphold Bute’s “character” as much as his own. In the Continu­
the death of Czar Peter III, Smollett commented.
ation, Smollett had described the disputes in which they had both been involved
Though the murder of a weak sovereign may, perhaps, be justified by the in 1763 (the “scene of illiberal dispute, and incredible infatuation,” to which
savage policy of a barbarous nation, it will ever be deemed a detestable he referred at the beginning of his T ra v e ls).Smollett clearly meant to pres­
act, by every person of sentiment and humanity; and it is the duty of ent the situation in seventeenth-century terms: he wrote, for example, that the
an historian, to fix the mark of eternal infamy upon the perpetrators, “minds of the people were so deeply and so universally tainted” and “intoxicated
howsoever dignified they may be by the success of usurpation.”'^ with dreams of conquest and dominion.””°^ The Earl of Bute, unfortunately a
Stuart by name,” had thus become the object of a kind of religious fanaticism
In a similar way, in Travels through France and Italy, Smollett describes the
(of “such a degree of virulence as had never before disturbed the tranquility of
shared Roman heritage of European states (his suggestion that the English would
Great Britain”).”’^ Smollett suggested the seventeenth-century origin of such
have won the sea battle at Actium, or that other “pretty equally enlightened”
prejudices: the Union of the Crowns had led to a “jealousy” of the “success of
European countries would have resisted Roman conquests was a sign of his
the Scots.””’’ Since Smollett was one of those Scots who “had prospered in many
cosmopolitan creativity).”” Smollett’s discovery in Nice that wherever peasants
different provinces of life, and made no contemptible figure in the cultivation
dug they found the “crumbled lime and rubbish of old Roman buildings may
of the arts and sciences,” he would have similarly found himself the object of
well suggest the way he thought that modern Europe was built on a common
“all those calumnies, antient and modern, that ever had been uttered against the
(but hidden) past.
Scottish nation”: “Had the natives of North Britain proved equally combustible,”
There was another way in which Smollett continued his Continuation into
he wrote, “the flames of civil war would have certainly been kindled.””” This, at
Travels through France and Italy. At Nice, Smollett responded to a “suspicion” of
least, was Smollett’s version of events: a slightly different interpretation was re­
one of his (fictional) correspondents. He was emphatic: “I assure you, upon my
flected in Smollett’s defenses of Bute’s “insensibility” (he was a “stoic”)”’” and his
honour, I have no share whatever in any of the disputes which agitate the public:
unpopular friends (their “characters, perhaps, wanted no advantage, but that of
nor do know any thing of your political transactions, except what I casually see
being known”).”” Smollett’s support for the “cyder tax” in the Continuation (he
in one of your newspapers, with the perusal of which I am sometimes favoured
pointed out that the opposition’s argument was actually “one of the strongest” in
by our consul at Villefranche.””’ Smollett’s (retrospective) attempt to distance
its favor),”°’ or his attempt to defuse the situation surrounding the publication of
himself from the politics of early 1765 was, in some ways, part of his continuing

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papers that would “set the late minster, the earl of B. and his arbitrary principles,
in the most odious light,”^‘° shows that he was still, in 1765, one of those “friends
who exercised their pens in his [Bute’s] vindication.”^"
One of the events Smollett sought to vindicate was the peace settlement that
ended the Seven Years’ War in February 1763. Smollett reprinted the “definitive
treaty of Peace” in the Continuation and then commented, “The reader will, at one
glance, perceive that these terms are more advantageous to Great Britain and her
allies, than those which were agreed by the late minister.”^'^ However, the advan­
tages of the peace were not that obvious to everyone.^'^ Although Smollett called
it “an eternal monument of that moderation which forms thetnost amiable flower
in the wreath of conquest,” he had to confess that the .terms “were more favourable
for France and Spain, than those powers could have reasonably expected to en­
joy” his lengthy account of the British conquest of Havana was perhaps a subde
criticism of its restitution to France.^'^ At the beginning of Travels through France
and Italy, Smollett similarly wrote that “one would imagine the French were still
at war with the English, for they pillage them without mercy” however, such a
remark (alluding to the “impositions” Smollett suffered in France) was meant to
undermine French pretensions, not enforce them. At Boulogne, Smollett listened
with amusement to the inference that the French generals purposefitlly lost the war
in order to bring the Marquise de Pompadour into disrepute (in the same way that
the “schemes of madame de Maintenon” had been disgraced by the victories of the
Duke of Marlborough).^''’ Thus Smollett was able to present, in Travels through
France and Italy, his continuing support for the peace. At Marseilles, for example,
he indicated that “trade is greatly on the decline.”^'® Smollett suggested that this
was a result of the peace of 1763 (despite the return of the islands of Martinique
and Guadeloupe to France):
This decay o f commerce is in a great measure owing to the English, who,
at the peace, poured in such a quantity of European merchandize into
Martinique and Guadeloupe, that when the merchants of Marseilles sent
over their cargoes, they found the markets overstocked, and were obliged
to sell for a considerable loss.
Smollett similarly discredited the French navy: “I was credibly informed that in
the last war,” he wrote at Toulon, “the king of France was so ill-served with can­
non for his navy, that in every action there was scarce a ship which had not several
pieces burst” at Boulogne he suggested that “those flat-bottomed boats, which
raised such alarms in England, in the course of the war” were simply built for
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smuggling.^^" Smollett also implied the superiority of the English when he refused
to treat with the Chancellor of France for the return of his books: he ironically
quotes his landlord telling his servant in confidence, “I am mistaken if I think the
^nglish ambassador is as great a man at Paris as the chancellor of France (Smol­
lett also enjoyed the “curiosity” of an “English boy, about eight or nine years old,
from-Dover,” who, in “less than eight weeks,” had become “captain of the boys”
of Boulogne).'''''^ Smollett returned to the subject of the peace in the conclusion to
the fifth volume of the Continuation (his last sentence confirmed that “in all other
respects, the two great powers with whom we were at war, have fulfilled the articles
of the general peace with a good faith and punctuality, of which we have few or no
examples in English history”) Along with his “continuation” in Travels through
France and Italy, this might have implied some uncertainty about the effect of his
preceding arguments. However, Smollett was also drawing attention to his Com­
plete History of England, which had concluded with an account of the Peace of Aix
la Chapelle in 1748.“ ^ Since “British ministers,” in these negotiations, “seemed
to treat, without the least regard to the honour and advantage or their country,
Smollett was suggesting that the peace of 1763 provided a suitable (if not entirely
“glorious”) “catastrophe” to his historical work.
In the conclusion to the fifth volume of the Continuation, Smollett also
returned to his defense of the “cyder act” (it was “necessary for paying off part of
that great sum [the national debt] ”) and his account of the case of general war­
rants” (which "is not be con[tro] verted by the most virulent enemy of the admin­
istration”) . I n doing so, he affirmed the personal (and participatory) nature of
his volume. The “case of general warrants” referred to the controversial “warrant”
issued against John Y7ilkes (1725—1797) £ind others involved in the publication of
the North BritonF^ Smollett had included a “narrative of the case of Mr. Wilkes”
in the Continuation (without interruption “for the sake of perspicuity”) while he
observed that the North Briton was “insolent and attrocious beyond the example of
all former oppositions,” he did not mention that his own journal. The Briton, had
inspired it (nor that he and W^ilkes had been friends) F* Since Smollett completed
The Briton in February 1763 (just after the Peace of Paris had been signed), he
may have seen the fifth volume of the Continuation as his opportunity to reply to
Wilkes’s later numbers. Smollett thus found pleasure in repeating the legal reso­
lution that “the paper, intitled The North Briton, No. 45, is a false, scandalous,
and seditious libel, containing expressions of the most unexampled insolence, and
contumely towards his majesty.”^^" He therefore lent his support to the “general
warrant” (although he was also aware of its dubious legality).Combined with
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A F R I E N D O F V I R T U E

his closing remarks on the peace and the “cyder act,” Smollett may have hoped with his “munificence and taste for the fine arts.”^"*' In many respects, the “friend
that his reference to Wilkes would act as a kind of reminder to Bute of the services of virtue” was a kind of patron; he was also someone who would have supported
he had provided (before he went to France).^^' In a letter to John Home in 1762 Smollett’s work (as he might have supported Smollett’s play in the late 1730s).
(Home was then Bute’s private secretary), Smollett had been confident of receiving In the fifth volume of the Continuation, Smollett thus attempted an appropria­
a pension from Bute7^^ He alluded to this in the Continuation when he wrote that tion of his earlier historical work: the impartiality he had preserved as a mark of
pensions had been granted to “men of genius and learning” (but not, he might universal ^‘human nature” became instead the contingent discourse of “patriotism”
have added, to him) 7^^ Smollett then speculated. (in the introduction to the Continuation, Smollett had written that “themes like
Perhaps the king’s privy purse was found inadequate . . . another kind (those] cannot fail to warm the heart, and animate the pen of the historian, who
of provision, however, might be found for men of literary'merit, which glows with the love of his country”) . I t was thus fitting that Smollett’s i n i tia l
should be less burthensome to the prince, at least as honourable for dedication to Pitt (who turned out to be an opponent of the peace of 1763) was
themselves, and much more advantageous to their country. They might addressed “not to the minister, but the patriot” (and the “permanent qualities”
be employed in places under the government, adapted to their several that this implied). Ultimately, then, Smollett’s fifth volume was involved in a
talents and dispositions. form of deceit. When read alongside Smollett’s further “continuation,” Travels
through France and Italy, that deceit would have been clear. In a sense, Smollett
Smollett had in mind the “multitude of consuls, agents, contractors, commissaries, had freed himself from the cloying (internalizing) aspects of “impartial” history
residents, governors, and secretaries, apointed in different parts of Europe, Africa, and turned to a more “outward” (and contingent) form. His conclusion to the
and America.” In many ways, the fifth volume of the Continuation represented fifth volume (which recalled some of the most controversial subjects of the period),
Smollett’s attempt to secure what he had already suggested in his letter to Home while defensive, was also provocative. Smollett thus revealed his attraction to the
(that “instead of the Pension,” he should be “gratified with some moderate Con­ “factional” and “partial” world he had attempted to transcend: he was himself the
sulship abroad”) The publication of Travels through France and Italy a year later final object of his own (if not of all) history.^'^^
merely continued the “hint.”^^^ Smollett had been particularly interested in the
consulships at Nice and Marseilles'^® his demonstration of his knowledge of the
area in the Travels, along with his account of his relationship to John Buckland,
“one of the best natured and most friendly men in the world” (and then vice-
consul at Nice), may have been intended to further his claim.^^
The Critical Review declared that the fifth volume of the Continuation could
have “no enemies but the friends of faction, and the foes of civil liberty and the
English constitution.”^^®For the Critical Review, the “friend of faction” was op­
posed both to Smollett and “that plan of government which had actually taken
place since the publication of his work.”^® He was thus opposed to the “friend of
virtue.” But the “friend of virtue” was no longer simply the friend of “sentiment”
(not reason), of “empirical” (not a priori) methods, and of “sceptical” (not partial)
views. He was also the “friend of merit” (perhaps especially “literary merit”)—a
sign, in other words, of that “plan of government” that crossed party divides. For
Smollett, the “friend of virtue” was thus what he hoped George III would be: a
“Patriot King,” surrounded by disinterested ministers (such as the Earl of Bute).
Smollett described George Ill’s “humanity and affection for his people” along

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The late Dr. Smollett, a short time before his death, at the particular
request of Voltaire, sat to an eminent painter for his portrait, which was
transmitted soon after to that celebrated genius, who sent the doctor a
handsome diamond ring in return.
—Chelmsford Chronicle, November 8, 1771
(quoted by Joliat, Smollett et la France, 436)

V)...................
works of Voltaire, Smollett did not meet the “celebrated genius” while in France.
Instead, he created his own role of an exiled man of letters, simulating at Nice the
literary retreat of Voltaire at Ferney.' Surrounded by volumes of his own works,
Smollett glanced out of his window at a countryside covered with highland snow.
Thus he returned himself to the communities he had left even as he sustained
his departure from them. Although there is no proof that Smollett sent Voltaire
his portrait, the affinity suggested by the Chelmsford Chronicle (two months after
Smollett’s death) is supported by his stay in Nice. Because Voltaire was widely
promoted in Scotland (and Smollett played an important part in this), it is help­
ful to consider some of his work in conclusion to this book.^ Smollett s work as
a “physical gentleman,” “good critic,” “theatrical divine, and friend of virtue is
reflected in Voltaire’s manifold interests. Voltaire perhaps provided Smollett with
a unique example of what it meant to reconcile the different aspects of his life.
In May 1726, Voltaire arrived in England after a famous quarrel with the
chevalier de Rohan.^ He stayed in London until the autumn of 1728, a period of
self-imposed exile from France during which he published La Henriade (1728).

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C O t l c L U S I O N
Smollett arrived in France in 1763 after a different quarrel, but with a similar
sense of persecution and literary ambition. Just as Voltaire began writing his Let­
ters concerning the English Nation (published in English in 1733 and in French as
Lettres philosophiques in 1734), so Smollett began to compose his own letters on
France and Italy. At Nice, Smollett would have recalled Voltaire’s account: he had
edited it less than two yehrs previously for his edition of Voltaire’s works (and had
taken a copy of it with him). Notably, in this edition, Voltaire’s “letters” had been '
assimilated into a volume of “Miscellanies in History, Literature and Philosophy”
(no mention was made of their collective title and, as in th&original English ver­
sion, the letter on Pascal’s thoughts was omitted).^ Ihis'reflected the state of the
French text that had been condemned (as a single work) by the Parlement of Paris
in 1734. The incorporation of this text into Smollett’s edition would have empha­
sized the encyclopedic qualities of the original English version (which continued
to be published in its entirety). Smollett would no doubt have admired the way
Voltaire was able to blend a discussion of English Presbyterians with the ideas of
Isaac Newton, the plans for an “English academy,” and a description of the stage.’
In his own “travel book,” Smollett adopted a similar encyclopedic approach; he
also played out what has been seen as Voltaire’s “puppeteer” role, adopting and un­
dermining the various “voices” of his text.^ Voltaire’s desire to discuss France while
writing about England (an ambition that was deciphered by the French authori­
ties) is reflected by Smollett’s veiled relationship to Scodand.^ A recent editor of
Voltaire’s Letters concerning the English Nation describes how "this is a book which'
helped to create for the Enlightenment a self-image”;®writing his own letters from
France in 1764, an earlier editor may well have thought the same.
Voltaire s visit to England in 1726 appears to have had a certain vogue in
London in the 1760s. Oliver Goldsmith, for example, produced an account of it
for the Lady’s Magazine (1761).^ In his edition of Voltaire’s works, Smollett not
only edited Voltaire’s own account but, in certain respects, also preserved the il­
lusion of his continuing visit. Having noted that Voltaire “seems to be peculiarly
adapted by nature, for the entertainment of the English people,” Smollett aimed to
prove this throughout his edition.'® In his notes to Candide (1759), for example,
Smollett wrote that Voltaire’s description of the Bulgarian war was “a picture
[Smollett] would recommend to the perusal and consideration of those who are
such sanguine advocates for the continuation of war” (a direct reference to the
opponents of Bute in 1762)." Similarly, he points out Voltaire’s allusion to “the
fate of admiral Byng” (“a severe reflection both upon the G— t, and the officers of
G— t B—n”) and the exile of “Gharles-Edward, king of England.”"' Smollett also
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C O N C L U S I O N
observed the opinion of Candide that “no employment could be more detestable
than laboring “ten years for the booksellers at Amsterdam (he notes, except that
of drudging for the booksellers of London”) and takes the opportunity offered
by the character of Pococurante to outline his concept of a fair critic (one who
“does not vindicate little imperfections, but excuses them, in consideration of the
^cellencies in which they are intermingled”).'’ Thus Smollett turned Voltaires
words to his own ends. In doing so, Smollett was particularly critical of Voltaire’s
historical methods (according to Smollett, Voltaire was warped by an affectation
of singularity in his way of thinking”) and his view of “human nature” (it was “just
as if a ruffian, meeting with a paragon of beauty, should slit her nose, knock out
one eye, begrime her countenance, and then reproach her as an ugly b—ch”).'^
But the exaggerated (almost satirical) quality of Smollett’s remarks testifies to the
attraction of Voltaire’s vision. In the same way, Smollett’s suspicion about how
Voltaire had taken “it into his head to establish an empire for himself, through
the whole circle of arts and sciences” may reflect his own feelings about his role
as “an universalist of the first order.”'’ In his edition of Voltaire’s works, Smollett
presented his own dialogue with Voltaire’s imperial words; in some respects. Travels
through Erance and Italy became a further volume of this Enlightenment project.
This is not the place to discuss the extent of Smollett s relationship to Vol­
taire. It is enough to indicate that Travels through Erance and Italy reflected Smol­
lett’s interests in Voltaire’s English work. At Nice, Smollett also developed another
Voltaireian conte. The History and Adventures of an Atom was partly a continuation
of the atomic perspective of Voltaire’s Micromegas (possibly translated by Smollett
soon after its publication in 1752).'® It may also have drawn from the orientalism
of Voltaire’s Zadig (1748).'^ In a review of the Universal History, Smollett notes
that the situation of Japan was “in many respects, analogous to that of Great Brit­
ain”;'® by adopting Japan as a foil in the Atom, Smollett was developing aspects
of his own Travels through Erance and Italy as well as Voltaire s earlier approach
to England. Smollett’s Atom also exposed what was latent in his other work. In a
letter to John Moore, Smollett described his recent “Peevishness and Discontent”
as the “wrong side of the Tapestry.”'®Drawing this metaphor from Don Quixote,
Robert Adams Day has suggested that the Atom revealed the underside of Britain
in the 1750s and 1760s.“ Because Day also suggested that the Atom was written
by “a man totally freed from the restraints of the historian or the pretended good
manners of the polemicist,” he may have been hinting that the metaphor should
be applied to Smollett himself." In some ways, Smollett’s work on the Atom
uncovered the “wrong side” of Travels through France and Italy (written at the same
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C O N C L i l i S I O N
time). Among the knots and discontent of the Atom, for example, is a sense of the
materialism that underpinned Smollett’s thought.^ Day has included a frontis­
piece to his edition of the Atom, which places the work in this context (in a print
titled “An Abridgment of Mr. Pope’s Essay on Man” [1769], a copy of the. Atom is
found among works by Newton and Locke and surrounded with memento mori
quotations from Shakespeare and Pope).^^ In fact, the notion of a speaking atom
reflects Locke’s concession about the possibility of thinking matter.In this book,
Smollett’s materialist tendencies have been traced in his medical and aesthetic'
theories (both originating in Glasgow), his carnivalesque writing, and "his interest
in associationist philosophy. It is possible that, in the Atom, such tendencies (per­
haps strengthened by Smollett’s reading of Voltaire) assumed their most outspoken
form. A full discussion of the Atom, however, and its relationship to Smollett’s
other pohtical writing, is beyond the scope of this book.
When Smollett returned to England in 1765, he did not take up his old
residence at Chelsea. Instead, he stayed briefly in Brewers Street, near Golden
Square, only a short walk from the homes of George Macaulay, John Hunter,
and William Hunter, and almost next door to David Hume.^^ At this time, he
published the fifth volume of the Continuation and carried on working on his ac­
count of France and Italy (imwhich his friends played so important a part). In an
entirely fitting gesture, Smollett set off for Scodand just as Travels through France
and Italy was published (in early May 1766).^® The rest of his time in England was
spent in Bath. In the autumn of 1768, a few months into the publication of The
Present State of All Nations, Smollett returned to Italy, staying first at Pisa and then
settling near Leghorn (by October 1769).^^ In a farewell letter to David Hume,
Smollett called this his “perpetual Exile,” thus invoking the image of his earlier
literary retreat.^® In order to avoid too much “illiberal dispute” this time around,
however, Smollett published The History and Adventures of an Atom after he had
left the country. At Pisa and Leghorn, Smollett continued his literary work, writ­
ing a new “travel book” and revising his old one.^’ The new book achieved some of
the slippery qualities of Voltaire’s work;^“ it also revealed that Smollett had traveled
back to Scodand while in France. From his villa near Leghorn, Smollett reflected
on his recent visit to Edinburgh and Glasgow (remembering, for example, the
windows of the inns near Doncaster that were “scrawled with doggrel rhimes, in
abuse of the Scotch nation”).^' But the tour made by the Bramble family in The
Expedition of Humphry Clinker did not simply enact his own journey: it was also
an “imaginative synthesis” of his work on the Present State of All Nations?^ Horace
Walpole (1717-1797) thus referred to Humphry Clinker as “a party novel written
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C O N C L U S I O N
by that profligate hireling Smollett to vindicate the Scots” (although he probably
missed a similar intention in the encyclopedic writing of the Travels)}^ Walpole
may have been particularly thinking of Barton’s poetic reverie concerning the Earl
of Bute (“Behold yon northern star, [says he] shorn of his heams’Y‘^or Bramble’s de­
cision that “it is a reproach upon me, as a British freeholder, to have lived so long
without-making an excursion to the other side of the Tweed. But he was also
objecting to the list of other “Caledonian luminaries (Smollett among them) that
punctuate the work: for example, “the two Humes, Robertson, Smith, Wallace,
Plaire, Ferguson, Wilkie, &c.,” at Edinburgh, and John Moore, John Gordon,
and the merchant John Glassford (1715-1783) at Glasgow.^^ Another friend, John
Armstrong, to whom Lismahago referred admiringly at Morpeth, visited Smollett
at Leghorn (before completing his “short ramble” through France and Italy)
Writing The Expedition of Humphry Clinker at Leghorn, Smollett also re­
turned to more metaphysical speculation. Liddys concerns about Wilson ( did he
really appear? or was it only a phantom, a pale spectre to apprise me of his death?”)
and her questions to Bramble after his accident (“Are you really living? or is it
an illusion of my poor brain?”) reflect the concerns of a novel with the world of
appearance and “metamorphosis.”^*Alongside Smollett s exposure of the orthogra­
phy ofTabitha and Winifred, such uncertainty contributed to a description of the
“wrong side of the tapestry.” As I have su^ested, Smollett’s novels often involved
strategies to divert attention away from such disorder (in the same way that Hume,
for example, turned from his skeptical philosophy to a game of backgammon with
his friends).^^ For Smollett, the wrong side of the tapestry represented not only his
peevishness and discontent, but also a reahty that underscored appearances and
made them unrecognizable (to him). Thus Jery perceived the greatest advantage
of traveling as “dispelling those shameful clouds that darken the faculties of the
mind, preventing it from judging with candour and precision.”^"The most impor­
tant image o i Humphry Clinker, then, is the idea of “expedition.” Smollett did not
intend this simply in the sense of a “journey,” or even, as Bouce suggests, in the
sense of the verb “to expedite.”^* The tide of Smollett’s book also implies “energy”
or “effort” (in the sense implied by the order of Bramble for Clinker to “follow
with all possible expedition”).« In some ways, it was Clinker’s role to define the
energy that had marked all of Smollett’s writing. Kenneth Simpson describes such
“effort” (Smollett’s “characteristic range and pace”) as belonging to a Scottish
tradition of dynamic plenitude”; for Simpson, the vitality of Smolletts heroes
is comparable to the “principle of life” itself« Sitting in an “open sea-boat” on
his way to Leith, Bramble experienced this kind of Scottish carnival.“^ As a gale
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C O N C L U S I O N

“increased co a storm of wind and rain,” the company lost sight of “the town of NOTES
Leith” and “the castle of Edinburgh” (objects on the other side of the tapestry),
and witnessed the chaotic and powerful underside of their journey. Sining in
Leghorn or Nice, Smollett would have sympathized with Bramble’s predicament,
for he too knew what it was like to be “recollected in himself” while being tossed
amid the waves.'*^ '
Tliis book began with a quotation from Travels through France and ItalyJkss.
picture of Smollett talking to himself about Scotland has informed my discussion
of Smollett’s writing. But Smollett also wondered if his image of Scotland was a
dream. On the one hand, Smollett was right; the snow he saw from his window Introduction
was simply an illusion of the highlands (like the-myths of Ossian his friends had
1. TFI, 1:2.
created).^* On the other hand, however, the blanket of snow revealed something
2. Ibid.
of the harsh reality of which France, as he traveled, was a dreamlike manifesta­
tion. This undifferentiated vision was Smollett’s Glaswegian inheritance. On the 3. Smollett observed that Bute was “a Stuart by name”; see Cont., 5:117- For Father Graeme, see
r a /, 3:19.
borders of the highlands, Glasgow provided Smollett with a way to understand
4. See CHE, 11:237-42.
his lowlander aspirations. Thus he was a playwright while opposing the theater, a
physician and a quack, an enlightened critic and a craftsman, an impartial histo­ 5. TPI, 5:41,14:134.

rian, and a Jacobite. The labels I have assigned to Smollett in this book are meant
to convey something of the ambiguity of the roles he undertook: each has its
enlightened and darker side. I have mentioned Voltaire mainly as a way to suggest
that Smollett reconciled these roles in favor of enlightenment; Voltaire’s theatri­
cality, exile, and sympathy with Scotland deepen such a portrait. When Smollett
went to Nice in 1763, he could not have missed these similarities; it was as much
6. Three letters are addressed “DEAR DOCTOR” (11:89; 18:157; 21:178); given Smollett’s refer­
ences to the Glaswegian physicians, William Hunter (1718-1783) and William Smellie (1697-
1746), it is likely that he meant John Moore.
7. Boswell, Journal o f a Tour to the Hebrides, 5:369-71.
8. ]ohason. Journey to the Western Islands o f Scotland, 134.
9. Boswell, Journal o f a Tour to the Hebrides, 366-67.

a literary exile as a physical and emotional haven. In 1764, Voltaire published his
Dictionnaire philosophique portatif I would like to think of Smollett’s Travels
through France and Italy as a similar kind of pocket encyclopedia. It is notable,
for example, that Smollett’s subsequent “travel book,” The Expedition of Humphry
Clinker, was valued not as a “narrative of events” but as a “miscellany” or “fund of
informadon.”'*^ Smollett’s miscellaneous writing in the Travels has allowed me to
trace his involvement in a community of Scottish writers. But it was also, in itself,
a contribution to the Enlightenment in Scotland. Thus Travels through France and
Italy presented a treatise on water, a natural history, a discourse on aesthetics, a
debate about the theater, a survey of religious belief, a history of England, and an
account of British commerce and politics. It was in this way that Smollett, writing
about two enlightened countries, quietly added a third, as he continued his travels
through France and Italy.
10. Lewis Knapp, noting that Johnson visited the Chelsea China Manu&ctoty (next door to Smollett’s
home in Monmouth House), suggests that he “could hardly have missed calling on Smollett and
sauntering in his garden”; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 112.
11. See Boswell, Life o f Johnson, 1:348-49; also see Smollett’s letter to John Wilkes (March 16, 1759),
in Letters, 70.
12. For this anecdote, see Karhl, Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 68; and Smeaton, Tobias Smollett,
94. The original source is unidentified.
13. Johnson’s Literary Magasdne and Smollett’s Critical Review both began publication in the spring of
1756; see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 33-36.
14. PS, 2:103-6; on Dumbartonshire, see 94—98.
15. Defoe’s view had already been revised in the fifth edition of A Tour thro‘ the Whole Island o f Great
Britain (1753): in this edition, Glasgow was simply “one o f the cleanliest, most beautiful, and best-
built cities in Great Britain” (4:122). Also see the first edition (1724—1726), 3:83—84.
16. See Beasley, “Tobias Smollett; The Scot in England,” 15.
17. See John Moore, “Life o f Tobias Smollett,” 1:75-82.

[ 136] [ 1 37 ]

NOTES
18. For an account of Smollett’s early life, see Knapp, Tobias Smolietti 3—26.
19. For an account of Smith’s early years in Glasgow, see Ross, The Life o f Adam Smith, 29-59.
20. See Fulton, “John Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 176-89.
21. Moore, “Life o f Tobias Smollett,” 1:150; also see Anderson, Lift o f Tobias Smollett, 33.
22. Goldberg, Smollett and the Scottish School, 16.
23. See Simpson, “Tobias Smollett: The Scot as English Novelist,” 64-105.
24. See Goldberg, Smollett and the Scottish School, 10-13. By dismissing Reid as a central figure. Gold-
berg emphasizes the “reconciling” character of a “Common Sense School (not its Mperimental
basis) and thus distorts Smollett’s relationship to the movement. . '
25. HC, 227. . '
26. See Shet, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenmerit, 13-14, 88.
27. See Carlyle, Anecdotes^ 172.
28. PS, 2:9-10.
29. PS, 3:215.
30. See Carlyle, Anecdotes, 96-99 (cf, 133-34).
31. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 44-49, 136-40; and Karhl, Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 74.
32. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 33, 42-44.
33. Smollett referred to John Shebbeare’s The Occasional Critic, or the Decrees o f the Scotch Tribunal in
the Critical Review Rejudged (1757) in a letter to John Moore (January 2, 1758); see Letters, 65. For
possible contributors to the Critical Review and connections to the British Magazine see Basket,
Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 151. 209.
34. In Humphry Clinker, Melford writes how “the people at the other end of the island know as little
of Scotland as of Japan”; see HC, 207.
35. See Beasley’s article “The Scot in England,” and his emphasis on Smollett’s alienation in Tobias
Smollett: Novelist, 6-10, 17—18.
36. See Daiches, Paradox o f Scottish Culture, 14-15.
37. See Sher, “Commerce, Religion and the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Glasgow,” 314-15,
333-35, 350. Also see Landsman, “Presbyterians and Provincial Society,” 194-209.
38. Smollett visited Glasgow in 1753. 1760, and 1766; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 160-63, 228-30.
268-70.
39. See Smollett’s letter to Richard Smith (May 8, 1763), in Letters, 112.
40. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 116—17.
41. TFI, 1:4; also see Smollett’s letter to George Macaulay (October 30, 1759), in Xe«m. 83.
42. See RR, 232-56. and PR, 192-352. Like Smollett in 1763, Peregrine meets “fether Graham” at
Boulogne PR, 194 (cf. RR, 236—40).
43. Joliat writes how Smollett was able to “tefind” himself in the south of France; see Joliat, Smollett
et la France, 155-56. Smollett’s daughter died (age fifteen) in April 1763; he had suffered from
tuberculosis from the early 1750s; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 163—64, 246—47.
[ 138]
N O T E S
44. Comparing the “feroce et detestable Peregrine” with the “bonhomme Bramble,” Joliat writes how
“Les voyages aquirerent done une importance considerable pour ceux qui recherchent un ouvrage
de transition chez Smollett”; see Joliat, Smollett et la France, 156—57.
45. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) left England seriously ill in Junel754. Like Smollett, he wrote how he
departed amid “all manner of insults and jests on [his] misery”; he also insisted that his journal was
a “branch of history” (and an attempt at “feasible” social reform). See Fielding, Journal o f A Voyage
toLisbon, 7—11, 23.
46. Joliat, Smollett et la France, 247.
47. Smith traveled as tutor to the Duke of Buccleugh; see Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 195-218.
48. See Joliat, Smollett et la France, 147; and Felsenstein’s introduction to TFL, lii-lviii.
49. The term is from Joliat, Smollett et la France, 247. Also see Thomas Seccombe’s introduction to
Travels through France and Italy, xiii; Felsenstein’s introduction to TFI, xv-xxiw, and Karhl (1945),
117.
50. See Felsenstein’s introduction to TFI, xxxv-xl; Seccombe (1907), xii—xiii, xvii; and Martz, later
Career o f Tobias Smollett, 68-72. More recendy, Felsenstein has explored how Smollett seeks to
“authenticate his Britishness” (rather than Scottish identity) in the Travels, which ate seen as “es­
sentially an autobiographical work of travel”; see Felsenstein, “After the Peace of Paris,” 313, 319.
51. See Karhl, Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 117 (cf. 112).
52. See Smollett’s letter to John Moore (November 13, 1765), in Letters, 125-26.
53. See Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections Made in the Course o f a Journey through
France, Italy, and Germany (1789), l:vi-vii; qtd. in Karhl, Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 104.
54. See Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars 1660-1800, O —Sd.
55. See Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, 190-94; and Sena, “Smollett’s
Persona and the Melancholic Traveler,” 353-69.
56. See Rice, “Smollett’s Seventh Travel Letter and the Design of Formal Verse Satire,” 491-503.
57. See Rice, “Satiric Persona of Smollett’s TravelsJ 33—47; and Sekora, Luxury: the Concept in Western
Thought, Eden to Smollett, 135—54.
58. See Smollett’s letter Quly 11, 1763) to the first Earl of Hertford (1718-1794), concerning the
detention of his books by custom-house officers at Boulogne. The letter (and list of books) is
reprinted by Felsenstein in an appendix to his World’s Classics edition of Traveb through France
and Italy (Oxford, 1981; reprinted 1992), 417-18. The sixty-five volumes referred to here do not
include fifty-eight volumes of the Universal History, also taken by Smollett to France.
59. Smollett seems to have been responsible for Voltaire’s “Prose Works” (totaling twenty-four vol­
umes); see Joliat, “Smollett, Editor of Voltaire,” 429—36.
60. For Smollett’s involvement in The Modem Part o f the Universal History (1759—1765), see Martz,
“Tobias Smollett and the Universal History!’ 1-14.
61. SexM aiu, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett, 104-8.
62. Robert Adams Day su^ests that “much of the Atom must have been composed at Nice”; see his
introduction to Atom, xxxviii, 1-liii. Felsenstein considers how Smollett’s attitude to the Seven
[ 139 ]

NOTES
Years War and “the peace” may have informed his writing of the Travels; see Felsenstein, “After the
Peace of Paris,” 314-21.
63. Smollett writes to John Moore (November 13, 1765), “since my return I have writt a few articles
merely for amusement”; see Letters^ 125.
64. See Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smolletty 74-80.
65. TFJy 5:36. Sec DQ. 1: 106 (facing); and Felsensteins note to TFL 388n20. Smollett took his
translation and the original to France.
6 6 . 777, 12: 107. Sec V&tonf, 8 :1 6 2 ; and Felsensteins note to 7F7, 409 n. 19.
67. Karhl notes that Smollett received 100 guineas for his work on Drummond’s- Travels; see Karhl,
Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 87. It is just possible that Smollett m y have included this book
under the heading “Quelques autres Livres d’amusement en Altgloft, Comedies et brochures in
the list of books he took to France; see Smollett’s letter to the" Earl of Hertford Quly 11, 1763), in
Felsensteins appendix to his World’s Classics edition of the Travels, 418.
68. For Drummond’s meeting with the Scottish “brigadier Paterson, brother to Sir Hugh Paterson
of Bannockburn,” see Drummond, Travels through Different Cities, 33; Smollett is introduced to
“General Paterson” at Boulogne (3:15).
69. Drummond, Travels through Different Cities, 42.
70. TFI,2S:240.
71. Drummond was prompted to “consider, with great attention, one figure in a consular habit or robe,
which bore a great resemblance to the manner in which our countrymen wear the plaid”; see Drum­
mond, Travels through Different Cities, 44. In viewing the “busts of Caracalla, Smollett recalled the
work of James Macpherson (1736-1796) and the “language of the Highlanders” (28:233-34).
72. See Drummond, Travels through Different Cities, 20-21. Drummond’s brother, George (1687-
1766), was Lord Provost of Edinburgh and “Grand Master of the Free Masons of Scodand”; he
organized the publication of Alexander’s work through Smollett. See SmoUetts letter to George
Macaulay (May 27, 1753) and Knapp’s note, in Letters, 27.
73. See Smollett’s letter to .Alexander Reid (August 3, 1763), in Letters, 117-18.
74. 77=7,8:63.
75. For Smollett’s “Account of the Expedition against Carthagene, in the West Indies, besieged by the
English in the Year 1741,” see Comp. 5:313-42.
76. See Comp., l:i.
77. Locke wrote, “'/a ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little,
and removing some o f the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge"; Smollett wrote, “Our aim has
been to cleat away this kind of rubbish in such a manner as to leave the narrative less embarrassed,
but more succinct,” adding that he has departed from the plan followed by all other compilers
of voyages” and placed his material in “chronological order.” See Locke, Essay, 10 ( Epistle to the
Reader”), and Comp., l:ii-iii.
78. Smollett drew attention to the “certain heads or titles that punctuate his work; his geographical
arrangement (advancing from “Polar Regions’ to the equator) paralleled Lockes movement from
simple to complex ideas; see PS, l:v-viii.
[ 140]
N O T E S
79. For Smollett’s account of France and Italy in the I’resent State o f All Nations, see 6:73-232,
325-488.
80. See Day’s introduaion to Atom, xxxix.
81. The 1756 volumes were probably part of a set owned by the printer, Archibald Hamilton; they are
now in the library of the University of Oregon. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist,
39-40. The annotated set of the Monthly Review (which identifies contributors) was marked by
Ralph Griffiths (1720-1803); it is now in the Bodleian Library.
82. See Basker, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, appendix A, 220-78, and appendix C, 284-86.
'
83. A royal license was awarded to Smollett (not a bookseller), granting him the copyright for all the
contents of the British Magazine, see Basker, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 190.
84. See Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett, 23-64, 104-23, and Martz, “Tobias Smollett and the
Universal HistoryJ 1-14.
85. See Fitzpatrick, “Smollett Attributions,” 97-100, and Joliat, Smollett et la France, 429-36.
86. See Knapp, “Publication of Smollett’s Complete History," 302-8.
87. See Robert Adams Day’s introduction to Atom, liii-lvii.
88. See Bryon Gassman’s introduction in Poems, 76-78.
89. Comp., 5:316.
90. See HC, 4; and the title page to the first edition. .An ode by “Smollett” is reprinted in one of
Bramble’s letters (HC, 241-42).
91. FCF, 3-6.
92. For example, Smollett translated Latin inscriptions (16:146-47), his correspondence with Fizes
(11:89-104), and also minor terms such as “4 ir chasse" (Smollett adds “a-hunting” [20:175])
or “brasiere" (Smollett adds “or pan” [13:122]). He emended the sentence “It is vety dangerous
to meet those animals on horseback” to “. . . for a person on horseback to meet those animals”
(20:170-71), and added some details to his account of Pisa (including correcting the length of an
aquaduct from five to four miles [27:223]). A copy of Travels through France and Italy containing
Smollett’s manuscript revisions is now in the British Library; for a discussion of Smollett’s changes,
see Felsensteins introduction to TFI, xxvi—xxxiv.
93. Smollett altered his description of Bianchi as “a learned and judicious antiquarian” to the person
“who shews the gallery” (28:237-38).
94. Felsenstein thus produced a text “in the form intended by Smollett when he accomplished the task
of revising the work for a further edition”; see Felsenstein’s introduction to TFI, xxxiv.
95. Atom, 15-16; cf. FCF, 239.
96. For the problem of the Scots language, see Daiches, Paradox o f Scottish Culture, 19-22.
97. See Beasley, “Tobias Smollett: The Scot in England,” 17.
98. See James Basket’s discussion of “the dark side of the Scottish Enlightenment,” in “Scotticisms and
the Problem of Cultural Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” 81—95.
99. See CR 2 (1756): 394.
[ 141 ]
 I NOTES
NOTES
100. See Daiches, Paradox o f Scottish Culture, 45—53.
101. See Bowers, “Reconstituting the National Body,” 1-25.
102. See Ogee, “Channelling Emotions,” 27—42.
103. Robert DeMaria has suggested that the alphabetical arrangement of Johnsons Dictionary obscures
irs encyclopedic nature; see DeMaria, Johnson's Dictionary and the Language o f Learning, 32-37.
104. Johnson wrote of “the dreams p f a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer” in his prefece to
A Dictionary o f the English Language, para. 73.
105. See Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett, 5, 53-64.
106. Ibid., 88. ^ ' '
107. The rogue thus plays an important part in Bakhtins concept of a “heferoglot” novel; see Bakhtin,
“Discourse in the Novel,” 400—408. ,
108. For Smollett’s use of the fifth edition of Defoe’s Tour, see Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett,
104-23.
109. See Keymer, “Smollett’s Scodands,” 124—25.
110. For the concept of carnivalized literature, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 1—18.
111. See Dwyer, “A ‘Peculiar Blessing,’” 1—21.
Chapter 1: A P h y s i c a l Gentleman
1. See Smollett’s letter to John Moore (November 13, 1765), in Letters, 125-27.
2. See Smellie, Collection o f Cases and Observations, 3-4.
3. See M R 5 (1751): 465-66; Smollett treated the woman in 1748.
4. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 138.
5. Ibid., 29-35, 139.
6. See Fulton, “John Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 178-79.
7. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 28, 46-49; John Douglas died on June 17, 1743.
8. See Smollett’s letter to William Flunter (ca. 1750), in Letters, 16-17.
9. The third volume was tided A Collection o f Preternatural Cases and Observations in Midwifery
(1764). See Klukoft, “Smollett’s defence of Dr. Smellie in The Critical Review,” 31-41; and Knapp,
Tobias Smollett, 139. George Rousseau notes how Smollett “continued from 1750 to 1764 to edit
and revise all Smellie’s obstetrical works," and suggests the influence on The Adventures o f Peregrine
Pickle (1751); see Rousseau, “Pineapples, Pregnancy, Pica and Peregrine Pickle” 176-99.
10. Smellie, Treatise, i.
11. C R l (1756):41.
12. Smellie, Treatise, bcvii; for Smollett’s reviews of the Philosophical Transactions, see the third section
of this chapter.
13. Smellie, Treatise, hcviii; see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 124-25.
[ 142]
14. See Smellie, Treatise, Ixxii, and Collection o f Cases and Observations, viii. In a review of Theory and
Practice o f Chirugical Pharmacy (1760) by Robert Dossie, Smollett asks his readers “whether it be
equitable to trespass on the property of an eminent surgeon, who is said to have given a high price
for the secret, by publishing the medicine: certain we are, that in a moral sense, public benefit
ought to take place of private interest”; see CR 10 (1760): 450 (cf CR 8 [1759]: 449).
15. Smellie’s Treatise began by emphasizing its structure (i-ii). For Smollett’s praise of Pringles plan,
"'see MR, 7 (1752): 52-56. Smollett reviewed James Grieves translation of C f Medicine by A. Cor­
nelius Celsus in the first issue of the Critical Review; see CR 1 (1756): 10-23.
16. Anderson, Life o f Tobias Smollett, 11.
17. Marie Mulvey Roberts and Roy Porter have described how, in the eighteenth century, “medical writ­
ers did not commonly disown the literary text, nor vice vetsd; see the introduction to Literature and
Medicine during the Eighteenth Century, 1.
18. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 142-44; and Rousseau, “Towards Maturity and Mental Collapse,”
1-9.
19. See Fulton, “John Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 180; and
Garlyle, Anecdotes, 175-76.
20. Armstrong, however, “knew that Smollett loved and respected him, and soon recovered his good
humour”; see Carlyle, Anecdotes, 176.
21. Basker notes that Smollett “devoted more atrenrion to scientific and medical publications than
any other kind of literature in 1756”; see Basker, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 18, 146.
22. For Smollett’s review o f A Treatise on the A rt o f Midwifery (1760) by Elizabeth Nihell, see CR 9
(1760): 187-97.
23. See CR3 (1757): 536-47; and CRA (1757): 35-45.
24. See CR 6 (1758): 312-17. Also see Roy Porter, “William Hunter: A Surgeon and a Gendeman,”
24-25; and Knapp, Tobias Smollettt 202—5-
25. CR A (1757): 43. The critic was the Edinburgh physician, James Grainger (1721-1766); see
Knapp, Tobias Smollett^ 203.
26. For example, Smollett observed Monro’s (wrong) interpretation of Hunter’s claim that he was
“lately in town”; see CR 6 (1758): 313-14.
27. Cf?4 (1757): 523.
28. For example, Smollett noted how “Dr. Monro publishes his treatise at Berlin, without mentioning
Dr. Hunter’s name, though he attended his lectures with Dr. Reimarus [who cires Hunter in his
published thesis]”: see CR A (1757): 227 and CR 6 (1758): 312-13.
29. For anorher example, see Smollett’s account of Remarks on Dr. Battle's Treatise on Madness (1758)
by John Monro (1715-1791). which refers to Monro’s interpretation of Battie’s words and Smol­
lett’s earlier review, in CR 5 (1758): 224—28; cf CR A (1757): 509—16.
30. Guerrini, “‘A Club of Litde Villains’: Rhetoric. Professional Identity and Medical Pamphlet Wars,”
230.
31. Smollett explained how “they serve only to create suspicion, that an author is cloaking ignorance
with affectation”: see CR 10 (1760): 111—18.
[ 143]

N O T E ^
32. a ? 13 (1762): 418.
33. a ? 13 (1762): 427.
34. Smollen recounted how. in the original review o f Alexander Monro’s De Vmis LymphaticU Valvu-
SU ( 757). the reviewers "could not help expressing their surprize, that he should claim that as
a discovery which had been many years publicly taught by Dr. Hunter”; see CR 13 (1762): 419.
35. Q? 15 (1763): 3 9 9 ^ 0 0 .
36. See the review of the second vdlume o f Medical Observatiom, in CR 13 (1762): 122-24.
37. For a dicussion of the importance of a physician’s "honour.” see Harley, “Honour and Property,'''
138-60. _^
38. Adriim Wilson suggests that court Whigs were pro-inoculation and that th6?orceps were, at least
mmally. aTory principle; see Wilson. “The Politics ofMedical Improvement in Early Hanoverian
London, 4-39.
39. Joseph Black was professor of medicine at Glasgow from 1756 to 1766. His letters to Hunter also
^ William Cullen (professor at Glasgow from 1751 until 1755); see CR
13 (1762): 421-23.
40. See Rousseau, “Towards Maturity and Mental Collapse,” 2.
41. See Hamilton, “The Scottish Enlightenment and Clinical Medicine,” 106.
42. In a rare ^o ciatio n of names. Henry Fulton has listed Smollett along with Smellie. the Hunter
brokers, W d h ^ Cullen. Adam Smith, and Joseph Black as part of a “brain-drain” from Glasgow;
see Fulton. John Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 183.
43. See Hamilton, “The Scottish Enlightenment and Clinical Medicine,” 107- 9.
appended to the first edition of A Trealise on the Theory and Practice
o f Midwifery (1751); also sec M R 5 (1751): 466.
45. See Fulton, “Smollett’s Apprenticeship in Glasgow, 1736-1739.” 175-86; and Fulton, “John
Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 178-79.
46. See Rousseau, “Smollett and Paracelsian Medicine,” 158-59.
47. See Hamilton, “The Scottish Enlightenment and Clinical Medicine.” 107.
48. Smellie, Treatise, Iv-lvii.
49. a ? 20 (1765): 149-50.
50. Ibid., 187.
51. Ibid., 184.
52. Smollett’s relationship to the Royal Society is discussed in the third section of this chapter.
53. See Cfi 20 (1765): 185-87.
54. In a review of the second volume of Medical Observations, SmoUett wrote. “Nothing, in our opin­
ion, rends more to the improvement o f medical knowledge than this method of coUeaing extraor-
chnary cases. It is the best confirmation that a student can have of the doctrines he has learned, and
the surest, next to his own experience, of the theories he has imbibed”; see CR 13 (1762): 121.
[ 144]
\
NOTES
55. Notably, Smollett contributed the articles on Mcmis and Wilson “for amusement” to the Critical
Review after his return from France and before the publication of Travels through France and Italy,
see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic andfoum alist, 228.
56. CR 4 (1757): 35.
57. rP7, 11:89.
58. Jb id ., 30:255-56.
59. For the suggestion of Moore, see Kahrl. Tobias Smollett: Traveler Novelist, 105; however, this letter
follows one to “Mrs. M— ” (7:52), probably Catharine Macaulay (see Felsenstein’s note in TFT,
393nl).
60. T F I,S M .
ks. 61. Ibid., 11:90-103.
62. Cf. Smollett’s letter to Richard Smith of New Jersey (May 8, 1763). in Letters, 112-14; TFT, 11:93.
63. TFT, 1:2.
64. See Rousseau, “Medicine and the Muses,” 45-46; for Rousseau, Apollo (as healer and poet) rep­
resents a (now lost) “built-in coherence of art and health,” 33.
6 65. 7y/. 5:41.
66; Ibid., 26:94.
67. Ibid., 28:239-40.
% 68. For such an approach, see Sena, “Smollett’s Persona and the Melancholic Traveler,” 369.
69. For Sterne’s well-known comments on Smollett (as the traveling Smelfungus), see Sterne. A Senti­
mentalJourney through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick (1768), 29. Ian Campbell Ross suggests that
Sterne was more of a “Smelfungus” than Smollett; see Ross, “When Smelfungus Met Yorick,” 78.
I
70. See Johnson’s letters to Sarah Johnson Qanuary 13. 1759), Elizabeth Lawrence (August 26. 1782),
and Hester Thrale (December 1, 1783), in Redford, ed.. The Letters o f SamuelJohnson, 1: 174-75,
4:70, 255. Also see Mulhallen and Wright, “Samuel Johnson: Amateur Physician,” 217-22.
71. See Porter, “The Hunger of Imagination,” 63-88. For compelling accounts of the illnesses of
Johnson and his friends, see McEnroe and Simon, eds.. The Tryanny ofTreatment: SamuelJohnson,
his friends and Georgian Medicine (2003). For an account of Smollett’s “nagging depression,” see
Rousseau, “Towards Maturity and Mental Collapse,” 6-8.
72. For an account of some of the physical causes of melancholy (and Smollett’s attempt to address
them), see Sena, “Smollett’s Persona and the Melancholic Traveler,” 361-66.
73. Johnson had probably read George Cheyne’s The English Malady (1733); see Porter, “The Hunger
of Imagination,” 81. Also see Johnson’s definition of “melancholy” in his Dictionary.
lA . Porter describes how Johnsons introspection took place "within a paradigm of insanity sharp-
focused by Locke’s Essrry Concerning Human Understanding ■,see Porter, “The Hunger of Imagina­
tion,” 76.
75. TFI, 11:93.
[ 145]
N O T p S
NOTES

76. For some discussion of the work of John Hunter and the so-called Glaswegian argument, see 101. Essay, 5.
Bruce, Radical Doctor Smollett, 22—29. 102. T F I,n -2 7 6 .
77. See Wright, “Metaphysics and Physiology; Mind, Body, and the Animal Economy in Eighteenth- 103. See Hamlin, “Chemistry, Medicine, and the Legitimization of English Spas, 1740-1840,” 68.
Century Scotland,” 251-301.
104. For an account of the Roman attitudes toward the water at Bath, see Jackson, “Waters and Spas
78. PS, 2:5. in the Classical World,” 9
79. PS, 384. 105. 38- See BCnapp, Tobias Smollett, 146-49, and Harley, “Honour and Property,” 48-51.
80. For an account of this debate, see Rousseau, “Matt Bramble and the Sulphur Controversy in the
106. Essay, 39.
XVIIIth Century,” 577-89. , -
107. CR 1 (1756): 341. An Historical Account o f the Rise, Progress, and Management, o f the
81. Anstey, The New Bath Guide, 39—40. General Hospital, or Infirmary, in the City o f Bath (1758) by William Baylies, Smollett wished
82. TFT, 1:2. -' ' that “Dr. Baylies, in mentioning Mr. Cleland, surgeon had, in some measure explained the very
83. Anderson, Life o f Tobias Smollett, 11. ' singular case of that gentleman” who evidently suffered “the most illegal despotism, of the most
A rrant iniquity and cruel oppression”; see CR 6 (1758): 517 (cf. CR 8 (1759): 338).
84. Essay, 3—4.
108. rp7, 40:336.
85. Ibid., 22-23.
109. Essay, 40.
86. Ibid., 24-29.
110. TFI, 24:200.
87. See Smollett’s review o f An Essay on Waters (1756) by Charles Lucas in CR 1 (1756): 321-45.
Smollett criticizes Lucas at length for his inaccurate observations. 111. Ibid., 30:253.
88. For a discussion of the quarrel between the chemists (Paracelsians) and the “humourists” (Galen- 112. For Smollett’s involvement in the Toun’s Hospital (along with John Gordon and William Stir­
ists), see Rousseau, “Smollett and Paracelsian Medicine,” 586-87. ling), see Fulton (1980), 182; also see Smollett’s description of the “infirmary” in PS 2, 106.

89. Cff4(1757): 161. 113. Essay, 7.

90. Smollett commented, “We think it unlucky, that our author should be so unacquainted with the 114. Essay, 8.
waters of Great Britain, and particularly with those of greatest note, and nearest the capital”: see 115. TFI, 3:13. At the end of this paragraph, Smollett again referred to Hippocrates and Celsus.
CR 4 (1757); 254-56. For Smollett’s involvement with Rutty, see his letter to William Strahan
116. Ibid., 11:104. In Paris, however, Smollett had noted, “They have even adopted our practice of the
(October 24, [1757]) in Letters, 62; also see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 207-8.
cold bath, which is taken very conveniendy, in wooden houses, erected on the side of the river,
91. See CR 2 (1756): 109. Also see Jery’s comments on the physican Diederick Linden (fl. 1748- the water of which is let in and out occasionally, by cocks fixed in the sides of the bath (6:47).
1769) in HC, 18-21.
117. TFI, 23:192-93. In Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693), John Locke similarly uses
92. a ? 6 (1758): 62-63. “Examples” to reason mothers out of their “fears” of cold bathing. He cites Seneca and Horace
93. a ? 4 (1757); 256. (rather than his own practice) but does note that “there are at this Day Ladies in the Highlands
94. Ibid., 253. of Scodand, who use this Discipline to their Children in the midst of Winter: and find that cold
Water does them no harm, even when there is Ice in it”; see Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning
95. PS, 6:132.
Education, in Axtell, ed.. The Educational Writing o f John Locke, 119-21. Locke had a medical
96. TP/, 40:36-37. background and, like Smollett’s writing of the Traveb, composed Some Thoughts concerning Edu­
97. Ibid., 40:337. cation through letters in self-imposed “exile”; see Axtell’s introduction, 3-4.
98. Ibid. 118. TFI, 11:94.
99. Ibid., 24:200. 119. For an account of Boerhaave’s view of health and sickness as “questions of bodily structures and
100. Smollett was in Bath in August 1757, possibly observing Lucas and Rutty firsthand; see Knapp, pressures,” see Roy Porter’s chapter on “The Eighteenth Century” in The Western Medical Tradi­
Tobias Smollett, 202, and Rousseau, “Smollett and Paracelsian Medicine,” 582. Smollett’s letter tion, 375. Daniel Musher has written how Smollett was concerned with “the tone of the body
to William Hunter reveals that he was drinking the waters in October 1762 but there is no real tissues and the balance amongst body fluids”; see Musher, “The Medical Views of Dr. Tobias
evidence that Smollett had tried them before the publication of his Essay, see Letters, 109-10. Smollett. 1721-1771,” 457.

[ 146] [ 147]
N O T i S NOTES

120. See CR 8 (1759): 21. Pitcairne applied Newtons theory of hydraulics to the human body; for his
influence in Montpellier, see Martin, “Sauvages’s Nosology,” 113, 128-32.
121. Essay, 9 - 1 0 .
122. 0 ? 4 (1757): 511.
123. Moore includes cold water among the “particular impressions which occasion an almost universal
sympathy all over the body”; see Moore, Medical Sketches, 225.
145. Ibid., 13:126.
146. HC, 324.
147. See Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 270. For a discussion of Sterne’s interests in medical literature, see
Hawley, “The Anatomy of Tristram Shandy,” 84-100.
148. See LiC, 33-75. Robert Uphaus has written that water is “the most important metaphor in the
-novel”; see Uphaus, “Sentiment and Spleen; Travels with Sterne and Smollett,” 418-19.

124. For Haller, the “irritability of muscle fibres was their property of contractivity in reaction to 149. See .Charles Lucas, Essay on Waters (London, 1756), 1:126; quoted by Hamlin, “Chemistry,
stimuli”: the heart was therefore “the most ‘irritable’ organ in the body.” See Porter, “The Eigh­ Medicine, and the Legitimization of English Spas,” 69. Curiously, Locke, who separated “the
teenth Century,” 394. Clay Cottage” from “the Inside” at the beginning of Some Thoughts concerning Education, de­
scribed “the Minds of Children as easily turned this or that way, as Water it self”; see Locke, Some
125. Essay,20-2\.
Thoughts concerning Education, 115.
126. See LG, 91-92; and D Q 1:14-15. Also see Ferdinand’s experiences in the cottage, and Melvile at
150. SeeCff 11 (1761): 25.
the grave of Monimia, in FCF, 85—89, 312-14.
151. For the attitude toward medical degrees from Aberdeen, see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 145—46.
1 2 7 . r / T , 3 5 :3 0 8 .
152. See Roy Porter, “Medicine and Enlightenment,” 1898; and Porter, “The Eighteenth Century,”
128. Ibid., 34:301.
375.
129. Essay, 11-12. Smollett also noted the “effects o f fency” in the king’s “power of healing scrophulous
153. For a description of “Doctor Slop,” see Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 84—88. Also see Cash, “The Birth
distempers.”
of Tristram Shandy; Sterne and Dr. Burton,” 198; and Porter, “William Hunter: A Surgeon and
13 0 . m , 3 4 :3 0 2 . a Gendeman,” 10—11.
131. Ibid., 293. 154. See Hawley, “The Anatomy of Tristram Shandy,” 94-95.
132. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter (February 24, 1767), in Letters, 132—33. 155. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 252-53. Smollett, for example, not only shared Walter Shandy’s
1 3 3 . TAZ, 3 4 :3 0 1 .
interests in midwifery but Toby’s obsession with fortifications; see Smollett at Boulogne (3:17),
Nice (13:120; 17:150), St. Remo (25:208), Spetia (26:219), Rome (30:260-61), Coni (38:323),
134. CZ? 6 (1758): 62.
Abe (39:326), and Toulon (39:329-30).
135. See CR 13 (1762): 508-9. Hydrophobia was a symptom of the bite of a mad dog for which
156. For an account of James Graham, see Roberts, “‘A Physic against Death’; Eternal Life and the
Smollett, contrary to Laynard, recommended “plunging in the sea”; cf. Essay, 18-19.
Enlightenment—Gender and Gerontology,” 155. George Rousseau has described the popularity
136. CR 13 (1762): 507. of a “turn in the garden”; see Rousseau, “Medicine and the Muses,” 40—41.
137. 77=7,30:253. 157. See the thirty-first book of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, quoted by Jackson, “Waters and
138. Ibid., 34:294-95. Spas in the Classical World,” 1.

139. Ibid., 13:124. 158. TFI,i-.\5.

140. Ibid., 27:226. Smollett described the Pont du Garde near Nismes (10:80) and the aquaducts at
Montpellier (12:105), Frejus (12:111), Cemenelion (16:144), Pisa (27:223), Rome (32:278—79),
and Spoletto (34:296). He took note of the river Var (12:115), the “pastoral streams of the
famous river Clitumnus” (34:296), “a beautiful piece of water” which was Thrasimene (34:297-
98), the Sorgue, Drome, and Isere, which foil into the Rhone (40:338—39), and the “charming
pastoral Soame” (41:344).
141. 77=7,30:253.
1 4 2 . Ib id ., 3 1 :2 6 4 .
143. Ibid., 34:295.
14 4 . I b id ., 2 4 :2 0 0 .
159. Ibid.
160. C7?20 (1765): 310.
161. TFI, 11:101.
162. Ibid., 12:116.
163. Ibid., 11:90. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter (February 6, 1764), in Letters, 121.
164. For a discussion of this print, and Hogarth’s involvement in contemporary medicine, see Wagner,
“The Satire on Doctors in Hogarth’s Graphic Works,” 200-225.
165. 77=7, 11:90. For Smollett’s interest in Patois, see the third section of the second chapter of this
book. Wagner notes Hogarth’s use of the “harlequin’s chequered dress” in portraying doaors and
clergymen; see Wagner “The Satire on Doctors in Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 203, 216.

[ 148] [ 149]
N O T E S NOTES

166. TFI, 34:300. Wagner describes The Company o f Undertaken: “They hold their gold-headed canes 191. CR 10 (1760): 20.
to their chins and noses, which suggests deep thought (ridiculed by the scatological detail of the 192. See CR 14 (1762): 322.
urinal) as well as the original purpose of the cane head that contained pomander or disinfectant
193. See CR 4 (1757): 137, I4l ; and CR 5 (1758): 485.
(for example, vinaigrette)”; see Wagner, “The Satire on Doctors in Hogarth’s Graphic Works,”
215. 194. CR 5 (1758): 491.

167. PP, 372-73. 195. TH, 22:184.

168. Ferdinand exposes the rivalijies at Tunbridge and the “sons of Paean” in London; see FCF, 196. -M artz, Loiter Career o f Tobias Smollett, 70.
239-63, and LG, 116-19. Also see Hogarth’s Southwark Fair (1734) and The Reward o f Cruelty 197. TF I 13:121.
(1751); and Wagner, “The Satire on Doctors in Hogarth’s Graphic Works,” 201, 212. _ '
198. Ibid., 22:187-90.
169. TFI, 12:108. ^ ' 199. Ibid., 16:144.
170. See Anderson, Life o f Tobias Smollett, 11; and Moore, “Life of Smplleft,” 151. 200. Ibid., 6:21.
171. See Reed, A Sop in the Pan fo r a Physical Critick, 7. 201. CR 1 (1756): 530.
172. m 41:345. 202. CR4 (1757): 215.
173. See Swift, Travels, 4. Usually published today as Gulliver’s Travel, Swift’s original title was Travels 203. CR 20 (1765): 259.
into Several Remote Nations o f the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon, and
204. m , 24:194.
then a Captain o f several Ships (1726; 1735).
205. CR 9 (1760): 475.
174. After his last voyage, Gulliver remains separated from society. He intends to “behold [his] Figure
often in a Glass, and thus if possible habituate [him] self by Time to tolerate the Sight of a human 206. TFI, 24:196. See Montesquieu, Spirit o f the Laws, 231—34 [14.2], 240—41 [14.11]. Montesquieu
Creature”; see Swift, Travels, 304. published De I'esprit des lois in 1748.

175. For a discussion of this case and the publications it inspired, see Rousseau, “Pineapples, Preg­ 207. TR/, 37:315.
nancy, Pica and Peregrine PickleT 180—83. The pamphlet may have been written by John Ar- 208. See Smollett’s letter to John Moore (November 13, 1765), in lotten, 125-27.
buthnot (1667-1735). 209. For a brief account of this, see Potter, “Medical Science and Human Science in the Enlighten­
176. See Porter, “William Hunter: A Surgeon and a Gentleman,” 11-12, 30. ment,” 68.

177. Cff 8 (1759): 31-32. 210. TR/, 29:168.

178. CR 1 (1756): 528. 211. See Simmons, Account o f the Life and W riting o f the Late William Hunter, 20.

179. a ? 9 (1760): 470. 212. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter (August 11, 1763), in Letten, 119.

180. CR 14 (1762): 322. 213. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter (February 6, 1764), in Letten, 120-23.

181. Ibid., 336 (c£ CR 8 [1759]: 44; CR 10 [1760]: 26). 214. See Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett, 68-69.
215. See Simmons, Account o f the Life and Writings o f the Late William Hunter, 9.
182. CR 8 (1759): 32.
216. TF I 55-.2S8.
183. CR 20 (1765): 263.
217. For a discussion of Hunter’s involvement in the Royal Academy and his production of ecotch&, see
184. See CR4 (1757): 215.
Kemp, £>r. William Hunter at the RoyalAcademy o f Arts, 15-17.
185. See Ibid., 137 (c£ CR 2 [1756]: 32-33; CR 6 [1758]: 34).
218. T F IlA -.m .
186. CR 14 (1762): 329.
219. Ibid., 3:18-19, 18:162.
187. See CR9 (1760): 471.
220. Ibid., 26:214.
188. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 147.
221. Ibid., 30:260.
189. CR 11 (1761): 449. 222. See Rolfe, “William and John Hunter,” 299-300. By 1764, Hunter had over £20,000 in ftmds;
190. CR 9 (1760): 188.' see Simmons, Account o f the Life and Writings o f the Late William Hunter, 24.

[ 150] [ 151 ]

V-
 I NOTES
NOTES

245. Moore also compared the inhabitants of Geneva with the “presbytetians of Scotland” during the
223. CS 11 (1761): 457.
civil wars (but added that there was not “a city in Europe where the minds of the people are less
224. Jane Oppenhcimer has observed how Smollett’s “early career was in many respects curiously
under the influence of superstition or fanatical enthusiasm than at Geneva”); see Moore, A View
parallel to that of William Hunter”; see Oppenheimer. “A Note on William Hunter and Tobias
o f Society and Manners in Fratue, Switzerland, and Germany, 1:158, I6 l.
Smollett,” 481. Also see Porter, “William Hunter: A Surgeon and a Gentleman,” 33; and Knapp,
246. Moore, A View o f Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 2:4—5.
Tobias Smolletty 46-48.
225. See Guerrini, “‘A Club of,Tittle Villains’: Rhetoric, Professional Identity and Medical Pamphlet 247. T F L U a ii .

Wars,” 235-38. 248. Ibid., 10:86.

226. See Porter, “Medical Science and Human Science,” 56. - "* 249. Moore, A View o f Society and Manners in France, Switscerland, and Germany, 2:5.
227. See Rolfe, “William and John Hunter,” 297, and Kemp, Dr. WiUiam H u n t^A t th i RoyalAcademy 250. TFI, 10:86.
o f Arts, \4. 251. London Magazine‘iS (1766): 243.
228. See Martin, “Sauvages’s Nosology,” 116-27. '* 252. 7y/, 29:251-52.
229. For a brief discussion of the unitary theory of John Brown (1735-1788), see Porter, Medical
253. See CR 21 (1766): 322, and London Magazine, 35 (1766): 243. Also see Monthly Review 34
Science and Human Science,” 59. (1766): 420.
230. For this quotation from Pringle’s work, see M R 7 (1753): 53. 254. Hume, “O f National Charaaers,” 197.
231. 7H , 9:72. 255. a ? 21 (1766): 323, 406.
232. Ibid., 24:194. 256. See John Moore, A View o f the Society and Manners in Italy: with anecdotes relating to some Emi­
233. Smollett thus followed the Hippocratic tradition of “airs, waters, and places. See Porter, Medi­ nent Characters 1:459-60.
cal Science and Human Science,” 65-66; and Porter, “The Eighteenth Century,” 417-20.
257. Moore, A View o f Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 1:31, 47.
234. Smellie, Treatise, 447.
258. TA/, 7:56.
235. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter Qune 14, 1763) in Letters, 114.
259. Ibid., 27:231.
236. M.ooie, Medical Sketches, 2—i .
260. Ibid., 7:56-57.
237. For example, Moore observed that there was “a kind of quackery which some people seem to
261. Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and Manners o f the French Nation, 104-5.
invite; they cannot be fully convinced of their physician’s skill and attention without it”; he also
described the quackery of a valetudinarian as if it was part of his illness. See Moore, Medical 262. CA 22 (1766): 433.
Sketches, 26, 31-32. 263. See Hume, “O f National Characters,” 197.
238. In 1772, Moore retired from his medical practice in order to travel as a tutor with the Duke of 264. Moore, “Life o f Smollett,” 94.
Hamdton; see Fulton, “John Moore, the Medical Profession and the Glasgow Enlightenment,”
265. Moore, A View o f the Society attd Manners in Italy, 2:495-96; see Genesis 16:12.
182.
266. See Philip Thicknesse, Useful Hints to those who make the Tour o f France (1768), 5-6.
239. See The London Magazine, or Gentlemans Monthly Intelligencer, 35 (1766): 243-29; and the title
page for July 1766. Extraas from Smollett’s Travels appeared from May to September 1766. Also 267. For an account of the secularization of biblical typology, see Korshin, Typolopes in England
see The Royal Magazine: or. Gentleman’s Monthly Companion, 14 (1766): 233-38. 1650-1820, 34-35,111-14.

240. See Philip Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and Manners o f the French Nation in a Series of 268. TA/, 7:59.
Letters, in which that Nation is vindicatedfrom the Misrepresentations o f some Late Writers (1766), 269. Ibid., 7:60.
91. 270. Ibid.
241. John Moore, A View o f Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 2:21.
271. Paul Korshin has suggested that Smollett regarded “the central story of Ferdinand Count Fathom
242. Ibid., 1:151,436. as a typological feble” (in which Renaldo “raises” the repentant Ferdinand “to life”); he also
243. TH, 20:170-74. includes the “misanthropic Sir Matthew Bramble” in a list of characters with predictive aspects.
See Korshin, Typologies in England 1650-1820, 251-55, 114.
244. Ibid., 39:330-31.

[ 153]
[ 152]
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NOTES

293. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have suggested that “orientational metaphors strucmre out
272. For a discussion of Hogarth’s use of stereotypes, see Wagner. “The Satire on Doctors in Hogarth’s concepts of “happiness,” “health,” and “goodness” (all of which are perceived as up ); see Lackoff
Graphic Works,” 218. and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 14-21.
273. See MandeviUe’s prefece to Th, FabU o f the Bees: or Private Vices. Publick Benefits (1732). 13-16.
294. TFI, 1:2.
274. Mandeville, The FabU o f the Bees, 2?)\. 295. Ibid.. 7:61.
275. For an account of the reception of Travek through France and Italy, see Knapp, Tobias S ^llett, 296. Jb id ., 11:93.
262-64. 272-73. Also sde some of the mote negative remarks in M R 34 (1766): 422-26.
297. Ibid., 6:49.
276. See Hume. “O f National Characters,” 198. -
298. Ibid., 7:57.
277. TFI, 4:25. 299. Ibid.
278. Moore, A View o f Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 1:31-35. 300. Ibid., 7:61.
279. Hume, “O f National Characters,” 200. 301. Ibid., 7:59.
280. Hume. “O f National Characters,” 213. 302. Ibid., 7:58-59.
281 Bramble, for example, comments. “I have perceived that my opinion of mankind, like mercury in 303. Ibid., 34:295.
the thermometer, rises and falls according to the variations of the weather”; see HC, 74. 304. According to George Lakoff, categories that ate “characterized solely by the properties shared by
their members” should not have “best examples” (a rationalist view of categorization); the feet
282. m 1 9 :1 6 5 - 6 7 .
that categories do have best examples is taken as evidence of embodied concepts. See Lakoff,
283. Ibid.. 39:329.
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, xi-xiv, 7.
284 Smollett also observed the difference in size between those who drink wine “for their ordinary
drink” and those who “use milk. beer, or even water” (39: 329); also see his account of the porters 305. TFI,7-.56-57.
306. See Georges-Louis Lederc, comte de Buffon, “Premier Discourse: De la maniere d”dtudier et
at Constantinople (19:167-68).
de ttaiter d’Histoire Naturelle,” in Histoire natureUe, generaU etparticulUre, vol. 1 (Paris, 1749),
285. Hume, "O f National Characters,” 202. 32-33. For a discussion of Buffbn’s thought (and a translation of this passage), see Sloan, “The
286. Anderson. Life o f Tobias SmolUtt, 29. See Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and Manners of Gaze of Natural History,” 126-41.
the French Nation, 89, and Moore, “Life of Smollett.” 128, 132.
307. For a discussion of the ideas of Carolus Linnaeus, see Sloan, “The Gaze of Natural History,
287. See Douglas, Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body, xxxiii, 27—42. 118-23.
288. See Hume, “O f National Characters.” 204. 308. TH, 22:184.
289. For Hume’s discussion of the idea of a vacuum, see Hume. Treatise, I.ii.v, pp. 53-65: also see 309. rF7, 22:184-89, 23:190-91.
Barfoot, “Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century,” 172-80. 310. In some ways, Buffon’s categories are structured by what Lakoff might call “interactional proper­
290 See Thomas Reid’s leaures on the fine arts, delivered in 1774 and first published as Thomas Reid's ties”: for example, if something fells into the class of “horse,” you ride it. See Lakoff, Women,
Lectures on the Fine Arts. ed. Peter Kivy (The Hague. 1973). 34. Reid’s lectures are discussed m Fire, and Dangerous Things, 48-51.
the second chapter of this book. 311. See Sloan, “The Gaze of Natural History,” 131-38.
291. George Lakoffhas explained that “Thought is embodied, that is. the structures used to put to­
312. m , 17:155.
gether our conceptual systems grow out of bodily experience and make sense in terms of it ; see
Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, xiv.
292. See Locke. Essay. I.i.2, p. 43. Nevertheless, Locke described the “understanding’ as ^ “eye” ' Chapter 2: A Good Cri ti c
(I i 1 p 43) and as something that “sets Man above the test of sensible beings”; he also used
embodied metaphors, such as “white paper” (Il.i.l. p. 104) and an “empty Cabinet” (I.iU5. p. 1. See Hume, “O f the Standard o f Taste,” in Essays, 234-36; and DQ, 2:72-73.
55; cf. II.xii.l7, pp. 162-63), to refer to the mind. In Some Thoughts concerning Educatwn, he 2. Hume, “O f the Standard o f Taste,” in Essays, 238.
us« the metaphor of rivers arriving “at very remote and distant places”: see Locke, Some Thoughts
3. Reid, Lectures, 21-22.
concerning Education, 114—45.

[ 155 ]
[ 154]

NOTES
4 Peter Kivy suggested that “in vety general terms, both Reid and Kant see the realm of aesthet­
ics as mediating between two major divisions of inteUectuid activity, identified with neither but
linking both”; see Kivy’s introduction to his edition of Reids Lectures, 16.
5. This definition derives from the Greek term for art (xEyvn); see Kristeller, “The Modern System
of the Arts,” 498-99.
6. See Sher, “Commerce, Religion and the Enlightenment,” 342-45.
7. Ibid., 333. For an account of Fouliss “academy,” see Duncan, ed.. NcHces and Documents, 81-90.
8. Richard Sher has written that Foulis took “the aesthetic dimension of his masters [Hutchesons]
teaching” vety seriously; see Sher, “Commerce, Religion and the Enlightenment^ 333.
9. See The Scots Magazine 21 (1759): 47; and Sher, “Commerce, Rejigion and the Enlightenment,
337. The sale catalog is reprinted in Duncan, ed.. Notices andsDocuments, 93-115.
10. For an account of the support of the tobacco merchants John Glassford. John Coats Campbell,
and Archibald Ingram, see Devine. "The Golden Age of tobacco,” 163. Also see Duncan, ed..
Notices and Documents, 83-84.
11. See Sher. “Commerce, Religion and the Enlightenment,” 316, 335-37.
12 Richard Sher has contrasted the interests of the Glasgow Literary Society in belles lettres and the
fine arts with the interests of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society in science; see Sher, “Commerce.
Religion and the Enlightenment,” 336. 338.
13. Kathleen Holcomb has described Reid’s “habit of developing ideas for publication” in the Aber­
deen Philosophical Society and the Glasgow Literary Society, see Holcomb, “Thomas Reid and the
Glasgow Literary Society.” 97-99. Adam Smith similarly developed ideas in the Glasgow literary
Society; see Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 85-86, 94.
14. See Moor. “On the Influence of Philosophy upon the Fine Arts,” in Essays, 15. 25.
15. This was attitude of Socrates with regard to “painting”; see Moor, Essays, 9.
16. Moor. Essc^s, 2-3.
17. Reid’s first book. An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles o f Common Sense (1764),
developed a theory of perception by considering each of the five senses in turn.
18 Foulis probably introduced Smollett to James Douglas and may have been portrayed as Strap in
Roderick Random-, see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 28. 102. Smollett dearly knew Foulis’s friend and
fellow printer Robert Urie; see his letters to John Moore (March 1, 1754, and September 28,
1758). in Letters, 32, 72-74.
19. C/J 3 (1757): 550-52.
20. The edition of the Iliad was not the source of SmoUett’s information about collations of Plato’s
work. For a reference to “a large packet of collations from Plato from the Vatican,” see a letter from
Foulis to a friend in 1754, reprinted in Duncan, ed.. Notices and Documents, 20-22.
21. See Spectot. EnglUh Literary Periodicals and the Climate o f Opinion during the Seven Years'Wit, 317:
and Basket. Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 17-28.
22. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 55.
23. a ? 3 (175A - 550-51.
[ 156]
N O T E S
24. For an account of the Edinburgh Review, see the introduction to Adam Smith’s contributions to
-'’the journal, in Smith, Essays, 229—31.
25. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 160-62; and Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 143-44.
26. Basket has speculated that William Robertson, David Hume, Adam Smith, John Home, Adam
Ferguson, Hugh Blair (1718-1800), Robert Wallace (1697-1771), and William Wilkie (1721-
1772) may have contributed to the Critical Review through Carlyle; see Basket, Tobias Smollett:
Ch Hc andJournalist, 151.
27. “A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review' (1756) is reprinted in Smith, Essays, 242-54.
28. Sec Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 18-19, 38, 54.
29. Smith wrote how the E dinburg Review, by giving its readers "an account of such books as are
worthy of their regard,” rather than “insignificant literary news of the times,” will “thus be able to
give all proper encouragement to such efforts as this country is likely to make towards acquiring
a reputation in the learned world”; see Smith, “A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review,"
in Essays, 242-43.
30. The review of Johnsons dictionary is reprinted in Smith, Essays, 232-41. Approving generally of
the Dictionary, Smith noted that the “defects consist chiefly in the plan, which appears to us not
to be suflSendy grammatical” (232). In his “Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review' Smith
suggested that it is “the peculiar talent of the French nation, to arrange every subject in that natural
and simple order, which carries the attention, without any effort, along with it” (245) and praised
the Encyclopedic (which began publication in 1751).
31. In 1762-1763, a version of these lectures vras transcribed by a student; see the introduction to
Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (first published in 1963), 7—8.
32. The last article titled “O n the study of the Belles Lettres” was marked "To be continued”; fourteen
essays were published.
33. For the attribution to Goldsmith, see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 194, and Taylor,
Goldsmith asJournalist, 12, 89, 97- For a different view, sec Goldsmith, Collected Works, 3:89.
34. Sec B M 1 (1760); 181. For the attribution of this letter to Richardson, see Basket, Tobias Smollett:
Critic and Journalist, 192. Richardson is alluding to Smollett's application for a "royal licence”
(printed on the blue wrapper of the early issues of the British Magassine)-, see Basket, Tobias Smol­
lett: Critic and Journalist, 190.
35. For a discussion of Smiths views, see the third section of this chapter. Goldsmith observed how
"moral and natural beauty are connected”; see B M 2 (1761): 436 (cf. 353). He also described how
the heart acquired “a habit of sympathy,” and traced the historical origins of poetry; see B M 2
(1761): 493. 543, 646-49.
36. W 2 (1761); 543.
37. Smith’s lectures had practical aspects; for example, the transcribers noted a variety of “rules.” See
Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 24, 40. Goldsmith similarly provided a list of words
“particularly adapted to poetical expression”; see BM 'h (1762): 150.
38. The first issue of the British Magassine contained the first part of Smollett’s serialization of Launce-
lot Greaves (often printed with illustrations), the first part of “The History o f Omrah, the Son of
[ 157]
 I NOTES
NOTES

was sure of a wdcome none the less hearty that they could daim him as an alumnus of their col­
Abulsaid. An OrientalTale” (probably written by Goldsmith; see Basket. Tobias SrrwUeU: Critic and
lege: and if he remained in Glasgow over a Saturday, it was hard if he escaped dining with them and
J o u m a l i s M a reprint o f Johnson’s IdUr 89 (1759). an account o f W books -
others on ‘hen-broth' at the ftunous Anderston Club"; see Quarterly Review 103 (1858): 82. For this
o f the “History o f Canada” (translated and edited by Smollett; see Basket. Tobm Smollett. Cnttc
interpretation of “A—’s,” see Felsenstein’s note to his edition of TFI. 389n31.
and Journalist. 199). a num ber o f songs and poems, and a pull-out map o f the naval engagement
59. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist. 71—72.
at Belle-Isle.
60. For a well-known interpretation of Smollett's views on the Venus of Medicis, see Sterne, A Senti-
39. See B M 1 (1760). 74-7 5 . •
..-mentdlJourney. 29.
40. See Arthur Friedman's note On this essay (attributed to Goldsmith), in Goldsm ith. ColUcted Works.
3:91. The essay was titled “O n the different Schools of Music. ^ . 61. See Scots Magazine 2 \ (1759): 47.
62. See Ross, Life o f Adam Smith. 48-55.
41. See Basket. Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist. 209-10.
63. Ibid.. 29, 114. 196.
42. See fiM 2 (1761): 353. "
64. See Kivy, The Seventh Sense. 22, 157.
43. Cont.y 4:131. ^
44 BM 1 (1760): 207. Although this artide is in the form of a letter “to the Authors of the 65. See Baxandall, Patterns o f Intention. 1, 5. 9.
ish Magazine: Edward W. Pitcher has shown that such letters were often feked; see Edward 66. See Hutcheson, Inquiry. I.bc (34).
W. P i t L . “Inconsistent Attributions and Arbitrary Signatures in Smollett's B ri^h Magaztne
67. Ibid., I.bt-x (34-35).
(1760-1767).” 443-46. Smollett's involvement in art reviewing makes it hkety that he was the
68. Ibid., preface (25-26), VI.x (80); and Smollett's review of An Inquiry into the Beauties o f Painting
author; certainly, the complaint about the “blind partiality shewn to foreigners” was something
(1760) by DanidW ebb (ca. 1719-1798). in O? 9 (1760): 200.
w ith which he would have ^ re c d .
69. For a brief discussion of Hutcheson's relationship to Locke, see Dickie, The Century o f Taste. 7.
45. Cont.t 2 :4l4.
70. Hutcheson, Inquiry. I.xii (36).
46 James Basket has w ritten that “they constitute the first attem pt by an English p e r io d i^ to pres­
ent a regular review o f current works o f art and they include w hat appears to be the first review 71. See Locke, Essay. II.i.4 (105).
in a periodical o f an exhibition by a contem porary artist”: see Basket. Tobtas Smollett: Cntic a 72. Hutcheson, Inquiry. Ill.i (48).
Journalist, 111. 73. Hutcheson referred his readers to an essay by Joseph Addison (1672-1719), in the Spectator.
47. Cent., 2:413. number 412 0une 23, 1712).
48. 0 ? 7 (1759): 375. 74. See Hutcheson, Inquiry. Il.xiv (47), Preface (24), I.xiii (36).
49. See CR 7 (1759): 375. and CR 9 (1760): 400. 75. See Hutcheson. Inquiry. I.xvi (38-39), IV (54-58).
50. See Smollett's artides on Robert Strange in Cfl 1 (1756): 94-96. 7 6 . m , 6 :4 6 .
375 CR 9 (1760)- 499-500, B M 1 (1760): 89; on Richard H ouston (1721-1775). m CK 7
77. Ibid., 33:284.
(1760): 231; on W illiam W oollett (1735-1785). in O ? 12 (1761): 312; on “ ^ o o p er («^
1 7 4 0 ^ a. 1814) and William Ryland (1732-1783) in CR 15 (1763): 224, and W ilham Hogarth 78. Ibid.
in CS 7 (1759): 274-75, B M 5 (1762): 492. a n d £ M 4 (1763): 433-34. 79. Ibid., 28:234.

51. See HC. 122-31. 80. Ibid., 33:287.

52. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist. 211-19. 81. Ibid., 33:288.

53. Ibid.. 54. 130. 82. Ibid., 33:291.

54. B A f4 (1 7 6 3 ):6 8 . 83. Ibid., 33:285.
55. T fl. 8:63. 84. See Smollett's “Preface,” in CR 1 (1756): i-ii.
56. See the title p s ^ o f the first volume o f the Critical Review (1756). 85. Hutcheson, Inquiry. Il.iii (40).
57. TFI. 5:41, 14:134. 86. See Hutcheson, Inquiry. VI.v (77).
58. Reviewing an edition o f SmoUett's “Mi«rellaneous Works” in 1858 the
87. r/7, 30:285.
the pmfessors at the University o f Glasgow: “Among these men the author of Roderick Rand
[ 159]
[ 158 ]
NOTES
NOTES

88. For this translation, see Felsenstein’s note in TFI, 452n28. nection between regular objects and the pleasure which accompanies our perception of them”;
89. TFI, 30-.2S5. see Hutcheson, Inquiry, Vlll.ii (89) (cf. preface, 23-24).

90. Ibid., 31:269. 112. See Peter Kivy’s introduction to his edition of Reid’s Lectures, 4-7; also see Kivy, The Seventh
Sense, 165-68.
91. Ibid., n-.222. See Hutcheson, lnquiry''I\.v (77).
113. Reid, Essays, Vlll.iii (1:495); quoted in Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 169.
92. 77=7,33:285.
114. Reid,_Zer«mK, 44 (cf. 36).
93. Ibid., 31:264-65. i
I 115. TFI, 30:258.
94. Q>«r., 4:131.
116. Ibid., 31:266.
95. See CR 1 (1756): 387, 479-80, CR7 (1759): 274, and B M 3 (1762): 492. F o r> e suggestion
117. Ibid., 33:290.
that Pallet, in Peregrine Pickle, was modeled on Hogarth, see Paulson, "Smollett and Hogarth:
The Identity of Pallet," 351—59. James Basket has noted the influence of Hogarth’s “Four Prints 118. Ibid., 33:286.
of An Eleaion” (1755-1758) on Launcelot Greaves (first published in the British Magazine)-, see 119. TFI, 28:237. Adam Smith noted the description of this statue by the Abbh du Bos; see Smith,
Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 205—6. Lectures, 76.
96. B M 1 (1760): 477. For the attribution of this article to Goldsmith, see Basket, Tobias Smollett: 120. TFI, 33:292.
Critic and Journalist, 285. Goldsmith referred to the “swelling lines of beauty” in his “Belles 121. Ibid., 33:291.
Lettres” series; see B M 2 (1761): 436.
122. Ibid., 28:241.
97. Both Hogarth and Hutcheson used geometrical examples: Hutcheson preferred the square to the
123. 0 5 9(1760): 197-98.
equilateral triangle (since there was increased variety but equal uniformity); Hogarth preferred the
triangle (since it represented a reduction of complexity). See Hutcheson, Inquiry, Il.iii (40—41), and 124. Hogarth, Analysis, 91—92. For an account of eighteenth-century praise for the Venus de’ Medici,
Analysis, iv, 21-22. see Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, 325—28. Smollett is listed among the “few heretics.”
125. Hogarth, 4na^rir, 66.
98. Hogarth, Analysis, iv (1).
126. Baxandall suggests a difference between describing a present and a non-present dog as “big.” If
99. Hogarth also passed wire through a wax model of the body and demonstrated how a “horn” could
the dog is present, Baxandall writes, “I have used ’dog’ to point verbally to an object and ’big’ to
be twisted and cut lengthwise; see Hogarth, Analysis, 7-11, 49—53.
chataaerize the interest I find in it.” He concludes, appropriately for Smollett, that art criticism
100. Hogarth, A»iZ^r«, xi. is “a heroically exposed use o f language”; see Baxandall, Patterns o f Intention, 9-11.
101. C7? 9 (1760): 203-4. 127. TFI, 28:236. Smollett may well have agreed with Goldsmith’s view in the “Belles Lettres” series:
102. Hogarth similarly perceived the skin as a “network" of “threads” containing “coloured juices”; the It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a man actually existing, whose pro­
different “mashes” of the network and sizes of threads contributed to the “variety of complexions.” portions should answer to those of the Greek Statue distinguished by the name of the Apollo of
See Hogarth, 114-16 (cf. 100). Belvedere; or to produce a woman similar in proportion of parts to the other celebrated piece,
called the Venus of Medicis; therefore, it may be truly affirmed, that they arc not conformable to
103. Hogarth, Analysis, 40.
the real srandard of nature: nevertheless, every artist will own that they are the very archetypes
104. TFI, 9:72. of grace, elegance, and symmetry, and every judging eye must behold them with admiration,
105. Ibid., 31:266. as improvements on the lines and lineaments of nature”; see B M 2 (1761): 541. For Hogarth’s
similar view of the Apollo of Belvedere, see his Analysis, 86-91.
106. See Locke, Essay, II.vi.8-10 (134—35).
128. rF /, 27:225.
107. Locke, Essay, II.vi.l5 (137).
129. Ibid., 31:266.
108. See Hogarth, Analysis, 54-66.
130. Ibid., 26:217, 21:180.
109. PEiA, Lectures, A\.
131. Ibid., 31:269.
110. See Locke, Essay, II.vi.l5 (137).
132. For Smollerts review of The English Connoisseur: containing an Account o f whatever is curious in
111. Hutcheson wrote that he did not inquire whether “there be any real excellence in regular forms” Painting Sculpture, drc. in the Palaces and seats o f the Nobility and principal Gentry o f England,
but only “if we can find any reasons worthy of the great Author of nature for making such a con- both in Town and Country, see CK 21 (1766): 407-9.

[ 160]
[ 161 ]
 NOTES
N O T E s'

161. See Brewer, Pleasures o f the Ima^natioHy 213.

133. m 33:292.
134. S tt Analysisi 12 2 .
162. r/=7, 9:78-79.

135. See Brewer. Pleasures o f the Imagination, 225-28. The Foulis Academy exhibited its productions 163- TFT 29:247. Old Black-Friars Bridge was designed by Robert Mylnc (1734—1811) and com­
for free on holidays; see Duncan, ed., Notices and Documents, 90. pleted in 1769. For Mylnes possible connections with Smollett, see Felsensteins note in his
edition of TFI, 448n30.
13 6 . See B A f 4 (1 7 6 3 ): 2 5 9 - 6 0 .
164. Ibjd._33:290.
137. TFI, 29:251-52. | ‘
165. James Basket has observed that none of Smollett’s art reviews “contain a single word of negative
1 3 8 . I b id ., 1 0 :8 0 .
comment”; see Basker, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 116, 146.
139. Reid. Lectures, 35.
166. CR 1 (1756): 479-
1 4 0 . See L o c k e. I I .ix .1 - 4 ( 1 4 3 - 4 4 ) . ^
167. C/? 3 (1757): 479.
141. See Reid, Inquiry, Il.ix (1:112-14); quoted by Peter Kivy in his introdhction to Reid’s Lectures, 2.
168. CR 5 (1758): 266. For further praise of Scots “sea pieces,” see Cont., 4:131.
142. Reid, Lectures, 37.
169. Moore, “Life of Smollett,” 129-31.
143. rF7, 28:241.
170. See Ross, Life ofJ^am Smith, 29.
144. Ibid., 28:234. 171. Ian Simpson Ross notes Smollett’s “negative view” (shared by Smith) of the teaching of John
145. For Reid, “common sense” implied the intuition of first principles (both sensation and judgment Loudan. See Smollett’s review of The History o f the Popes by Archibald Bowyer, in CR 11 (1761):
were therefore immediate); see Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 158—59. 225-26; and Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 42. Smollett wrote that he had a "sincere Regard and
146. Referring to Hogarth’s painting, Smollett seems to have preferred the phrase “it denotes terror and warm aflPection” for Robert Dick; see his letter to John Moore (June 4, 1757), in Letters, 58.
amazement” because the sensation was more clearly separated from its cause; see Smollett s review 172. Sec Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 160—62; and Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 109, H 4.
oIA n Essay on the Writings and Genius o f Pope (1756) by Joseph Warton (1722-1800), in CR 1
173. Lewis Knapp speculated that Smollett might have met Smith on his third visit to Glasgow in 1766,
(1756): 231. For the view that a spectator required specialist knowledge to be a proper judge
but at this time Smith vrould have been in France; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 268. In 1753, Smol­
of painting, see Smollett’s review of Daniel Webb’s Inquiry, in Cff 9 (1760): 198.
lett’s connections to the university included the partner of John Moore, Thomas Hamilton (profes­
147. See Kivy, The Seventh Sense^ 155. sor of anatomy and botany), and Robert Diclq see Smollett’s letter to Moore (January 21, 1754) in
148. Reid, Lectures, 42; also see Hutcheson, Inquiry Y.n (60). Letters, 30-31.

149. Hogarth, Analysis, 85. 174. For Smith’s visit to London (and his “rough” encounter with Samuel Johnson), see Ross, Life o f
150. TFI, 31:268. Also see Smollett’s account of the “chapel of St. Lorenzo” (28:240). Adam Smith, 188-91.

151. See Hutcheson. Inquiry, IV.v (57); and Reid, Lectures, 46. For Hogarth’s account of “twisted 175. Sec a ? 7 (1759): 383-99.

columns,” see Hogarth, Analysis, 14. 176. Smith resigned his chair at Glasgow in 1764; he then traveled as the tutor to the Duke of Buc-
cleugh until October 1766. See Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 195-218. Also see Moore, A View of
152. Reid, Zecrarer, 41.
Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 1:260—81.
153. See Kivy’s introduction to Reid’s Lectures, 13-14.
177. See W. P. D. Wightman’s introduaion to Smith’s essay “O f the Nature of that Imitation which
154. See Reid, Essays, Vlll.iii (1:496); quoted by Kivy in his introduction to Reid’s Lectures, 13. Also
takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts” (1795), in Smith, Essays, 172-73.
see Hutcheson, Inquiry, Vlll.iii (93).
178. See Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 208.
155. CR 1 (1756): 387.
179. In January 1767, Madame Riccoboni (1713-1792) wrote to David Garrick (1717-1779) that
156. rZ7, 28:235-36. Smith was “un homme charmant”; later that year, also in a letter to Garrick, she expressed her
157. Smollett told the story of how Michelangelo felsified the statue of Bacchus in order to trick some opinion of Smollett’s works as “detestables.” See Riccoboni’s letters to Garrick (January 29,1767;
pretended connoisseurs” (28:235-36). November 14, 1767), in [Garrick et ai.,] The Private Correspondence o f David Garrick, 2:509-11,
158. r H . 31:266-670 524-26.
180. See Bourgeois, “The Importance of Smollett’s Philosophic, Medical, and Aesthetic Reviews,” 4—5.
159. Ibid.. 31:267.
181. See Raynor, "Hume’s Abstract of Adam Smith’s Theory o f Moral Sentiments^ 51-79.
1 6 0 . Ib id ., 2 8 :2 3 8 - 3 9 .

[ 163]
[ 162]
 i NOTES
NOTES
182. Hume may have reviewed De Vesfrit (1758) by Claude Arien HeWtius (1715-1771), William
Robertsons History o f Scotland during the Reign o f Queen Mary and ofKing James VI (1759), and
William Wilkie s The Epigoniad{\7‘VJ\ 1759); see CR6 (1758): 501—6 and CR7 (1759): 89—103,
323-34. Also see Raynor, “Hume’s Abstraa of Adam Smith’s Theory o f Moral Sentiments^ 52.
183. See a ? 7 (1759): 383.
184. See CR7 (1759): 388-91, arid Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, I.i.5.1 (23).
185. See CR 7 (1759): 384:-86, ahd Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, I.i.1.3 (10), I.i.2.6 (15-16),
I.i.3.1 (16).
186. CR 7 (1759): 394. ^ -
187. See Raynor, “Hume’s Abstract of Adam Smith’s Theory o f Moral SenriMtntsJ 61.
188. Raynor observes how this passage shares features of Hume’a ‘'Abstract’’ of A Treatise o f Human
Nature (1740) and a letter to Adam Smith (April 12, J759); see Raynor, “Hume’s Abstract of
Adam Smith’s Theory o f Moral Sentiments^ 53—54.
189. CR 7 (1759): 383.
190. For a discussion of the influence of the Spectator in Scotland, see Nicholas Phillipson, “The Scot­
tish Enlightenment,” 26-28.
191. See The Spectator AW (June 21, 1712), 3:535—39.
192. See The Spectator AOS (June 19, 1712), 3:527-31.
193. See The Spectator 2S\ (February 2, 1712), 3:35-38.
194. CR 1 (1756): 226.
195. CR 7 (1759): 399. See Hume’s slippery introduction to The Natural History o f Religion, 309-10.
196. See Hume, “O f the Standard of Taste,” in Essays, 237.
197. Ibid., 239.
198. Ibid., 234.
199. Ibid., 24l,-i2.
200. See Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, VII.iii.2.7-9 (320); also sec Raphad, Adam Smith, 29.
201. See Hume, “O f the Standard of Taste,” in Bsays, 227; and Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments,
VII.ii.2.14 (299) (cf. VI.ii.2.17 [233-34]).
202. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments,Vl.u.\.22. (226-27).
203. George Dickie writes that Hume “appears to understand the search for the standard of taste to be
a search for good critics”; see Dickie, The Century o f Taste, 133. As Peter Kivy notes, the argument
is not entirely circular; see Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 143—47.
204. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, V l\X uA A -2 (T27).
205. See Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, V ll.i.l (265), and CR 7 (1759): 397.
206. CR 1 (1756):i.
207. Smith wrote that the “frivolous accuracy” that the “casuists” attempted “to introduce into subjects
which do not admit of i t . . . rendered their works dry and disagreeable, abounding in abstruse
[ 164]
and metaphysical distinctions, but incapable of exciting in the heart any of those emotions which
it is the principal use of books of morality to excite”; see Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, VII.
iv.33 (340). Also see Smollett’s review of Joseph Warton’s “An Essay on the Writings and Genius
of Pope,” in CR 1 (1756); 238.
208. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 57-59.
209. See The Spectator 291 (February 2, 1712), 3:37, and Hume, “O f the Standard of Taste,” in Es­
says, 236. In his “Proposals” for the Critical Review, Smollett wrote that the reviewers “will not
exhibit a partial and unfair Assemblage of the Beauties or Blemishes of any Production”: see the
“Proposals,” reprinted in Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 171-72. For a discussion of Hume’s approach,
see Dickie, The Century o f Taste, 126, I4 l.
210. CR 7 (1759); 398.
211. CR 2 (1756): 404. In his review of The English Connoisseur, Smollett emphasized the importance
of this practice: “Were the capital beauties and defects (for even the best paintings are not without
them) pointed out in a judicious manner,” he wrote, “a work of this kind would be of national
importance, and do honour to the kingdom”: see CR 21 (1766): 449.
212. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 94.
213. See Boswell, Life o f Johnson, 4:57; quoted by Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 184.
214. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 182-86.
215. S^pecxot, English Literary Periodicals, 320-21.
216. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, VAX.S
217. Smith, “A Letter to the Author’s of the Edinburgh ReviewJ in Essays, 253.
218. Responding to attacks on the Critical Review, Smollett wrote that the reviewers “will continue to
exert that spirit and impartiality, by which they flatter themselves the Critical Review has been
hitherto distinguished”; see CR 2 (1756): i-ii.
219. See Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments,N\X\.\.\7 (224).
220. TFI,A0-3^7-58.
221. Ibid., 12:109-10.
222. TFI, 25:202. Smollett’s phrase “conversation and society” is particularly resonant. Referring to
Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, John Dsvyer has described “sentiment” as a “highly artistic form
of civil or polite conversation, which often takes place between 'utter strangers’”; see Dwyer,
“Enlightened Spectators and Classical Moralists,” 96—98.
223. Yorick writes that his imagination was “eternally misleading me”: for example, he notes that
it was his “frame of mind” that attached him to the fece of “Madame de L***” (during their
conversation, Yorick notices that “she had glided off unperceived”); similarly, his tears for the
monk, like his bow to the “shopkeeper’s wife.” were exaggerated and misplaced. See Sterne, A
Sentimental Journey, 120, 17—22, 56.
224. TFI, i5:306.
225. Ibid., 8:70.
226. Ibid., 41:344.
[ 165 ]
 \

NOTES NOTES

227. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, I.i.4.7 (22). 252. Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” Annexe.6 (in Essays, 212-13).
228. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments,\Xi.\.\ (15). 253. 77=7,7:57.
229. TH, 1:2. 254. Smith, Lectures, 3—4.
230. Ibid., 12:108. 255. Smollett mistakenly corrects the “Scotch dialect” of Joseph Warton; see CR 1 (1756): 228. For a
231. Ibid, 7:59. reprint of the appendix to Hume’s Political Discourses (1752), see Hume, “Scotticisms” (in The
Philosophical Works, vol. 4), 461-64.
232. See Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, I.ii.1.1 (27—28).
256. Smith, “Review of Johnson’s Dictionary” (1755), in Essays, 241.
233. Smith had described the “mart who is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident, who is
hurt if either the cook or the butler have failed in the least article of their duty, who feels evSry 257. CR 15 (1763): 126.
defect in the highest ceremonial of politeness . . . who is put out of humour by-the badness of 258. Smith, Lectures, 18.
the weather when in the country, by the badness of the roads when upon a journey, and by the 259. See Smith, Lectures, 120-21, and J. C. Bryce’s introduction to Smith’s Lectures, 18-19, 36.
want of company, and dulness o f all public diversions when in town*; see Smith, Theory o f Moral
260. Reid, Lectures, 51—52. For Hutcheson’s approach to rhetoric, see Miller, “Francis Hutcheson and
Sentiments, I.ii.5.3 (42).
the Civic Humanist Tradition,” 40-55.
234. TPI, 12:187.
261. RR, xxxiii.
235. Ibid., 29:245.
262. See Smith’s letter to the Due de la Rochefoucauld (November 1, 1785), in Smith, Correspondence,
236. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, Il.iii. 1.3-4 (94-95).
286-87. Smith was in London from 1773 to 1776; see Ross, Life o f Adam Smith, 249-69.
237. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, III.3.28 (148). For Smith’s emphasis on the stoic virtue of 263. r77, 28:233-34.
self-command, see Theory o f Moral Sentiments, Vl.iii {237-62).
264. CR 12 (1761): 407-8.
238. TFT, 34:295, 41:342-43.
265. TTT, 28:234.
239. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, III.2.19 (123).
266. Ibid., 3:18.
240. For a discussion of Smollett’s early play The Regicide (1749), see the third chapter of this book.
267. Ibid., 3:18-19.
241. Smith wrote that “Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has beftllen
268. Ibid., 19:166.
another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned”; see
Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, I.i.4.7 (21). 269. Ibid., 24:197.
242. See Kenneth Simpson, The Protean Scot, 13. 270. Smith su^ested that nouns were discovered before adjectives, and poetry before prose; see Smith,
Lectures, 9-13, 133—41.
243. Smith, Theory, VI.iii.26 (248).
271. TPI, 21:182-83. See CR 15 (1763): 201.
244. See Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” 1.16 (in Essays, 185).
272. r7=7, 21:181.
245. Ibid., 1.6 (in Essays, 179).
273. Ibid.
246. Ibid., 1.19 (Im. Essays, 186).
274. For Smollett’s attempt to establish an English Academy, see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and
247. TFT, 31:267-68. Cf. Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” 1.8 (in Essays, 180).
Journalist, 76—81.
248. TPI, 27-226.
275. 777,21:181.
249. Ibid., 33:289.
276. Ibid., 28:234.
250. It might have been easier to comment on the mattress than its superincumbent figure. For some
277. Smith, 77i(fo;7, VI.ii.1.12 (223).
eighteenth-century attitudes to “The Hermaphrodite,” see Haskell and Penny, Taste and the
Antique, 234-36. 278. Ibid., V.2.9 (205): also see Jery Melford’s account of Murphy’s “death song” in HC, 188. For
some “important cultural connections” between Scotland and America, see Dwyer, “A ‘Peculiar
251. Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” III. 1 (in Essays, 207). Smith described that “whatever we feel from
Blessing,’” 9.
instrumental Music is an original, and not a sympathetic feeling: it is our own gaiety, sedateness,
or melancholy; not the reflected disposition of another person”; see Smith, “O f the Imitative 279. r77, 21:180.
Arts,” 11.22 ilm Essays, 198). 280. Ibid., 21:181.

[ 166] [ 167]
 I
NOTES
281. Ibid.. 21:180.
282. For this anecdote, see Smollett’s review of Macpherson’s Temora, in CR 15 (1763): 200.
283. TFI, 11:89-90.
284. See Smith, Lectures, 137.
285. Smith wrote that “by acting According to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue
the most effectual means fcjr promoting the happiness of manldnd, and may therefore be said,
in some sense, to co-operate with the Deity, and to advance as far as in our power the planjif
Providence”; see Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, III.5.7 (166). For Smith’s thoughts about the
“invisible hand.” see Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, IV. 1.10 (184) and Jnfuiry into the Nature
and Causes o f the Wealth o f Nations, IV.ii.9 (456).
286. See Hutcheson, Inquiry, Ill.iv (49), and Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, IV.i.ll (185).
287. Smith, Theory, IV.i.3 (179).
288. Smith wrote that “utility” bestowed upon our actions “a new beauty”; he continued, “This beauty,
however, is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and speculation, and is by no means the qual­
ity which first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind.” See
Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, IV.2.11 (192).
289. D. D. Raphael describes how Smith regarded "all scientific and philosophical systems as products
of the imagination”; see Raphael, Adam Smith, 109-13.
Chapter 3: A Theatrical Divine
1. For an account of the “formal accusation” (or “libel”) of the Presbytery of Dalkeith, see Sher, Church
and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 82-85; and Carlyle, Anecdotes, 159-65.
2. See Carlyle, Argument, 190; and Carlyle, Anedotes, 157-59. The pamphlet war over Douglas became
a focus for the dis^reements o f the so-called Moderate and Popular parties in the Church; see Sher,
Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 79-81.
3. See Carlyle, Argument, 192, and John Witherspoon, A Serious Enquiry into the Nature and Effects o f
the Stage (Glasgow, 1757). For a similar view, see the “Admonition and Exhortation” of the Presby­
tery of Edinburgh (in January 1757) and its endorsement at Glasgow (in February 1757), reprinted
in Gipson, John Home, 71-76.
4. See Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 48, 33. For a discussion of the Platonic (and Puritan) origins
of this view, see Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 5-10, 80-93. For an account of the “criminal
aspects of playgoing,” see Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time o f Garrick, 47—50.
5. See Ferguson, Morality o f Stage-Plays, 20-25, and Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 71. Witherspoon
attempted to refute “this new and wonderful doctrine of its being necessary that good men should
attend the theatre” (58).
6. See Carlyle, 195.
7. Ferguson cited Paul quoting a play. See Ferguson, Morality o f Stage-Plays, 4-5, and Acts 17:28, 1
Corinthians 15:33. Carlyle showed an early interest in the London stage and later formed a friend­
ship with David Garrick; see Carlyle, Anecdotes, 101-2, 173-75, 261.
[ 1 68 ]
NOTES
8. Richard Sher follows Alexander Carlyle in giving an account of this reading; see Sher, Church and
University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 77.
9. For a theatrical interpretation of Smiths Theory o f Moral Sentiments, see Barish, The Antitheatrical
Prejudice, 243-55; and Dwyer, “Enlightened Speaators and Classical Moralists,” 102-3.
10. Carlyle, Anecdotes, 98.
T tr'Smoilett described the “Pitiflill Intrigues of that little Rascal Garrick,” the “Indolence, Worthlessness
and Folly” of John Rich, and how the “English audience hath been crammed with new Tragedies
until! it spues 2^ n ”; see Smollett’s letters to Carlyle (1747; October 1, 1749; March 1, 1749), in
Letters, 3-6, 11-12, 33-36.
12. See Smollett’s letter to Carlyle (October 1, 1749), in Letters, 11.
13. See Smollett’s letters to Carlyle (1747; June 7, 1748; February 14, 1749), in Letters, 5, 8, 9-10,
and Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 76—77.
14. Home’s was not performed in London until 1758; see Pedicord, Theatrical Public in the Time
o f Garrick, 208-9.
15. See Smollett’s letter to Carlyle (March 1, 1754), in Letters, 33.
16. See Carlyle, Anecdotes, 133—34, 152-54, and Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 76-77. Carlyle recorded
another meeting in Forrest’s Coffeehouse in 1758; see Carlyle, Anecdotes, 172. Smollett was clearly
on friendly terms with Home in 1762 when he asked him to use his interest with the Earl of Bute
in his favor; see Smollett’s letter to Home (December 27, 1762), in Letters, 110—11.
17. Sec Smollett’s letter to Carlyle (March 1,1754), in Letters, 35-36. Carlyle had three acts Douglas
in his own hand by the summer of 1754; see Carlyle, Anecdotes, 151.
18. See Smollett’s letter to Francis Hayman (May 11, 1750), in Letters, 13-14.
19. For an account of the staging of Douglas, sec Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlighten­
ment, 74-78.
20. For an account of the bacl^round of The Regcide, see Bryon Gassman’s introduction to Smollett’s
plays, in Poems, 69-76. Also see Moore, “Life of Smollett,” 82.
21. For Eleonora’s family name, see The Regcide (1749), IV, iii (in Poems, 144). In the prologue to
Douglas, Home writes, “This night our scenes no common tear demand, / He comes, the hero of
your native land!”; see Home, Douglas, 21.
22. Sec Tobin, Plays by Scots, 24.
23. Lismahago recommends “the works of Allan Ramsay”; see HC, 193.
24. Gassman suggests that The Regcide “never develops beyond its mechanical form”; see Gassman’s
introduction, in Poems, 75. For an account of Ramsay’s play, sec Tobin, Plays by Scots, 21—23.
25. See Churchill, The Apology. Addressed to the Critical Reviewers, 8-9; and Regicide, I.vi (102-6), Il.iv
(113). Home explains his epilogue to Douglas by concluding that “‘tis absurd / With comic wit
to contradict the strain / O f tr^cdy, and make your sorrows vain”; see Douglas, Epilogue (75).
26. See Douglas, IV (60—62).
27. See Regicide Ill.viii (135), IV.i (139), Il.viii (120), and Gassmans annotations, in Poems, 464
(n37, n44, n47). Athol’s misplaced confidence in “fate” is also suggestive of Macbeth, see Regcide
V.ix(171).
[ 1 69 ]
 i
NOTES
28. See Resettle, III.x (124), and Home, Douglas, IV (58).
29. Home, Douglas, V (71).
30. Repcide, I.vi (103, 105).
31. Regicide, Ill.iv (131).
32. See John Clelands review of The Repcide, in M R, 1 (1749); 72.
33. At the end of The Regicide, th^ King, Queen, Dunbar and Eleonora are dead. Although a prisoner,
Athol remains alive to persist in his claim to the throne; Angus reasserts the established order widi—
a series of, somewhat hollow, heroic couplets. See Regicide V.ix (70-71).
34. Notably, Home joined Carlyle and Robertson as “Volunteers” in Edinburgh'ih 1745; see Carlyle,
Anecdotes, 58. ' 181-205. For the effects of the Licensing Act in London, see Thomas and Hare, eds. Theatre in
35. Carlyle, Anecdotes, 99.
36. The opening lines of “The Tears of Scotland” (1746) (“Mourn, hapless CALEDONIA, mourn /
Thy banish’d peace, thy laurels torn!”) resemble Angus’s words in The Re^cide (“Weep, Caledonia,
weep!—thy Peace is slain—” ); see Poems, 23—26, and Regicide,V.vi (163). Both phrases are remi­
niscent of the title of Gabriel Nesbir’s play Caledon’s Tears referred to above. Notably, Smollett
later declared that no comedy had “a more moral tendency” than The English Merchant (1767)
by George Colman (1732—1794), which featured the pardoning of an old Jacobite; see CR 23
(1767); 214-16.
37. Smollett wrote, “the conscientous Manager next Season, instead of fulfilling his own Promise and
my Expectation, gratified the Town with the Production of a Player, the fete of which every Body
knows”; see Regicide, preface, 90.
38. See Sambrook,/a7H« TJoffwon, 191-96.
39. See Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole, 78-80.
40. Smollett probably met Thomson and Mallet through Andrew Mitchell (1708-1771); see Knapp,
Tobias Smollett, 27—28, 82—84. Also see Smollett’s letter to Carlyle (1747), in Letters, 4. In his re­
view of The Works o f James Thomson (1762), Smollett noted “the refusal of a licence for his tragedy
o f Edward and Eleonora”■,see CR 14 (1762); 126.
41. For possible Jacobite interpretations of these plays, see Tobin, Plays by Scots, 143—44, and
S a m b t o o k , Thomson, 237—40; also see Scott, “James Thomson and the Anglo Scots,” 95.
Gerrard notes that Patriot language was often close to Jacobite rhetoric; see Gerrard, The Patriot
Opposition to Walpole, 107, 232.
42. See the dedication to Thomson’s subscription edition of Edward arul Eleonora-, quoted by Sam-
\stoofi, James Thomson, 196.
43. See Thomas and Hare, eds.. Theatre in Europe, 216.
44. For these terms, see Regicide, preface (90); also see Sher, Church and University in the Scottish
Enlightenment, 90.
45. See Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 72.
46. See the anecdote by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) in Memoires o f the latst Ten Years o f the Reign o f
George the Second (first published in 1822), 3;97; quoted by Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 128.
[ 1 70 ]
NOTES
47. See PP, 655-60.
48. Regicide, preface (90).
49. Ibid. (92).
50. Ibid. (89).
51. See Reproof. A Satire (1747), in Poems, 44, and Regicide, prefece (91).
52. See Gassman’s introduction to Smollett’s plays, in Poems, 69.
53. See Smollett’s letter to Francis Hayman (May 11,1750), in Letters, 13-14. Smollett asked Hayman
to “transmit” the play to Garrick.
54. For some of the difficulties of the theater in Scodand, see Cameron, “Theatre in Scodand,”
Europe, 205—7, and Loftis, Southern, Jones, and Scouten, Reveb History o f Drama in English, 242.
55. CR 3 (1757); 160.
56. Carlyle, Anecdotes, 98.
57. Reed, A Sop in the Pan fo r a Physical Critick, 8, 22.
58. See Stone and Kathl, David Garrick, 28-30, 128.
59. Garrick and Quin were both playing at Covent Garden in 1746-1747; Quin later played the tide
role in Coriolanus in 1749 (after Thomson’s death). See S a m b t o o k , Thomson, 256-57, 281.
60. Home changed the name “Barnet” to “Randolph” when Douglas was staged in London. See Gerald
Parker’s introduction to Douglas, 8, and Cameron, “Theatre in Scotland,” 200.
61. See Smollett’s letters to Carlyle (1747 and June 7, 1748), in Letters, 5, 8.
62. See Bevis, “Smollett and the Israelites,” 387-94. Bevis cites the Mourning Chronicle of March 31,
1785; the play is now lost.
63. See Blnapp, Tobias Smollett, 91-92; and Gassman’s introduaion to Smollett’s plays, in Poems, 78.
Ironically, this tide was found in a list of “Books and Copies left unsold at Mr. John Osborns
‘Sale’” of 1751; the play is now lost.
64. See James Basket, “Another Smollett Play?” 33-34. Basket’s attribution is based on a manu­
script annotation (by John Hunter) to Samuel Foart Simmon’s A n Account o f the Life and Writ­
ings o f the late W illiam Hunter, see Simmon’s Life, 1.
65. See Smollett’s letters to Carlyle (February 14, 1749, and October 1, 1749), in Letters, 9-12, and
Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 87-91. Also see Sambtook, James Thomson, 192.
66. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 196-202.
67. In the 1756-1757 season. The Reprisal was performed eleven times and Douglas nine times; see
Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time o f Garrick, 206—7, 224—25. Smollett’s play was in
good company since the other new afterpieces in 1756—1757 were by Garrick, Samuel Foote
(1720—1777) and Henry Woodward (1714—1717); see Stone and Karhl, David Garrick, 665.
68. Maclaymore was “a Scotch ensign in the French service.” In the epilogue, Smollett explained that
his pen was drawn “against the hostile French” and added that, “Who damns him, is no Antigal-
lican.” See The Reprisal (1757), in Poerm, Li (178-79), epilogue (217).
[ 171 ]
 f N O T E S
NOTES
69. In a letter to Carlyle C1747), Smollett referred to “Oswald the Musician” with whom he seems
to have heen liaising about setting Carlyles “gay Catches to music; see Letters^ 6. Smolletts
first printed work was “A New Song,” which appeared with music hy Oswald in John Newhery’s
Universal Harmony (1745); a version of this song later appeared in Roderick Random (225).
Another song in Roderick Random, “Thy fetal shafts unerring move” (226), was printed in the
Gentlemans Magazine Quly, 1755) under the title “A Favourite Air, Sung at Vaux-hall,” also set
to music hy Oswald. Both of tiiese songs were set to music by Dr. Hayes (a professor of music
at Oxford), and music was provided for the elegy “in imitation of Tibullus, also in Roderick
Random (376), by a Mr. Buswell. Oswald set Smollett’s “The Tears of Scotland” to music in
1746, as well as the poem “Adieu, ye streams that smoothly flow,” printed in Peregrine Pickle
(102), and probably the three songs of The Reprisal (“For the man whcTm I love, tho’ my heart
I disguise” [I.iii (85]), “Let the nymph still avoid and be deaf to the swain” [II.v (202-3)], and
“Behold! my brave Briton’s the fait springing gale” [II.xv (215-16)]); the fourth song of The
Reprisal wis sung to a popular refrain. For Smollett’s songs, see Poems, 23-26, 46-52, 55, and
Gassman’s annotations. Also see Lewis M. Knapp, Smollett s Verses and their Musical Settings
in the Eighteenth Century,” 224-32.
70. Carlyle wrote, a little skeptically, that Garrick and Home became “the Greatest Friends in the
World”; see Carlyle, Anecdotes, 173. Smollett complimented Garrick in his Continuation o f the
Complete History, see Cont., 4:126. Also see Smollett’s letters to Garrick (January 1758; February
4, 1757: January 27. 1762), in Letters, 52-54, 103-4. It is likely that Garrick played some pan in
the British Magazine', see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 194, 284.
71. SfTi^ztspooti, Serious Enquiry, 60-62.
72. Theophilus Cibber, Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects, “First Dissertation,” 61-62; quoted by
Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 24.
73. See Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 17—28.
74. CR 2 (1756): 48-49. See Cibber, Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects, “First Dissertation,” 22.
75. CR 1 (1756); 79. Also see the review of The Spouter; or the triple revenge (1756), in CR 1 (1756);
146.
76. CR 1 (1756): 79-81.
77. Ibid., 131-32.
78. CR 13 (1762): 137. For a similar view, see the review of Virginia, a Tragedy (1756), in CR 1
(1756); 277.
79. See the review of Whitehead’s The Schoolfor Lovers in BM, 3 (1761): 83-84.
80. Witherspoon wrote that, “to please, or attempt to do so, is essential to the stage, and its first,
or rather its main design”; he therefore believed that “vice” in the theater was usually in a more
“eng^^eing and insinuating form”; see Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 14, 42. Smollett revealed
a similar belief when he praised one of Garrick’s prologues but wished that he had omitted the
"double entendres"', see CR 2 (1756): 474.
81. See Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 34, 39, and CR 3 (1757): 258. Notably, Smollett wrote that
John Cleland’s Tombo-Chiqui (1758), over which “an English audience would fall asleep,” was
better for not being offered to the theaters: see CR 5 (1758): 199—206.
[ 172]
82. In a letter to John Moore Qune 4, 1757), Smollett wrote that he did not see the article until it
was in print; see Letters, 58. Hume had praised Douglas in his prefece to Four Dissertations (1757);
according to the Critical Review, he had praised it beyond its “real and intrinsic merit ; see CR 3
(1757): 267.
83. See Witherspoon, 13.
§4^_See Smollett’s review of Murphy’s The Apprentice, in CR 1 (1756): 82, and his account of an ad­
aptation of The Winter’s Tale (1756) by Charles Marsh, in CR 1 (1756): 145. Also see his review
of Whitehead’s The Schoolfor Lovers-, in CR 13 (1762): 137 (c£ CR 15 [1763]: 13-14). Notably,
a review of Smollett’s The Reprisal, in the Critical Review, observed that the “prologue to this litde
comedy acts the proper part of a prologue”; see CR 3 (1757): 157.
85. In a review of Garrick’s adaptation o f The Winter’s Tale, Florizel andPerdita (1762), Smollett wrote
that “we that live at a distance from the theatre . . . have cause to complain that here is neither
prologue, epilogue, nor specification of the personae dramatis"-, see CR 13 (1762): 157. The in­
clusion of these elements in the reviews of the British Magazine (possibly organized by Garrick)
was therefore a somewhat ambivalent sign of that periodical’s relationship to the theater; see, for
example, BM, 2 (1761); 313-16, 365-68, and BM, 4 (1763): 7-9, 81-84, 171-73.
86. Fielding’s ferces had contributed to the passing of the act; see Loftis, Southern, Jones, and Scouten,
Revels History o f Drama in English, 252-55.
87. For an account of Cibber’s “company,” see Thomas and Hare, Theatre in Europe, 219.
88. See Smollett’s letter to Carlyle Oune 7, 1748), in Letters, 7.
89. See Walter Scott, “A Memoir of the Life of the Author,” in The Novels o f Tobias Smollett, xli.
L.
90. See PP, 307, 359. M. Ellison has suggested that Smollett “read closely and admired the realistic
London comedy of Shakespeate” and that he acted as a kind of bridge between Ben Jonson and
the comedy of Dickens; see Ellison, “Elizabethan Drama and the Works of Smollett,” 850, 853.
91. Smollett made frequent allusions to Shakespeare in his novels: see, for example, his description of
Ranter, who assumed “the looks, swagger, and phrase of Pistol” (RR, 277), Peregrines recollection
of “Shakespear’s description” of “the chalky cliffe” near Canterbury (PP, 186), Fathom’s lago-like
manipulations of Renaldo and Monimia (FCF, 217), Mr Clarke’s recollection of “the idea of the
ghost in Hamlet, which,” he says he “had seen acted in Druty-lane, when [he] made [his] first
trip to London; and [he] had not yet got rid of the impression” (LG, 81), and the opening lines
o f Humphry Clinker, which were an adaptation of Falstaffs speech in The Merry Wives o f Windsor
(HC, 7).
92. For quotations from Rowe’s The Fair Penitent, see PP, 651 and LG, 64. Congreve s The Mourning
Bride is the basis of Monimia and Renaldo’s reunion; see PCF, 319-21. Garrick played Lothario
in the The Fair Penitent eighty-two times and Osmyn in The Mourning Bride twenty-four times;
see Stone and Kathl, David Garrick, 656—57.
93. Smith, Theory o f Moral Sentiments, III.i.5 (112).
94. See Brown, “The Dialogic Experience of Conscience; Adam Smith and the Voices of Stoicism,
233-60.
95. Sez’WoLttizt, Joyce’s Grandfathers, 57—87.
[ 173 ]
NOTES
96. See Brown, “The Dialogic Experience of Conscience,” 255-59.
97. Vivienne Brown notes Smith’s caution in his description of the moral agent who “really adopts”
the “sentiments of the impartial spectator”: “He almost identifies himself with, he almost be­
comes himself that impartial spectator, and scarce even feels but as that great arbiter of his con­
duct directs him to feel”: see Smith Theory o f Moral Sentiments, III.iii.25 (146-47), and Brown,
“The Dialogic Experience of Conscience,” 253-54.
98. See Hume’s essay, “O fT r^edy” (1757), in Essays, 216—17.
99. m , 34:302.
100. SteV3xi-GA>tie:\houol, Novels o f Tobias Smollett, \A2.
101. For a similar idea, see Jean-Paul Sartre, La nausee (1938; Paris, 1991), 61-62. In this novel,
Roquentin believes that “Je n’ai pas eu d’aventures,” and explains “II m’est arrive des histoires, des
dvenements, des incidents, tout ce qu’ on voudta. Mais pas des aventures.” He then adjusts his
opinion: “mais de temps en temps, par exemple quand oh jouait de la musique dans les cafts, je
revenais en arriere et je me disais: autrefois, a LondreS, a M ekn^, k Tokio j’ai connu des moments
admirables, j’ai eu des aventures.”
102. In a review of Virginia, a Tragedy (1756) by Francis Brooke, Smollett speculated that the theater
manager “disapproved of the catastrophe, in which Virginia’s fete is narrated, and not acted on
the stage: tho’ these objections would have had no weight with a circle of Greeks and Romans’'-, see
CR 1 (1756): TIT. Smollett adopted the convention in his own play; see Regicide, V.vi (163-65).
103. For some of the autobiographical aspects, see Smollett’s letter to Carlyle (June 7, 1748), in Let­
ters, 7-8.
104. 219, 225, 430,435.
105. Ibid., 68, 85, 93, 251.
106. Ibid., 103,138, 349, 172, 304.
107. Ibid., 424, 430.
108. Don Quixote renames his lady “Dulcinea del Toboso” and his horse “Rosinante”; femously, his
library contains the “authors of his misfortune.” See DQ, 1:5-6, 27. Miss 'Williams explains, “I
looked upon myself as a princess in some region of romance, who being delivered from the power
of a brutal giant or satyr by a generous Oroondates, was bound in gratitude, as well as led by
inclination, to yield up my affections to him without reserve”; see RR, 119.
109. PR, 94. 177,285. 413, 597.
110. Ibid., 426, 332, 212, 652. 388, 419.
111. ECF,Yl, 132, 93, 94. 93, 130, 140; cf. RR, 303.
112. FCF, 253. 130.
113. LG, 50, 193, 189.
114. T/C, 271-72.
115. Ibid., 252. 99.
116. Peregrine finally bursts into their apartment: his “antagonist,” however, “instead of firing his
blunderbuss, when he saw him approach, started back with evident signs of surprize and con-
[ 1 74 ]
NOTES
sternation, exclaiming, ‘Lord Jesus! Sir, you are not the man! and, without doubt, are under some
mistake with regard to us.’” See PP, 414-19.
117. Smollett wrote that he “was often diverted with the conversation of this fellow, who was very
arch and very communicative” (9:76); it was during one of their conversations that Joseph told
the story of Mandrin (9:76-78). When Smollett met Joseph again, he was embraced as his
“benefactor” (40:337-38).
ir§ ) Smollett’s novels ate full of people telling stories: they include Melopoyn’s “tedious narration of
trivial circumstances” (RR, 379-96), Miss William’s story (RR, 117—38), Lady Vane’s “memoirs”
(PP, 432—539), and a parson’s account of Mackercher and Annesley (PP, 691—735). In Ferdinand
Count Fathom, the relationship between stories is more obvious (Diego’s story, for example, reads
like an interpolated vignette but is actually shown, with the help of “A retrospective link, neces­
sary for the concatenation of these memoirs,” to be the main narrative of the novel); see FCF,
109—25, 330. In Humphry Clinker, the maze of letters and “in petto" narratives reveals a complex
unity; see, for example, HC, 307.
119. Scott, for example, compared Smollett to Fielding; see Scott, “Memoir of the Life of the Author,”
xli. George Rousseau comments that Smollett “recedes too far into a distant background to ap­
pear as a felt presence”: see Rousseau, “Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne: A Revaluation,” 16,
120. RR, xxxiii.
121. For this concept, see Bakhtin, Problems o f Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 194.
122. RR, xxxvi.
123. This is what Bakhtin would call a “dialogic angle"; see Bakhtin, Lk-oblems o f Dostoevsky's Poetics,
182,
124. See RR, xxxvii-xxxviii. For the concept of an “authorial surplas,” see Bakhtin, Problems o f Dos­
toevsky's Poetics, 70-73.
125. FCF, 4.
126. Smollett cut seventy-nine pages of Peregrine Pickle for the second edition. Thus Peregrine no
longer enjoyed “the luscious fruits of his conquest” of Mrs. Hornbeck and avoided an “Intrigue
with a Nun, which producejd] strange Consequences”; see PP, 202, 325.
127. FCF, 239.
128. See Paul-Gabriel Bouc6’s note on this pass^e in his edition of The Adventures o f Ferdinand Count
Fathom, 487n7.
129. For the concept of a “hidden polemic,” see Bakhtin, Problems o f Dostoevsky's Poetics, 195-97.
130. Smollett refers to “misappropriations” in his apologue to Roderick Random-, see RR, xxxviii.
Although Smollett narrated his “brutal behaviour” in Travels through France and Italy, it was
with the hindsight of having “scolded [his] own people for not having more penetration than
[himself]” (8:68-70).
131. PP, 568.
132. HC, 312.
133. Ibid.. 313.
[ 175]
 N O T E i
NOTES

134. They include visits to the theater {RR, 257), masquerades (PR, 243), ordinaries (FCf, 90),
163. FCF, 78-79, 39. Peregrine observes, “Were the player debarred the use of speech, and obliged
and coffee-houses (HC, 52-54), as well as Ranelagh (HC, 88-89) and Bath {PP, 362-91; HC,
to act to the eyes only of the audience, this mimickry might be a necessary conveyance of his
28-75).
meaning; but when he is at liberty to signify his ideas by language, nothing can be more trivial,
135. See H Q 336 and TFI, 1:2. forced, unnatural and antick, than this superfluous mummery” {PP, 654).
136. Ferdinand “excelled all his fellows in his dexterity at fives and billiards; was altogether unri­ 164. FCF, I3I.
valled in his skill at draughts^*and backgammon; began even at these years, to understand the
165. Ibid„.139.
moves and schemes of chess/ and made himself a meer adept in the mystery of cards, which
he learned in the course of his assiduities and attention to the females of the house”; see FCF, 166. Ferdinand exclaims, “talk not of ruin and Wilhelmina! let these terms be for ever parted, for as
26,74. the east and west assunder! let ever smiling peace attend her steps, and love and joy still wanton
in her train! . . . bear witness to my constancy and faith, ye verdant hills, ye fertile plains, ye
137. Launcelot “mingled in every rustic diversion”; see iG , 60.
shady groves, ye purling streams: and if I prove untrue, ah! let me never find a solitary willow or
138. See PP, 71-76. bubling brook, by the help of which I may be enabled to put a period to my wretched life”; see
139. RR, 58, 97. In Peregrine Pickle, Crabtree similarly pretends to be deaf; see PP, 387. FCF, 49 (cf. 313-14, 319-21).
140. RR, 276. 167. In the Monthly Review, Ralph Griffiths wrote that “the readers greatest satisfaction must spring
141. PP, 312. from his continually bearing in mind the improbability that such a monster ever lived, or that
such unnatural cruelties and villanies were ever perpetrated”; see M R 8 (1753): 203. For the later
142. PP, 193.
view, see Boucf, Novels o f Tobias Smollett, 151.
143. FCF, 240.
168. Monimia's phtase is an allusion to Congreves The Mourning Bride-, see FCF, 319.
144. rp /, 2:10.
169. LG, 139.
145. Ibid., 2:9.
170. See FCF, 323.
146. SeeA fP,34(1766):21.
171. LG, 239. The news that Wilson is in fact Dennison is communicated to Liddy so “that her delicate
147. TFI, 29:242. Similarly, at “a wretched town called Muy,” Smollett “fcrretted” the landlord out of nerves might not suffet too sudden a shock”; see HC, 315.
his “bed-chamber” in order to underpay him (12:110—11).
172. PP, 414-17.
148. Ibid., 35:307.
173. / / C 288-89.
149. Ibid., 41:343.
174. TFI,S-A\.
150. Ibid., 25:204-5.
175. Ibid., 20:170.
151. Ibid., 24:201.
176. Ibid., 26:218.
152. Ibid., 31:263.
177. Ibid., 34:298.
153. Ibid., 38:318-25.
178. Ibid., 34:299.
154. PP, 250.
179. Ibid., 41:349.
155. Ibid., 251-52.
180. Smollett's “axle-tree” finally “took fire” in Chalons (41:344).
156. Ibid., 255.
181. rP 7 , 31:299.
157. rP7, 35:307.
182. Smollett also observed that “two miscreants . . . might have murdered [them] without fear of
158. FCF, 216.
detection” (34:300-301).
159. Ibid., 232.
183. LG, 66 (cf. 234).
160. Ibid., 238-39.
184. PCP,29.
161. Ibid., 321-23.
185. Ibid., 199.
162. PP, 653-54.
186. See LG, 107 (cf. 122); and HC, 27.

[ 176]
[ 177]
 NOTES
N O T EJ

216. See Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought^ 21 y 33-34. Readers of Pere^ine i
187. See PP, 593; and LG, 225. Grabble also predicts the death of Crabshaw and his horse (223).
Pickle would also have heard the music of “a Cobler there was & cl* and “the song of Bumper
188. See LG, 252. Squire Jones**', see PP, 12, 119, 241, 282. Also sec the songs of Bowling and Jenny {RR, 15, 49,
56), Crowe {LG, 92), and the psalmody of Humphry Clinker {HC, 134, 153). Notably, Smol­ i
189. For these meetings, see RP, 32 and 250, 115 and 338, 143 and 202, 319, 355, 373, 232 and i
398,423, 337,413. lett’s references to music have been seen as valuable commonplace “annotations to musical his­
tory”; sec Percy Young, "Observations on Music by Tobias Smollett,” 24.
190. TFI, 40:337. In France, Smollett also re-met “Mr. M[ayn]e” (12:115) and j^ust missed meet­ t
ing “Mr. L__” (10:87). In Turin, Smollett’s correspondent re-encountered the marquis M. 217. _jSee-iy^ 157, 176, 196, and HC, 49. Bramble also notes the “horrid sounds” and “variations of
(38:319-20). ( discord” at Bath {HC, 32). In Ferdinand Count Fathom, Captain Minikins voice “resembled the
sound of a bassoon” {FCF, 183); in Launcelot Greaves, Launcelots face resembled a fiddle {LG, i
191. For these meetings, see PP, 163, 187 and 317, 312, 424.
102). William Freedman has similarly suggested, in “risky words,” that Laurence Sterne “heard
192. For these meetings, see FGF, 142, 302, 174, 196, 278, 107-8. ^ music in his head while writing Tristram Shandy”', see William Freedman, Laurence Sterne and the I ’
193. For these meetings, see LG, 97 and 185 and 238, 129, 107 and 234,'457. Ori^ns o f the Musical Novel, 12—14. s
194. For these meetings, see HC, 304-5, 298-99, 314-15. 218. See Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” 11.16 (194-95). Smith also noted the strong affinity of (vocal)
music, poetry, and dancing; see Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” II.l—8 (187—90).
195. See HC, 21, 257.
219. //C ,8 5 . I :
196. HC,12.
220. See HC, 92, and FCF, 208. ^ t
197. FGF, 322.
221. TFI, 27:231-32. Smollett is also entertained by a "^maestro di capelLT at St. Remo (25:208) and 4^ *
198. PR, 425. ^ t
by Mr. Mayne at Nice (12:116). i
199. TFI, 11:94. Ib
222. PP, 652. <
200. Smollett wrote to M. Fizes that he found himself “pursued by unutterable grief, anxiety, indigna­
tion, and the cruel remembrance of his irretrievable loss” (11:94). Lewis Knapp has observed 223. Peregrine repeats the lines “in this manner”: “To begprotection for the men who lie,— / Trembling
behind their ramparts*', another critic was misled by Garrick’s performance in Nicholas Rowe’s i
Smollett’s sense of loss; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 4, 21-22, 246-47.
The Fair Penitent. See PP, 651—52. t
i
201. TFI, 41:345. See the second section of the fitst chapter of this book.
224. See HC, 193-96.
202. For this concept, see Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 407-8.
i "
225. Lismahago’s argument has been shown to have some relationship to the Philosophy o f Rhetoric
203. For these references, see PR, 435, PP, 780, and FGF, 359. t
by George Campbell (1719—1796), published in 1776 but discussed by the Edinburgh literati
204. For these references, see LG, 254 and HC, 334. (and presumably by Smollett) in the 1760s; see Thomas R. Preston’s introduction to his edition
205. HC, 334. of Humphry Clinker, xxxii—xxxiv.

206. RR,A55. 226. Sec RR, 62.

207. PP, 781, 19.
208. See FGF, 351-52; and HC, 165-66. Also see PP, 183.
209. LG, 254.
210. HC, 317.
211. For this reference to Freud, and an account of how SmoUett used “caricature” to turn the gro­
tesque” into “art,” see Karhl, “Smollett as Caricaturist, 199.
212. Ferdinand is a “virtuoso in musick”; see FGF, 159.
227. Ruth Smith writes that an oratorio involved “a perceived mismatch between music, subject mat­
ter and location”; see Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought, 45.
i
228. See Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought, 23.
229. Traveling to London at night, Roderick and Strap cannot see their fellow travelers. A captain’s
voice seems to mutter “like distant thunder,” but when Smollett sees his body, he is put in mind
of “extension without substance”; see RR, 48-50. Ruth Smith writes that Handel “did not neces­
sarily notice or co-operate with” the “message” of his librettist; see Smith, Handel's Oratorios and
Eighteenth-Century Thought, 38-39.

213. FGF, 157,159, 244-45. 230. The voices of Smollett’s novels include national dialects (Ferdinand was saluted with such a J
214. See PR, 222, LG, 233, and FGF, 208. “strange confusion of sounds” on entering a coffee house [FCF, 90]), slang terms (such as “tip
the wink” [ ^ , 54; PP, 641]), as well as the discourses of the law {RR, 332; cf. LG, 43), medicine
215. See Smith, “O f the Imitative Arts,” 11.12 (191).

[ 179]
[ 178 ]

J
N O T E S
NOTES

(LG, 117). mathematics <,PP, 133-34), gambling (RR. 316), toasting {RR, 348), “punctiUio” long reproached vdth fanaticism and canting, abounds at present with ministers celebrated for their
i^FCF, 61; RR, 311), the countryside (PP, 597; cf. LG, 47), and the sea (PP, 392; LG, 119-20). learning, and respectable for their moderation”; sec H Q 226.

231. PP, 225, 219. The Latin phrase derives from Horace, Satires, I.i.69 (“Change but the name, of
you the tale is told”); see James Clifford’s note to his edition of Peregrine Pickle, 788.
232. IjG, 134.
233. TH, 39:328-29.
234. See Shepherd, Methodism ari^ the Literature o f the Eighteenth Century, 194-95. Shepherd also
notes the burning of the playhouse at Glasgow in 1764.
235. TFl, yZ-.lll. At Nice, Smollett had su^ested that the number of “religious feasts, sacrifices, lasts,
and holidays” of the “antient Romans” was “even greater than those of the Christian church of
Rome” (20:176).
236. Ferguson wrote that plays exposed “the vices and absurdities of the Popish Clergy”; see Ferguson,
Morality o f Stage-Plays, 14. Also see Witherspoon, Serious Enquiry, 5, 8. 29, and Barish, The
Antitheatrical Prejudice, 160-61.
237. See Tobin, Plays by Scots, 1-2. Smollett commented on such festivals at Boulogne (4:27-28),
Nice (20:175-77), and Florence (27:229-30).
238. TFL,A:27.
239. Also see Smollett’s account of the “amusements” at Nice (17:154-55).
253. See Carlyle, Anecdotes^ 43—44. For an account of the “polite” values of the “new school,” see Sher,
Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 57—58, 152-54. William Leechman was the
professor of divinity at Glasgow from 1744 to 1759, and was made principal of the university in
1761; he was also a founding member of the Anderston club to which Smollett addressed some of
his letters in Travels through France and Italy. See Kennedy, “William Leechman, Pulpit Eloquence
and the Glasgow Enlightenment,” 56-72.
_ 254. Ebenezer Erskine (I 68O—1754) and seven colleagues withdrew from the “prevailing party” in
1740 (over the issue of church patronage); see Fawcett, The Cambuslang Revival, 24-28.
255. Leechman’s rival for the divinity chair, John MacLaurin (1693-1754), had been involved in the
revival at Cambuslang sec Kennedy, “William Leechman, Pulpit Eloquence and the Glasgow
Enlightenment,” 56-59. Whitefield also preached at Cambuslang in July 1742; see Fawcett, The
Cambuslang Revival, 114.
256. For an account of the activities of Methodists and Moravians, see Langford, A Polite and Com­
mercial People, 238-87.
257. See Hume, History, 5:70; quoted by Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 66.
258. TFl, 5:39. 27:230, 33:290.
259. Ibid., 28:240, 26:217.

240. TFl, 4:29. See Barish. The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 239-41, and Witherspoon. Serious Enquiry, 260. Ibid., 31:268.
69-71. Smollett made a similar observation in Nice (20:175—76). 261. Ibid., 4:28.

241. T F lA a ^ . 262. C ont.,^\M \\ cf 36:313.

242. Ibid., 4:28. 263. Cant., 4:121-22. At Boulogne, Smollett describes the “devotees” in France: “Their pretensions to
superior sanctity, and an absolute conquest over all the passions, which human reason was never
243. Ibid.
yet able to subdue, introduce a habit of dissimulation, which, like all other habits, is confirmed
244. For Whitefield’s perceived theatricality, see Shepherd, Methodism and the Literature o f the Eigh­ by use, till at length they become adepts in the art and science of hypocrisy” (777, 5:39).
teenth Century, 192-93.
264. See Wesley, Journal, 6:229-30. Wesley was writing in April 1779, by which time he would have
245. T F l A a i - l i . perhaps understated his earlier involvement with the Moravians; see Podmore, The Moravian
246. Ibid., 5:39. Church in England, 73-80.

247. Ibid.. 4:28. 265. Cont.,AA21.

266. TFl, 12:109.
248. Ibid.
267. Ibid., 25:210.
249. Ibid., 27:230.
268. Also see Smollett’s accounts of the monks of St. Francisco di Paolo in relation to a sea turtle
250. Ibid., 5:39.
(19:164—65) and their “privy” (22:185). Notably, Wesley, in his journal, laments Smollett’s
251. Ibid., 4:28. “dogmatic” attitude and his “manner of speaking concerning witchcraft”; see Wesley, Journal
252. In a letter to Carlyle (1747), Smollett alluded to Carlyle’s new “Life of a Scottish Parson,” and com­ Guly4, 1770), 5:375.
mented that he could not “without Mortification observe a young Fellow ofTaste and Spirit, reduced
269. r77. 25:210.
to such a Gothic Dilemma, as will neither permitt Him to improve the One, or indulge the other,
270. Ibid., 17:152.
but even compell him to Condescensions he can ill digest in espousing Principles he may at bottom
disdain”; see I-etters, A. In Humphry Clinker, however. Bramble notes that “the kirk of Scotland, so 271. See Cont, 4:122.

[ 180] [ 181 ]
N O T E S !
272. TFI,5-39.
273. Ibid., 3:16.
274. Ibid., 34:297.
275. Ibid.. 12:109-10; 12:105.
276. Smollett was referring to the education of “English girls” at convents in France: here, they “im­
bibe prejudices against the protestant religion” and “their own country” (3:16). Smollett wrote
that Whitefield and Wesley “^ u n d means to lay the whole kingdom under contribution”; see
Cent, 4:122.
277. The “Moderate Party” sought to promote church discipline and held a “fundamentally conserva­
tive view of civil and ecclesiastical organization”; see Sher, Church and University in the Scottish
Enlightenment^ 50—54.
278. See Langford. A Polite and Comrnercial People, 253. Smollett may also have been inspired by
Christopher Anstey’s The New Bath Guide, which featufcd Methodist characters; see Prestons
introduction to his edition of Humphry Clinker, xxvT
279. At Glasgow, Jery mentions “an intercourse of devotion, at the meeting of Mr. John Wesley; who,
in the course of his evangelical mission, had come hither in person. See HC, 231, and Wesley,
Journal (June 18, 1766), 5:170—71.
280. For example. T. B. Shepherd believes that “the book is as much an apologia for Methodism as it
is a criticism”; see Shepherd, Methodism and the Literature o f the Eighteenth Century, 224.
281. See//C , 134-36.
282. Locke wrote, “When the Spirit brings Light into our Minds, it dispels Darkness. We see it. as
we do that of the Sun at Noon, and need not the twilight of Reason to shew it us . . . we may
as rationally take a Glow-wotme to assist us to discover the Sun, as to examine the celestial Ray
by our own dim Candle, Reason”; see Locke, Essay, IV. xix. 8-9 (699-700). For another possible
source (a couplet by Edward Young), see Prestons note in his edition oiHumphry Clinker, 387n8.
283. Locke, Essay, IV.xix.7 (699).
284. Locke, IV.xtx. 10 (702).
285. See the introduction to this book; and TFI TTil'iH. Also see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 111, and
Langford. A Polite and Commercial People, 242.
286. 7/C,134. The turnkey at Clerkenwell similarly fears that “we shall all die like so many psalm­
singing weavers”; see HC, 147.
287. See HC, 137, 168. Notably, Bramble has a “foolish pique at the name of Matthew, because it
savours of those canting hypocrites, who, in Cromwell’s time, christened all their children by
names taken from the scripture”; see HC, 186-87. Liddy exposes some of the dangers of expe­
riencing “manifestations and revelations” when she writes, “I should think myself abandoned of
grace; for I have neither seen, heard, nor felt anything of this namre, although I endeavour to
discharge the H-nies of religion with all the sincerity, zeal, and devotion, that is in the power of
. . . Lydia Melford”; see i/C , 251-
288. Clinker rescues Bramble from the sea and a river; see HC, 177-79, 300-302. Faced with the
potential patronage of the “reasonable” Bramble or his “calvinistical sister. Clinker notably
[ 1 82 ]
NOTES
“submits” to Bramble’s “rank and learning” {HC, 136); he is the only principal character not to
write a letter in the novel.
289. For a discussion of Wesley’s attempts to reconcile “&ith” and “holiness,” see Rivers, Reason, Grace
and Sentiment, 1:205-53.
290. Locke, Essay, IV.xix.9 (700).
291. HCj 337.
292. See HC, 152-53. As in his description of the Moravians in the Continuation, Smollett suggested
a sexual aspect to Tabitha and Winifred’s “enthusiasm”: Winifred, for example, concludes her let­
ter to Mary Jones by hoping that she will “pray without seizing for grease to prepare [Mary] for
the operations of this wonderful instrument, which, [Winifred] hope[s], will be exorcised upon
[Mary] and others at Brambleton-hall.” See HC, 152 (c£ 263—64), and Cont,, 4:123. Arthur
Fawcett notes that this criticism was brought against revivalists at Cambuslang; see Fawcett, The
CambuslangPsn\ysA, 143—44.
293. See W a r n e r , Grandfathers, 81-83.
294. This reflects Bakhtin’s description of the “centripetal” and “centrifugal” forces of language; see
Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 270-75.
295. See Warner,/twicer Grandfathers, 77—78.
296. See Warner, Joyce's Grandfathers, 83. In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett similarly ob­
served the relationship between "wheat-ears" and "white-a—se" (3:17-18).
297. For this description of satirical laughter, see Bakhtin, Rabelais arul His World, 12.
298. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 11-12.
299. m , 33:287-88.
300. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 5.
301. See Smollett’s review of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in CR 10 (1760): 315.
302. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 7.
303. See Scouten, The London Stage, 679. An article (possibly by Smollett) in the British Magazine
described the relationship of a “new comedy” to Italian “commedia dell'arte" and the English tra­
dition of pantomime; see BM 2 (1761): 413-15. Notably, Lismahago in Humphry Clinker, was
“peculiarly adapted to his part” as Pierot in “Harlequin Skeleton”; see HC, 331.
304. The Licensing Act took the form of an amendment to a vagrancy law of 1714; the Act is reprinted
in Thomas and Hare, Theatre in Europe, 207-10. Alasdair Cameron wrote that the “Scots were so
used to acrobats and street entertainers that, until the mid-nineteenth century, the country word
for actor was ‘tumbler’”; see Cameron, “Theatre in Scotland,” 194.
305. See Cameron, “Theatre in Scotland,” 198, 202, and Sher, Church and University in the Scottish
Enlightenment, 77.
306. See Smollett’s review of George Colman’s TheJealous Wife'm C R \\ (1761); 132. Harry William
Pedicord provides anecodotes from the 1790s describing the “uproar” (and amount of orange-
peel) in the theater; see Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time o f Garrick, 44-45.
[ 183]
 NOTES
NOTES

307. Sec Thomas and Hare, Theatre in Europe^ 394—97, and Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time
ofGarricky 55, 59-60. Bakhtin crotc that “footlights would destroy a carnival,” since “carnival
does not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction between ac­
tors and spectators”; see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His Worlds 1.
308. See Thomas and Hare, Theatre in Europe^ 400, and Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time
o f Garrick^ 52-53. Audiences showed their power in debates about casting, opening times, and
prices. , ‘
309. See M R 16 (1757): 179. The half-price tradition meant that afterpieces were accessible for 6d;
see Thomas and Hare, Theatre in Europe, 394. It was Garricks infringement of this tradition
that led to the “Fitzgiggo riots” in January 1763. ,-
310. 777:20:176.
311. TFT, 20:155. At Rome, Smollett noted that there were “no public diversions, except in carnival-
time” (29:252). Terry Castle has ecplored the affinity of masquerades and carnival: masqeraders,
she writes, “developed scenes of existential recombination” that threatened “unitary notions of
the self”; see Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation, 4.
2. In a letter to Carlyle, Smollett wrote, “I shall enquire about Home’s Essays and doubt not of being
entertained by them according to your Prognostic.” Although Lewis Knapp suggests that Smollett
was referring to Hume’s Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding (1748), it seems
more likely that he meant Three Essays, Moral and Political (published in Edinburgh and lx>ndon in
1748). While the former work was anonymous, the latter was the first work to bear Hume’s name
and was incorporated into the third edition of Essays, Moral and Political (1748). See Smolletts
letter tp Carlyle (ca. 1747), in Letters, 5.
3. See Hume, “O f the Study of History.” in Essays, 563-65.
4. Ibid., 567-68.
5. Ibid., 568.
6. Hume, “O f the Study o f History,” in Essays, 567. The Critical Review noted that Smollett “was
commendable for espousing the cause of virtue and humanity, in opposition to cruelty and
immoral schemes of policy; and he takes all occasions to declare himself an advocate for the
natural rights of mankind, without adopting the barbarous maxims of an enthusiastic repub­
lican"; see C/?3 (1757); 482.

312. See Fawcett, The Cambttslang Revival, 114-22. 7. See CR 7 (1759): 288.

313. TFT, 35:308. See Smollett’s account of “church pageantry” at Florence (27:229-30) and the 8. See Mossner, Life o f David Hume, 312—15.
“retinue” of a “Roman princess” traveling to Assisi (34:296). 9. For an account of the publication of Smollett’s History, see Knapp, “The Publication of Smolletts
314. TFT, 10:83-84. Complete History. . . and Continuation" 295-308.
10. See Hume’s letter to Andrew Mfilar (May 17. 1762), in Hume. Letters, 1-.358-60. All references
315. Ibid., 16:144-45.
to Smollett’s History are to this revised (octavo) edition, published in eleven volumes. For a bib­
316. Ibid., 32:272-73.
liographical account of Smollett’s History, including how the plates complicated the publication,
317. Ibid., 25:212. see May, “Authoritative Editions of Smollett’s Complete History o f England" 240-305.
318. Ibid., 39:330. 11. The fourth volume of the Continuation was published in 1762 (not, as stated on the title page,
319. Ibid., 40:334. 1761); see Knapp. “The Publication of Smollett’s Complete History . . ■ and Continuation,

320. Ibid., 10:87. 300-302.

12. Mossner cites a report in the New Evening Post (December 6, 1776); see Mossner, Life o f David
321. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 255. Also see Goethe, Italienische Reise (1816-1817), 40;
for this translation, see Goethe, Italian Journey, 52. Hume, 555-56.
13. Lewis Knapp cites Robert Anderson’s account; see Knapp, “The Publication of Smolletts Com­
322. Walter Scott referred to Peregrine’s “blacl^uard frolic of introducing a prostitute, in a ftlse
plete History . . . and Continuation,” 304-5. Ian Simpson Ross considers Smollett’s history from
character, to his sister” as a “sufficient instance of that want o f taste and feeling which Smollett’s
the perspective of this combination; see Ross, “‘Mote dull, but by no means so dangerous as that
admirers are compelled to acknowledge may be present in his writings”; see Scott, “Memoir of
of Mr Hume’; Smollett’s 'Continuation of le bon David’s History o f England" 217-39.
the Life of the Author,” xxxvii-xxxviii. Bakhtin wrote that such “carnival laughter” both “buries
and revives”; see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 12. 14. See Hume’s letter to William Robertson (March 12. 1759), in Hume, Letten, 1:301-3.

323. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 256. 15. CR 2 (1756); 404. Such blemishes were mainly stylistic; however, in a later review, Smollett
observed historical inaccuracies (for example, he noted that “the patent, page 2, obtained by the
324. rT /, 31:271.
Duke of Lancaster for the legitimation of his natural children is not silent, as this historian sup­
poses, upon the point of succession to the crown”). See CR 1 (1759): 290.

Chapter 4: A Friend of Virtue 16. a ? 2 (1756): 395.

17. CR2 (1756); 386.
1. For the publishing history of this essay, see Eugene F. Miller’s notes in his edition of Hume’s Essays,
xii-xiii, 563. 18. CHE, l:iv.

[ 185]
[184]

N O T E si
19. Hume, “O f the Study o f History,” in Essays, 568.
20. C/J3 (1757): 482 (cf. 449-58).
21. CR 2 (1756); 394, and CR 3 (1757): 482. In the introduction to his History, Smollett explains
that his footnotes would include such “detached events, and private anecdotes, which tho’ tending
to elucidate the story, would, if inserted in the context, disunite the chain of incidents, and spoil
the uniformity of the execution”: see CHE, 1:vi.
22. The lines formed part of an ano|iymous ode “To Dr. Smollett,” published in Lloyd's Evening Post,
and British Chronicle (February 20—22, 1760); the poem is reprinted by Knapp, Tobias Smollett, _
223-25.
23. a ? 2 (1756); 394.
24. Smollett wrote that “pictures” of battles “leave agreeable impressions'on the memory, and serve
as land-marks to those who embark in the voyage of history”;'see CR 2 (1756): 395 (cf. CR 4
[1757]: 387).
25. See the third section of the second chapter of this book.
26. See David Raynor, “Hume and Robertsons History ofScotlandP 59—63.
27. a ? 7 (1759): 89.
28. Ibid., 90.
29. See C,3.t\y\e, Anecdotes, 172-73.
30. See Hugh Blairs lecture on “Historical Writing” in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
(1783), 2:282-85. Blair gave Smollett’s History as an example of a misapplied metaphorical style;
see his lecture on “Metaphor,” in Lectures, 1:301-2.
31. See the first section of the third chapter of this book.
32. For an account of Buchanan’s influence, see O ’Brien, Narratives o f Enlightenment, 104—11.
33. O ’Brien writes that in Home’s play Douglas, the hero “exemplifies a type of Buchananite stoic
nobleman eager to defend through deeds of martial valour the integrity of Scotland”; see O ’Brien,
Narratives o f Enlightenment, 109.
34. See Blair’s lectures on “Historical Writing” (Lectures, 2:284) and “Metaphor” {Lectures, 1:301).
35. See O ’Brien, Narratives o f Enlightenment, 1—2.
36. Ibid., 96, 99.
37. Ibid., 57-58.
38. O ? 7 (1759):90.
39. Ibid., 1.
40. Ibid. For an account of Smollett’s involvement in The Univenal History, see Martz, “Tobias Smol­
lett and the Universal History" 1—14. Also see Smollett’s five surviving letters to Samuel Richard­
son (from April 1759 to O aober 1760), in Letters, 78-79, 87-92.
41. Louis Martz speculates that Smollett “was responsible for nearly 3000 folio pages”; see Martz,
“Tobias Smollett and the Universal History^ 11. Basket has identified Smollett as the author of
[ 1 86]
NOTES
seventeen teviews of the Universal History (appearing in the Critical Review between 1759 and
1763); see Basket, Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist, 225-28.
42. See O? 7 (1759): 14.
43. See CHE, l:v. Also see Hume’s letter to Horace Walpole (August 2, 1758) in Hume, Letters,
1:284-85.
44^_Hume quoted the Roman proverb, “I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato,” in
order to demonstrate how the “incredibility of a fa ct. . . might invalidate so great an authority”:
see Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (first published in 1748 as Philosophical
Essays concerning Human Understanding^, X.i (113). David Wootton discusses Humes historical
criticism” in “David Hume, ‘The Historian,’” 285-90.
45. See MR, 28 (1763); 249-56. Paul-Gabriel Bouce speculates (as did Ruffhead) whether Smollett
wrote A Journal o f a Campaign on the Coast o f France (reviewed in Cf? 6 (1758): 420-23); see Paul-
Gabriel Boucd, “A Note on Smollett’s Continuation o f the Complete History ofEnglandJ 57-61.
46. See Martz, latter Career o f Tobias Smollett, 73-87.
47. 77=7,31:268.
48. Smollett observed that he found “satisfaction in perusing the book in three volumes, intitled, Roma
antica, e modema" (29:240). For an account of Smollett’s borrowings, see Martz, Later Career o f
Tobias Smollett, 73—80.
49. See Wootton, “David Hume, ‘The Historian,’” 284—85.
50. See Wootton, “David Hume, “The Historian,’” 285.
51. Blair’s lecture on “Historical Writing,” in Lectures, 2:288.
52. CR 7 (1759): 293. Geoffrey Carnall has described how “Historians after Voltaire felt it incumbent
on them to realize as fully as possible the social context within which the events narrated occurred,
but to do this without loss of narrative impetus was perceived as a condition of success”: see Car­
nall, “Historical Writing in the Later Eighteenth Century,” 207.
53. TFI, 15:141-42.
54. See Carnall, “Historical Writing in the Later Eighteenth Century," 215.
55. Karen O ’Brien wrote that “The History o f Scotland reflects Robertson’s anxiety that Scottish culture
cannot sustain itself unless turned towards the wider world, but also dramatises his regret for the
lost worlds of Scottish history”; see O ’Brien, Narratives o f Enlightenment, 128.
56. TFI, 17:150.
57. Ibid., 15:135.
58. See Hume, History, 6:407.
59. See CHE 8:164 (and CHE, 7:206); cf. Hume, History, 6:381 (and 5:362-63).
60. Hume, “My Own Life,” in Essays, xxxvii.
61. See CHE, 7:327, 447; and CHE, 8:65, 98, 185.
[ 187]
 N O T E S
NOTES

62. Laura^Kennelly has suggested that Hume’s History was a “bestseller under Oliver Goldsmith’s 88. CHE, 1:2.
name ; see Laura B. Kennelly, “Tory history incognito; Hume’s History o f England ia Goldsmith’s
History o f England” 398-99. 89. Smollett also cited the Philosophical Transactions to support his “observation” that Britain was
originally joined to France; see CHE, 1:3-4, 27. In Travels through France and Italy, Smollett
63. C/ffi, 7:85-86.
noted that it was “now believed that the portus Itius, from whence Caesar sailed to Britain, is a
64. See Hume, History 5:104-6. place called Whitsand" (3:15).
65. Other parallels include C ottin^on’s “presumption to give his advice upon matters of state” and See CHE, 1:113. Hume noted that monks had a “propensity to imposture”; see Hume, History,
that, after all this passion on both sides. James renewed his consent; and proper directions were^- 1:24-25, 132.
given for the journey”; see H u m e , 5:105-6. 91. H u m e , 6:541.
66. See Greene, “Smollett the Historian: A Reappraisal,” 31-32. , --' 92. CHE,1:4.
67. See Slater. Authorship and Authority in Hume’s ff« » ;j/(^ A n ^ /^ 4 ’’'250-52. 93. See Hume, HUtory, 5:277.
68. See fonnelly, “Tory history incognito: Hume’s History o f England in Goldsmith’s HUtory o f Eng­ 94. Cfffi, 8:40.
land” 400, and Slater. “Authorship and Authority in Hlime’s HUtory ofEngUndT 251 Also see
95. Ibid., 7:62.
CHE, 1:561.
96. Hume, HUtory, 6:86. For an account of Hume’s understanding of the civil war as a “war of
69. For the possibility of this influence, see O ’Brien. Narratives o f Enlightenment. 115.
religion,” see Phillipson, Hume, 73.
70. Hume, History^ 5:559.
97. See Hume, Treatise, I.I.iv (10); and Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, III
71. Hume, Treatise, introduction (xhc), and Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, I (14). (23-24).
72. See Hume, History^ 5:353. 98. Having narrated that James tore the “protestation” from the “journals of the commons,” Hume
73. Hume, History 5:543. commented, “the king having thus, with so rash and discreet a hand, torn off that sacred veil,
74. Ibid., 5:119. which had hitherto covered the English constitution, and which threw an obscurity upon it, so
advantageous to royal prerogative, every man began to indulge himself in political reasonings and
75. CHB.7:373.
enquiries”: see Hume, HUtory, 5:92-93.
16. Ibid., 1:6. Hume noted that James had “little opportunity for acquiring experience”; see Hume. 99. See Hume, HUtory, 5:178. Smollett also noted that religion was an “inflammatory ingredient”
HUtory, 5:24.
deliberately “mingled” in the petition of right; see CHE, 7:125.
77. Hume, HUtory, 5:533.
100. CHE, 8:206. Also see Smollett’s description of a “universal ferment” surrounding the Popish Plot
78. See Mossner, Ufe o f David Hume, 310. and the “inference” of a “suppositious child” (as heir to James II). in CHE, 8:124, 242.
79. CHE, l;i-ii. 101. CHE, 7:448; cf. Hume, HUtory, 5:450.

80. In a letter to William Huggins Quly 2. 1758). Smollett wrote that he piqued himself “upon be­ 102. Hume was contemplating the “conspiracy” involving Walter Raleigh; see HUtory, 5:8.
ing the only Historian of this Country who has had Honesty, Temper and Courage enough to be 103. Hume observed that Charles “reconciled his mind” to such “calamities”; see Hume, History
wholly impartial and disinterested”; see Letters, 69. 5:517, 534. He also noted a similar “artifical confounding o f the two species of treason” in the
81. CHE, 1:1. trial of Lord Russell; see Hume, HUtory, 6:431—33.

82. Hume, “Essay on History," in Essays, 566-67. 104. CHE, 7:417; cf. Hume, History, 6:72.
83. CHE, 1:1-2. 105. See CHE, 7:271—72; cf. Hume, HUtory, 5:416—17. Hume noted that the Earl of Holland “several
times changed sides” and observed the “prudence” o f Moncl^ see Hume. History, 5:521, 6:125.
84. For a discussion of Hume’s view of the unalterability of “human nature," see Norton, “Hume,
David Wootton wrote that the “true heroes of Hume’s account were thus the men who had
Human Nature, and the Foundations o f Morality,” 158-59.
known when to change sides”; see Wootton, “David Hume, ‘The Historian,’” 302-3.
85. Hume seems to have been interested in the seventeenth century as a period in which the "minds of
106. CHE,1:\46.
men underwent “a general, but insensible revolution”; see Hume, History, 5:240-41.
107. Hume, HUtory, 6:106.
86. See Wootton, “David Hume, T he Historian,”’ 288-90.
108. Before marrying Bertha, Ethelbert, like Charles I, “was obliged to stipulate, that the princess
87. See Hume. HUtory, 1:3.
should enjoy the free exercise of her religion": see Hume, HUtory, 1:28, 40.
[ 188 ]
[ 189]
N O T E S NOTES

i
109. See Hume, History, 1:39. 132. The “167 plates and heads” formed part of the second (octavo) edition; see Knapp, “The Publica­
n o . See CHE, 7:303. tion of Smollett’s Complete History . . . and Continuation,” 297-98. Other illustrations were
included in the first edition: the Critical Review praised the “designer and engravers of the three
111. See CHE, 8:272 (cf. 236). Smollett suggested that Charles II did not retreat to France, partly
frontispieces" that were “well conceived and elegantly executed”; see CR3 (1757): 481. At thebe-
because he did not “relish the prospect of living with a mother, who had endeavoured already to
ginning of his History, Smollett noted that “in this delightful study, we become acquainted with
direct his conduct, with the most despodc authority,” and noted the influence of Mademoiselle de
Querotiaille; see CHE, 7:373, 8:62. the characters and even the persons of those heroes who triumphed over barbarity”; see CHE, 1:1.

112. Hume, History, 6:448. 133. See CHE, 7:416 (facing). Also see the (cross-eyed) picture of John Wilkes, in Cont., 5:211 (fac-
- ing).
113. Hume wrote (of James II) that “so great an infatuation [with Catholicism] is perhaps an object
of compassion rather than o f anger”; describing Charles I at Oxford, Hume noted that “perhaps 134. CHE, 7:371-72; cf. Hume, History, 5:540-41.
in no period of his life was he more jusdy the object of compassion.” See Hume History, 6:494, 135. CHE, 8:9.
5:479. 136. CHE, 7:445. Smollett also wrote that the “internal disturbance” of James II “had such an effect
114. For this phrase, see Hume, History, 5:210. upon his constitution, that blood gushed from his nostrils”; see CHE, 8:262.
115. CHE, 7:367-70. Smollett confirmed the unnaturalness of the event: “Such were the impressions 137. CHE, 8:157-58. Smollett also noted the “infectious distempers” of London (8:39; cf. 7:10) and
of grief and horror made by this melancholy spectacle that some pregnant women lost the fruit that a heart “was seen to palpitate on the executioner’s knife” (8:187); unlike Hume, he observed
of their wombs; others were seized with convulsions; and many fell into violent distempers that that the “practice of medicine was gready improved” in the period (by Sydenham) (8:207-8).
conveyed them to their graves” (370).
138. 8:143.
116. See Hume, Treatise, Ill.i (455-70); cf. I.iii.xiv (155-72).
139. Hume, History, 5:68.
117. See Hume. Enquiry concerning the Principles o f Morals, Appendbc I (289). For a brief discussion
140. Hume, History, 5:73. Smollett wrote, “Whatever his motives might have been for enforcing this
of Humes concept of “moral sensibility,” see Norton, “Hume, Human Nature, and the Founda­
practice, it was not a bad ptesetvative against the deperate effects of gloomy fanaticism, which
tions of Morality,” 160-63.
had already taken full possession of one kingdom, and made considerable progress in the other”;
118. See Hume, History, 5:486, and CHE, 7:315. see CHE, 7:59.
119. Cornelius de W it was being tortured; Hume reprinted a translation of the ode in a footnote. See 141. CHE, 7:391. In a similar way, Smollett noted that, in 1689, the “zeal of the parliament towards
Hume, History, 6:269. their deliverer [William III] seems to have overshot their attachment to their own liberty and
120. See CHE, 7:400; cf. Hume, History, 6:35-38. privileges”; sec CHE, 8:291.
121. See CHE, 8:217; cf. Hume, History For Smollett, the young ptetender (or “vanquished 142. See CHE, 7:317-''-18. For similar terras, see Smollett’s account of the Popish Plot, in CHE, 8:130,
adventurer") underwent “such a series of dangers, hardships, and misery, as no other person ever 157.
out-lived”; see CHE, 11:237—42.
143. O ffi, 7:233.
122. See CHE, 7:198; cf. Hume. History, 5:341-43. 144. CHE, 7:221. Smollett described what Friedrich Nietzsche would have called a “slave revolt in
123. Hume, History, 6:160. morals”; Nietzsche allies “slave” morality with revenge, "ressentiment,” and the “internalization of
124. Cfffi; 8:157. man.” See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy o f Morals (1887), 21—25, 64-66.

125. See CHE, 7:187. Hume added that the “aged primate dissolved in tears”; see Hume, History 145. See Hume’s letter to John Clephane (ca. 1756), in Hume, Letters, 1:237.
5:326. 146. For an account of the pamphlet A Vindication o f the Great Revolution in England (1758) by
126. See Hume, History, 6:24; cf. CHE, 7:385. Thomas Comber, see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 187—90.

127. CHE,Z-.\72-7i. 147. CS 5 (1758): 2.

128. See Hume, History, 6:395. 148. O? 3 (1757): 494.

129. CH£. 8:266. 149. See Hume, History 5:212. Hume noted that, after the death of Cromwell, anybody “even equal
to him in genius,” would “find it more difficult to practise arts, of which, every one, from experi­
130. 777, 32:273.
ence, was sufficiendy aware”; he also observed that the so-called godly party had become the
131. O ffi, 7:98. “good and the honest party”; see Hume, History, 6:125, 377.

[ 190 ] [ 191 ]
 N O T E S
I
NOTES

150. See Hume, History, 5:130 (cf. 442-43).
151. See Smollett’s letter to William Hunter (February 24, 1767), m Letters, 132-33.
152. For an account of the publication of Catharine Macaulays History, see Hill, The Republican
Virago, 25-26.
153 Donald Sierbert has written that Macaulays version of the execution of Charles I is a flat,
humdrum paraphrase of Hume, with elements of burlesque that divest the scene of its Humean
majesty”; see Sierbert, “Catiiarine Macaulays History o f England-. Antidote to Hume’s Htstorf.
393-96. Also see Hill, The Republican Virago, 30. , - --
154. See Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 260.
155. TA/, 7:52-62. ^ '
156. See Bmapp, “The Publication of Smollett’s Complete History. . . and Continuation, 300-302.
157. See Miles, “Bibliography and Insanity: Smollett and the Mad-Business, 214-15.
158. See the dedication to George Canning, An appeal to the publick from the malicious misrepresen­
tations o f the Critical Reviewers (1767); reprinted in Noyes, ed.. Letters o f Tobias Smollett, 216.
Quoted in Miles, “Bibliography and Insanity: Smollett and the Mad-Busmess, 2l6.
159. Cont., 5:v.
160. Ibid., 5:iii.
161 Ibid. 5-19. Smollett gave an account of the “spirit in Cock-lane as an example of how many
' weak minds in respeaable spheres of life, were infected by the fears of the vulgar”; he later wrote
that “the common people were infected with the utmost degeneracy of manners. The commision
of rapes, robberies, and murders, continued to be as frequent as ever, and the many examples ol
punishment produced little or no amendment.” See Cont., 5:21, 292.
edition, unsold, was bought up”; however, this has been shown to have no foundation. See
Macalpine and Hunter, George III and the Mad-Business, 184-86. Peter Miles has speculated
that SmoUett’s support for Bute might lie behind the volume’s apparent suppression; however.
Miles decided that they were “not dealing with suppression but simply with the feet that less
copies were printed.” See Miles, “Bibliography and Insanity: Smollett and the Mad-Business,”
208-9, 216-18. Nonetheless, the feet that fewer copies of this volume were printed (and
reprinted) may suggest a form of “suppression.
174. TFI, 1:2.
175. Cont., 5:445.
176. T E I,2 6 :W .
177. Ibid.
178. See Cont., 5:446-49.
179. TFI, 12:105. See Cont., 5:69-76. O f John Galas, SmoUett wrote, “This venerable martyr bore his
fete with such primitive simplicity and fortimde, as even excited the admiration of his persecu­
tors” (75). His story was also important for Voltaire; see Mason, Voltaire: A Biography, 98-99.
180. TFI, 7:52-53, 26:214. SmoUett wrote how three Indian chiefs of the Cherokee nation saw all
the improvements of arts and mechanics, the commerce, strength, and opulence of England,
without discovering the least symptom of admiration, either in word, look, or gesture ; see
Cont., 5:25. For SmoUett’s account of Pascal Paoli (1725-1807) in Corsica, see Cont., 5:381-86.
181. rA7, 12:112.
182. The scheme was supported by the “Society for the Encouragment of Arts”; see Cont., 5:12,
434-35.
183. This was an “affeir of much greater consequence to the nation than debates among statesmen ;

162. Cont., 5:iii. see Cont.j 5:15-16, 433-34.

184. SmoUett observed that “whales are very seldom seen near the English shore”; see Cont., 5:24.
163. Ibid., 5:viii.
164. CR 5 (1758): 2; cf. CHE, 10:259-60. 185. See Cont., 5:319.
186. The “powder-magazine of Augusta” was blown up “by lightning with so much violence, that not
165. Cont., 5:298-301, 323-24.
a stone of the foundation could be observed on the place, which was so hoUowed, as to form a
166. Cont., 5:335. large pond, upwards of twenty feet in depth, fifty in breadth, and one hundred in length ; see
167. 0 5 20 (1765): 270. Cont., 5:294-95.
168. In the third volume of the Continuation, Smollett included Commodore Moore’s report on the
187. See Cont., 5:344-61.
campaign at Martinique and Guaddoupe (1759); in the fourth volume, Smollett created a paral­
188. Despite adopting this title, he seems to have been received everywhere with the “usual honours”;
lel text of these divergent accounts. See Cont., 3:447-62; and Cont., 4:372-88.
see Cont., 5:356.
1 6 9 . S ee 0 5 2 0 (1 7 6 5 ): 2 7 0 .
189. Cont., 5:354.
1 7 0 . C R 5 (1 7 5 8 ): 2.
190. Ibid., 5:348, 352; also see SmoUett’s description of the duke’s approach to Rome (354).
171. CR5 (1758): 1. 191. TFI, 29:243. Smollett noted that the duke resided with Sir Horace Mann (1701-1786) in Flor-
172. For an account of SmoUett’s work on The Briton, see Byron Gassman’s introduction in Poems,
cnce and was accompanied by him to Pisa; see Qont.^ 5:351—52.
221-40. 192. TFI, 32:273-74. Smollett wrote that, “before the duke left Rome, the pope ordered a horse-race,
173 Referring to the fifth volume of the Continuation (in 1820), Robert Anderson wrote, “It is said,
after the Roman manner, to be performed by barbs ; see Cont., 5:355.
that as soon as the paragraph, p. 444, respecting his Majesty’s iUness, was observed, the whole
[ 193]
[ 192]
N O T E*S NOTES

193. TFI, 38:318-24. Smollett described the dukes journey to Turin (when his carriage broke down 2 1 8 . m , 2 9 :3 3 1 .
on “the heights of Lonquette”); see Cont., 5:348—49.
2 1 9 . m , 3 9 :3 2 9 .
194. Smollett called this his “excursion on the continent”; see Cont., 5:46-114 (cf. 258-64, 368—96).
220. Ibid., 5:31. Smollett referred to the events of the Seven Years’ War when he described, in Boulogne,
195. m , 26:215. the “poor Canadians, who were removed from the island of St. John, in the gulph of St. Laurence,
196. The allusion was clearly to his own account of Charles I; Smollett also compared him to George when it was reduced by the English” (5:40). For similar references to the War of the Austrian Suc-
I (he was a “foreigner by birth, a circumstance always unfavourable for a prince in the opinion ^ s i o n (1743-1748), see TFI 13:118-19, 14:128, 14:132, 25:209, 26:214, and 38:323.
of his subjects”). Sec Cont., ^:85, 90. 221. TFI,1:\2.
197. TFI, 32:275-76; 20:177. ' 222. Ibid., 5:30.
198. Ibid., 16:145. 223. Cont., 5:450; cf. 329.
199. Ibid.. 28:233. ^ '' 224. Sec CHE, 11:304. Smollett’s conclusion is quoted at length in the Critical Review, see CR 5
200. 5:444, (1758): 16-17.

201. Bute became First Lord of the Treasury in May 1762rafter he resigned in 1763, he “maintained 225. See Cont., 5:450.
a shadowy political presence.” See Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 354—57; and Cont., 226. See Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 357-59.
5:202 .
227. See Cont., 5 :2 1 1 - 3 6 .
202. TFI, 1:2. 228. Sec Cont., 5:211; and Gassmans introduction to The Briton, in Poems, 230-31. Also see Smol­
203. 5:120, 117. lett’s letters to Wilkes (between March 1759 and March 1762) in Letters, 75-77, 79—80, 82,
204. Smollett later wrote that Bute’s opponents “called out for a Cromwell to head them; and were 102-4. Smollett seems to have used a “frank” of Wilkes when sending a letter to John Moore
even guilty of forgeries, that they might introduce encomiums upon that usurper”; see Cont., Qune 1, 1762); see Knapp’s footnote in Letters, 107 (and Smollett’s comment on the “public
5:31,367. abuse of franking,” in Cont., 5:312-15).

205. See Cont., 5:117-19. 229. Smollett noted Wilkes’s “guilt” at least three times; see Cont., 5:222, 230, 307.

206. In the Travels, Smollett noted the threat of “civil dissension” (1:2) and included an anecdote 230. For example, Smollett wrote that the administration “^ a in and again insisted upon extirpating
describing how Henry V complained that “he was not only plagued by the living Scots, but even the practice of issuing such warrants from a secretary of state’s office, and for making them illegal,
persecuted by those who were dead” (4:28). while the opposition, as we have already seen, insisted upon declaring them so by a vote of one
house of parliament”; see Cont., 5:425 (cf. 235, 302—11).
207. 5:118-19.
231. Byron Gassman writes that Smollett may have continued The Briton in the hope of “some future
208. Ibid., 5:121.
emolument”; see Gassman’s introduction to The Briton, in Poems, 234. Peter Miles suggests that
209. Ibid., 5:195-99. Smollett may have been reminding Bute of his obligations in the Continuation', see Miles, “Bib­
210. Ibid., 5:431. liography and Insanity: Smollett and the Mad-Business,” 219—20.
211. Ibid., 5:119. Miles has written that the fifth volume of the Continuation was published at “a time 232. See Smollett’s letter to John Home (December 27, 1762), in Letters, 110—11.
when the possibility of Bute returning to power was not beyond the bounds of contemporary 233. See Cont., 5:27-28. Smollett noted that John Home and Samuel Johnson, among others, had
imagination”; see Miles, “Bibliography and Insanity: Smollett and the Mad-Business,” 209. received a pension; he also refuted the “forged lists of North-Britons gratified with pensions, ap­
21 2 . Conr., 5:162-86. pointed to places, or promoted in the service”; see Cont., 5:118, 121.
213. For an account of the peace, see Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 347—52. 234. In his letter to John Home (December 27, 1762), Smollett noted that “in the last ministry” he
214. Cont., 5:191, 186. had “made some advances towards the Consulship of Madrid,” had been offered "the Consul­
ate of Nice” (which he had rejected), and was now contemplating the post as “English Consul
215. See Cont., 5:124-36, 190.
at Marseilles”; see Letters, 110-11. Also see Smollett’s letter to George Macaulay (October 30,
216. TFI, 1:8. 1759), in Letters, 83.
217. Ibid., 5:36-37. In the Continuation, Smollett wrote that, in 1764, the “public of France was grcady 235. Smollett concluded his letter to Home: “I need say no more upon the Subject but that if you
elated by the death of the famous duches of Pompadour, whom the people, during her life, had think there is the least Presumption, or Impropriety in making such a Request, you will take no
considered as their scourge”; see Cont., 5:333. further notice of this Hint, but suppress it as an Indiscretion”; see Letters, 111.

[ 194] [ 195]

i NOTES
N OT E S
236. Smollett approached the Earl of Shelburne about the consulship at Nice through the Duchess of
Hamilton and David Hume; see Knapp, Tobias Smollett^ 271—72. Also see Smollett s letter to the
Duchess of Hamilton (January 17, 1767). in Letters, 128-29, and Hume’s letter ro Smollett Quly
18, 1767), in Hume, Letters 2:151—52.
237. Smollett received “a letter of recommendation” to Buckland from Sir James Paterson, the (Scot­
tish) “commandant” of Nice^ until 1763 (3:15: cf. 10:88). Smollett later wrote that he visited
Buckland at Ville Franche (1*4:128).
238. CS 20 (1765): 274.
239. This was a somewhat optimistic description of the “Rockingham Ministry,” which began in July
1765; see Langford, A Polite and Commercial and People, 364-69.
240. Byron Gassman writes how George III was perceived in terms of Bolingbrokes concept of a Pa­
triot King”; see Gassman’s introduction to The Briton, in Poerns, 222—23. Paul Langford describes
the “King’s Friends,” a group surrounding Bute with an equally “shadowy political presence”; see
Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 356—57, 364—69.
241. Cont., 5:26-27 (cf. 33-34, 203-4). In Humphry Clinker, Barton describes George III as an “Au­
gustus, in patronizing merit”; Bramble adds that he was a “very honest kind-hearted gendeman
. . . he’s too good for the times.” See HC, 95.
242. Cont., l;v.
243. In different ways, Voltaire and William Robertson have also been perceived as the “final signified”
of their own historical works; see O ’Brien, Narratives o f Enlightenment, 55, 96-97.
Conclusion
1. Voltaire lived at the chateau of Ferney, near Geneva, from 1759 to 1778; see Mason, Voltaire: A
Biography, 93-140.
2. Selections of Voltaire’s writing were regularly printed in the Scots Magazine and other newspapers;
see Dwyer, “A ‘Peculiar Blessing,’” 8-9. Robert Utie published works by Voltaire in Glasgow; see
Sher, “Commerce, Religion and the Enlightenment,” 327.
3. For Voltaire’s visit to England in 1726—1728, see Mason, Voltaire: A Biography, 10—21.
4. See the seventeenth volume of The Works o f Voltaire (1762). Voltaire s Remarks on Mr. Pascals
thoughts” was included in the twenty-sixth volume; even so, the text appears to be a (re)ttansla-
tion from the French. For details about the publication of letters concerning the English Nation
and Lettres philosophiques, see Nicholas Cronk’s introduction to his edition of the former text,
xxviii—xxxii.
5. See Voltaire, I^etters concerning the English Nation, 29-30, 61-86, 117-19, 87-97.
6. See Epstein, “Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters: The Case of Voltaire’s Lettres Phihsophiques" 120.
7. Although, Nicholas Cronk has shown that Voltaire also intended an English audience: see Cronk’s
introduction to Letters concerning the English Nation, xix—xx.
8. See Cronk’s inrroduction to Letters concerning the English Nation, xvii.
[ 196]
I
9. For an extract from Goldsmith’s Memoirs o f M. de Voltaire (published in monthly installments
in the Laidy’s Magazine during 1761), see appendix C in Cronk’s edition of Letters concerning the
English Nation, 162—71.
¥
10. See Voltaire, l:iv. !
11. See Voltaire, 23:9.
X2—Bee.-Voltaire, 23:104, 122. For a discussion of Voltaire’s Jacobite sympathies, see McLynn, “Voltaire
and the Jacobite Rising of 1745,” 7-20.
13. See Voltaire, 23:82, 117.
!
14. See Smollett’s reviews of The General History and State o f Europe (Parts 5 and 6) and Candide, in I
CRA (1757): 385-95, and CS 7 (1759): 550-54.
15. See CS 4 (1757): 386.
!
16. For the attribution of this translation to Smollett, see Martz, iarer Career o f Tobias Smollett, 92.
17. See Martz, letter Career o f Tobias Smollett, 93.
18. See C S8 (1759): 189-90.
19. See Smollett’s letter to John Moore (February 8, 1767), in Letters, 131.
20. See Robert Adams Day’s introduction to the Atom, xxxrx.
21. See Day’s introduction to the Afom, xxv; cf. xlvii.
22. For a self-confessedly “opinionated and contentious” account of Smollett’s materialist leanings, see
Bruce, Radical Doctor Smollett, passim.
23. For Day’s comment, see his introduction to the Atom, bdi.
24. See Locke, Essay, IV.iii.6 (539—43), and Arotn, 5—6.
25. Hume also lived in Brewer Street in 1765: see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 259.
26. For an account of Smollett’s “final years in England and Scotland,” see Knapp, Tobias Smollett,
265-78.
27. For an account of Smollett’s “final years in Italy,” see Knapp, Tobias Smollett, 279-301.
28. See Smollett’s letter to David Hume (August 31, 1768), in Letters, 136-37.
29. Charles Batten suggests that “eighteenth-century readers” would have understood The Expedition
o f Humphry Clinker to be a “fictional travel book”; see Batten, “Humphry Clinker and Eighteenth-
Century Travel Literature,” 392—408.
30. E. T. Helmick has suggested that Voltaire’s “restraint and simplicity” influenced the style of
Humphry Clinker, see Helmick, “Voltaire and Humphry Clinkerl' 59—64. Donald Bruce has noted
that Lismahago’s “account of Roman Catholic missionaries in America . . . has all the guile and
deadly surHce innocence of Voltaire.” See Bruce, Radical Doctor Smollett, 127, and HC, 190—91.
31. Seef/C, 192.
32. See Martz, Later Career o f Tobias Smollett, 136-62.
33. See Walpole, Memoirs o f the Reign ofTGng George the Third (first published in 1845), 4:218; quoted
by Goldberg, Smollett and the Scottish School, 144.
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[ 2 1 0 ]
[211 ]
 INDEX

The Absent Man (Smollett), 80 Basket, James, 52—53, 67, 158n46, 163nl65;
“Account of the Expedition against Carthagene” Tobias SmolUtt: Critic and Journalist^ 11
(Smollett), 11 Bath, 7, 23-25, 27, 31, 98
Adams, Percy, 8 Batten, Charles, 197n29
Addison, Joseph, 67, 75; “Pleasures of the Battie, William: Aphorismi de Cognoscendis &
Imagination or Fancy,” 65 Curandis Morhis, 30; A Treatise on Madness,
The Adventures o f Ferdinand Count Fathom. See 28
Ferdinand Count Fathom Baxandall, Michael, 54, 59, I61nl26
The Adventures ofLauncelot Greaves. See Baylies, William, I47nl07
Launcelot Greaves Beasley, Jerry C., 3, 12
The Adventures o f Peregrine Pickle. See Peregrine beauty, 68; fine arts and, 70—71; idea of, 54—55;
Pickle line of, 57; materiality of, 58; qualities of
The Adventures o f Roderick Random. See Roderick mind and, 61; teal, 56; relative, 55, 70;
Random theories of, 53—63
Age of Synthesis, 13 Bernini, Giovanni, 71
(Home), 76, I69nl4 Bianchi, Giuesppe, 11
Aix-la Chapelle, 21, 25—26, 27, 127 Birch, Thomas: The History o f the Royal Society
Alceste (Handel), 80 o f London, 17
amphitheaters, 95, 101 Black, Joseph, 5, 20, I44n39
Analysis o f Beauty (Hogarth), 56-57 Blair, Hugh, 76, 107; Critical Dissertation on
Analysis o f Dr. Rutty’s Methodical Synopsis the Poems o f Ossian, 72; “Historical Writing,”
(Lucas), 24—25 108-9
anatomy, 37 Boerhaave, Herman, 20—21, 28, I4 7 n ll9
Anderson, John, 2, 43 Boswell, James, 2
Anderson, Robert, 18, 24, 32, 43, 192nl73 Bouce, Paul-Gabriel, 187n45
Anstey, Christopher: New Bath Guide^ 15—16, Boulogne, 126
23 Bowers, Terence, 12
Aphorismi de Cognoscendis & Curandis Morhis Boyle, Robert, 113
(Battie), 30 British art, 63
The Apology (Churchill), 77 British Coffeehouse, 5
Archigenes, 27 British Magazine, 5, 8, 82, I41n83, 157n38;
An Argument to Prove that the Tragedy o f Douglas art in, 52, 53, 56, 60, 63; “Belles Lettres
Ought to be Publickly Burnt by the Hands o f articles, 51
the Hangman (Carlyle), 75 The Briton, 5, 9, 125, 127. 195n231
Armstrong, John, 5, 18, 135, 198n37 Brooke, Francis: Virginia, a Tragedy, 174nl02
art. See fine arts Brooke, Henry: Gustavus Vasa, 78, 79
Brooke, Richard, 36
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 13, 84, 99-100, 101, Brown, Vivienne, \7Ar07
I42nl07, 175nl23, 183n294 Bruce, Donald, 197n30
Barber, Frances, 2 Buccleugh, Duke of, 139n47

[213 ]
1N D E ^ INDEX

Buchanan, George, 3, 77; Rerum Scoticarum The Company o f Undertakers (Hogarth), 31 Encylopedie, 51 Genoa, 59, 64, 88. 97, 101, 123
Historian 107 A Compendium o f Authentic and Entertaining English Academy project, 12, 50, 73, 87, 132 The Gentle Shepherd (I^msay), 77
Buckland, John, 128 (Smollett), 10 The English Connoisseur, 59 George III (king), 120-29
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, 44—45, 155n310 A Complete History o f England (Smollett), Enlightenment, 2-6, 13 Glasgow: Anderston Club, 2; Enlightenment in,
Bulgaria, 132 104-5, 106, 110-20, 121, 127 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 2-6; Literary Society, 49, 50, 64, 156nl2;
Burns, Robert, 3 A Complete System o f Geography (Smollett), 9 (Hume), 108 physicians and medicine, 20-21; religion in,
Burton, John, 30 Congreve, William, 83 Enquiry concerning Principles o f Morals (Hume), 95—96; Smollett and, 2—6; s t^ e plays in, 75;
Bute, Earl of, 1, 9. 109, 137nl, 194n201; Continuation o f the Complete History o f England 116 University of, 3—4, 48
defense of, 125—26; opponents,of, 132; (Smollett), 8, 103-4, 105, 120-29, 134; fine -Xpictirus, 66 Glassford, John, 135
Smollett and, 122, 128 arts and, 51-52; religion and, 97 Erskine, Ebenezer, 181n254 Goethe, Johann von, 101
f
Coriolanus (Thomson), 80, 94 Essay concerning Human Understanding (Locke), Goldberg, M. A.: Smollett and the Scottish
Galas, John, 123, 193nl79 Critical Dissertation on the Poems ofOssian''^ 10, 57, 60 School, 4
Caledon’s Tears, or Wallace, a tragedy (Nesbit), 77 (Blair), 72 An Essay on the Bite o f a mad dog (Laynard), 29 Goldsmith, Oliver, 51, HO, 132
Calvinism, 96—97, 98 Critical Review % 8, 9, 17, 24, 34, 41, An Essay on the External Use o f Water (Smollett), Gordon, John, 3. 17, 20, 28, 135
Campbell, George, 179n225 48; on beauty, J4^56; on Douglas, 83; on 18, 23-24, 26, 28 Graeme, Father, 1
Canning, George, 120 fine arts, 52, ^3, 62-63; first issue of, 50, Essay on Waters (Lucas), 30 Graham, James, 31
Canton, John, 35 67; on history, 121; Hume and, 105-6, Essays, Moral and Political (Hume), 103 Greene, Donald, 110
Caraccioli, Louis-Antoine, 105 lOJ; on medicine, 18, 20; on Philosophical Essays on the Intellecttial Powers o f Man (Reid, Grieve, James, 18
Carlyle, Alexander, 5, 50, 76-77, 78, 83, 96, Transactions, 33; on taste, 65, 67; on Theory X). 58 Griffiths, Ralph, 67, 177nl67
102, 103; An Argument to Prove that the o f Moral Sentiments, 64 Euripides, 49 Guadeloupe, 122, 123, 126
Tragedy o f Douglas Ought to be Publickly Critique o f Judgment (Kant), 48 Eurycide (Mallet), 79 Guerrini, Anita, 19
Burnt by the Hands o f the Hangman, 75; "Life Cromwell, Oliver, 114—15, 118 The Expedition o f Humphry Clinker, See Gmtavus Vasa (Brooke, H.), 78, 79
of a Scottish Parson,” 180n252 Cronk, Nicholas, 196n7 Humphry Clinker Guthrie, William, 11
Carnall, Geoffrey, 187n52 Cullen, William, 3, 20, 23, I44n39
carnival, 95-102 Culloden, Battle of, 78 fenaticism, 96 Haller, Albrecht von, 28
Cary, Lucius, 115 Felsenstein, Frank, 7, 139n50, 139n62, I4ln94 Hamilton, Archibald, 5, I4ln81
Castle, Terry, 184n311 Daiches, David, 5 Ferdinand Count Fathom (Smollett), 11, 29, Hamilton, Gavin, 104
Catholicism, 95, 96, 97 Day, Robert Adams, 10, 133—34, 139n62 31-32, 85, 86-87, 89-90, 91, 93 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 77
Celsus, 27 Defoe, Daniel, 3, 13, 137nl5 Ferguson, Adam, 4, 76, 95, 135; The Morality o f Handel, George Frederick, 11, 93, OA\Alceste,
Cemenelion, 101 DeMaria, Robert, I42nl03 Stage-Plays seriously considered, 16 80
Cervantes, Miguel de, 100 d’Entrueils, Nadeau, 123 Fielding, Henry, 83, 139n45, \73n86'. Journal o f Hayman, Francis, 60, 80
Charles I (king), 110-11, 114, 115, 116, 118, De Wit, Cornelius, 116 a Voyage in Lisbon, 7, 22 Helmick. E. T , 197n30
190nll3 Dick, Robert, 63 fine arts, 48—53, 62, 73; beauty and, 70-71; Henrietta Maria, 111, 115, 116
Charles II (king), 114, 115, 116 Dickie, George, l64n203 British, 63; taste and, 51—52, 54—55, 60, 65 Henry IV (king), 109
Charlotte (queen), 37 Dickson, Thomas, 18 Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem (Macpherson), 72 //enQ/ y y (Shakespeare), 77
Chelmsford Chronicle, 131 Dictionary o f the English Language (Johnson, S.)» Fizes, Antoine, 20, 22, 28, 31, I4ln92 Henry V (king), 194n206
Cherokee Indians, 193nl80 13, 2 2.51,72, 84, 157n30 Fleetwood, Charles, 79 Hippocrates, 21, 27
Cheyne, George, 22, 43, I45n73 Dictionnaire philosophique portatif(So\xaiii€), Florence, 9, 39, 55, 62, 84, 90, 96 “Historical Writing” (Blair), 108—9
Christianity, 98 136 Fothcrgill, John, 37 The History and Adventures o f an Atom
Church and University in the Scottish Don Quixote (Cervantes), 9, 29, 47, 65, 85, 133 Foulis, Andrew, 2 (Smollett). 9-10, 133-34
Enlightenment (Sher), 4 Douglas (Home), 75, 76-77, 80, 100, 171n67 Foulis, Robert, 2, 5, 156n8; School for the Art History o f England iJAwsssi), 67, 103, 106, 111
Churchill, Charles: The Apology, 77 Douglas, James, 5, 37 of Design, 6, 49 The History o f Englandfrom the Accession o f James
Church ofScodand, 100 Douglas, John, 17 France, 69; national character of, 41, 42-43; I to that o f the Brunswick Line (Macaulay,
Cibber, Theophilus, 83; “Two Dissertations on Drummond, Alexander, I40n71; Travels through religion in, 95, 96; water and bathing, 27. See C ), 120
Theatrical Subjects,” 81 different Cities o f Germany, Italy, Greece, and also Travels through France and Italy The History o f Great Britain (Hume), 104—5
Clarendon, Earl of, 108, 110 Several Parts o f Asia asfar as the Banks o f the Francklin, Thomas, 11 The History ofRasselas (Johnson, S.), 22
Cleland, Archibald, 26—27 Euphrates, 9 Freemasons, 9, 98 The History o f the Royal Society o f London
Cleland, John, 78 Dumbarton, Scotland, 3 Frejus, 95, 96, 101 (Birch), 17
Clephane, John, 18, 19, 21, 119 Dwyer, John, I65n222 Frye, Thomas, 52 The History o f Scotland (Robertson), 106
Collection o f Cases and Observations in Midwifery Fulton, Henry, I44n42 history writing, 104—9
(Smellie), 16-17, 19 Edinburgh Review, 5, 50, 64, 68, 107, 157n29 Hogarth, William, 59, 62—63, I60n97, I60n99,
Collinson, Peter, 34 Edward and Eleonora (Thomson), 78, 80 Garrick, David, 77, 78-79. 80. 82-83, 100 \6^n\62-. Analysis o f Beauty, ^6—57 \ The
Colman, George: TheJealous Wife, 82, 183n306 Ellison, L. M., 173n90 Gassman, Byron, 195n231 Company o f Undertakers, 31; picture of
Common Sense School, 4 empiricism, 118 Geneva, 39, 153n245 Richard III, 6l

[214] [215]
 INDEX
INDEX

Holcomb, Kathleen, 156nl3
Home, John, 4, 5, 102, \2^-y Agis, 76, I69nl4;
Douglas, 75. 76-77, 80. 100, 171n67
Huggins, William, 188n80
Hume, David, 5, 7, 41, 43, 64, 76, 83—84,
96, 112, 134; Critical Review 2xA, 105-6,
107; An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, 108; Enquiry concerning
Principles o f Morals, 116; Essays, Moral and
Political, 103; History o f England, 67, 103,
106, 111; The History o f Great Britain,
104-5; “My Own Life,” 110; The Natural
History o f Reli^on, 66; “O f Miracles,” 108;
“O f National Characters,” 40; “O f the
Standard of Taste,” 47, 65, 66; “O f the Study
of History,” 103; Political Discourses, 71—72;
Stuarts and, 109-20; A Treatise o f Human
Nature, 65, 111; virtue and, 103-4
Humphry Clinker (Smollett), 8, 11, 30, 85, 87,
90,91-93, 94, 98, 99, 134-36
Hunter, James, 80
Hunter, John, 23, 37, 134
Hunter, William, 3, 16-17. 20, 36-37, 80, 134.
Medical Commentaries, 19
Huntington, Lady, 98
Hutcheson, Francis, 3, 5-6, 96, 159n73,
I60n97, I 6 0 n lll; Inquiry into the Original
o f Our Ideas o f Beauty and Virtue, 54, 56, 74;
philosophies of, 53-58, 61
hydrophobia, 29, 30, I48nl35
Ingram, Archibald, 156nlO
An Inquiry concerning the cause o f the Pestilence
(Smollett), 28
An Inquiry into the Beauties o f Painting (Webb),
57, 59
Inquiry into the Human M ind (Reid, X ), 60,
63
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes o f the
Wealth o f Nations (Smith), 64, 74
Inquiry into the Original o f Our Ideas o f Beauty
and Virtue (Hutdieson), 54, 56, 74
Ireland, 116
The Israelites; or. The Pampered Nabob, 80
Italy: beauty in, 55; water of, 24. See also Travels
through France and Italy
Jacobitism, 5, 79
James, Robert: Medicinal Dictionary, 22
James I (king), 76, IT, 111, 113-14, 117-18.
119
James II (king), 1. 115, 117, 190nll3
Japan, 133
The Jealous Wife (Colman), 82, 183n306
Johnson, Mark, 155n293 literature and medicine, 22 Miles, Peter, 193nl73
Johnson, Samuel, 2-3, 4-5, 91, I42nl04; Lloyd's Evening Post, 106 Millar, Andrew, 104
Dictionary o f the English Language, 13, 22, Locke, John, 98, 134, I40n77, I4 7 n ll7 , Millar, John, 5, 104
51, 72, 84, 157n30; The History o f Rasselas, 154n292; Essay Concerning Human “Miscellanies in History, Literature and
22 Understanding, 10, 57, 60 Philosophy” (Voltaire), 132
Joliat, Eugene, 7, 138n43, 139n44 London, 7; Literary Club, 72; theater and, Mitchell, Andrew, 170n40
Journal encyclopedique, 51 76-81 Moderate Party, 76, 98, 102, 182n277
A Journal o f a Campaign on the Coast o f France, Londoji Mtigdzine, 40 The Modem Part o f the Universal History
108 Loudoun, John, 63 (Smollett), 108
Journal o f a Voyage in Lisbon (Fielding), 7, 22 Lucas, Charles, 27; Analysis o f Dr. Rutty's Monro, Alexander, 16, 19, I44n34
Methodical Synopsis, 24-25; Essay on Waters, Monro, Alexander, Jr.: Observations Anatomical
Kant, Immanuel: Critique o f Judgment, 48 30 and Physiological, 19
Karhl, George, 7, I40n67 Ludlow, Edmund, 122 Monro, Donald, 19
Kennelly, Laura, 188n62 Lyttelton, George, 79, 80 Montesquieu, M. de, 36
Keymer, Tom, 13 Monthly Review, 10, 67, 78, 88, 100
Keysler, Johann, 22 Macaulay, Catharine, 8; The History o f England Montpellier, 20, 30, 101
King Henry VII, or the Popish Imposter from the Accession o f James I to that o f the Moor, James, 5, 50; “On the Influence and
(Macklin), 78 Brunswick Line, 120 Philosophy upon the Fine Arts,” 49
Kivy, Peter, 58, 61, I56n4 Macaulay, George, 8, 19, 134 Moore, John, 2-3, 15, 16, 137n6, I48nl23,
Knapp, Lewis, 137nl0, I63nl73 Macbeth (Shakespeare), 77 152n237; Medical Sketches, 38; on national
Korshin, Paul, 153n271 Machiavelli, Niccolb, 104 characters, 41; A View o f Society and Manners
Macklin, Charles: King Henry VII, or the Popish in France, Switzerland, and Germany, 39; A
Lacy, James, 78 Imposter, 78 View o f Society and Manners o f Italy, 39, 41;
Ladys Magazine, 132 Macl^urin, John, 181n255 visit to Voltaire, 64
Lakoff, George, 154n291, 155n293, 155n304 Macpherson, James: Fingal, an Ancient Epic The Morality o f Stage-Plays seriously considered
language: English, 71; Provencal, 73; Scots, 12; Poem, 72; Temora, 73 (Ferguson), 76
word derivations, 72~7^ Mallet, David: Eurydice, 79; Mustapha, 78 Muirhead, George, 50
“The Last Judgment” (Michelangelo), 56 Mandeville, Bernard, 42 Murdoch, Patrick, 5
Launcelot Greaves (Smollett), 8, 29, 32, 85, 90, Mann, Horace, 124 Murphy, Arthur, 81—82
91,92, 95 Mapp, Sarah, 31 Musher, David, I4 7 n ll9
Lawrence, Thomas (physician), 16, 22 Marlborough, Duke of, 126 music, 60, 62, 70
Laynard, Daniel Peter: An Essay on the Bite o f a Marseilles, 39, 101, 128 Mustapha (Mallet), 78
mad dog, 29 Martinique, 122, 126 Mylne, Robert, I63nl63
Lectures on the Fine Arts (Reid, T ), 58, 60, 72 Martz, Louis, 7, 11, 35, 108, 186n4l “My Own Life” (Hume), 110
Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres (Smith), Mary Queen of Scots, 111
51,71,73 Mason, H.: Lectures upon the Heart, Lungs, national characters, 40-41, 43
Lectures upon the Heart, Lung, Pericardium, Pericardium, Pleura, Aspera, Arteria, natural history, 32-45
Pleura, Aspera, Arteria, Membrana Intersepiens, Membrana Intersepiens, or Mediastinum, 20 Natural History (Pliny), 31
or Mediastinum (Mason), 20 Mauriceau, Francois, 21 The Natural History o f Religion (Hume), 66
Leechman, William, 2, 96, 181n255 Medical Commentaries (Hunter, W ), 19 The Nature and Qualities o f Bristol Water
Leghorn, 134 Medical Observations and Inquiries, by a Society (Sutherland), 25, 29
Leibniz, Gottfried, 111 o f Physicians in London, 18—19, 21 Naylor, James, 110
Letters concerning the English Nation (Voltaire), Medical Sketches (Moore), 38 Nesbit, Gabriel: Caledon's Tears, or Wallace, a
132 Medicinal Dictionary (James), 22 tragedy, 77
Licensing Act, 79, 83, 100, 183n304 medicine, 7, 15, 18, 20-23; literature and, 22 New Bath Guide (Anstey), 15—16, 23
The Life and Opinions o f Tristram Shandy Memis, John: The Midwife's Pocket Companion; Newton, Isaac, 21, 111, 132, 134
(Sterne), 22 or, a Practical Treatise o f Midwifery, 21 Nice, 6, 7, 38, 59, 73, 123, 124, 128; history
“Life of a Scottish Parson” (Carlyle), 180n252 Methodism, 97-98 of, 109; water of, 23
Linden, Diederick: A Treatise on the three Michelangelo, 62; Pieth, 59; “The Last Nietzsche, Friedrich, 191nl44, 198n45
medicinal Mineral Waters at Llandrindod, in Judgment,” 56 Nihell, Elizabeth, 18; A Treatise on the Art o f
Radnorshire, South Wales, 25 Micromigas (Voltaire), 133 Midwifery, 34
Linnaeus, Carolus, 38 The Midwife's Pocket Companion; or, a Practical Nimes, 101
Literary Club, 72 Treatise o f Midwifery (Memis), 21 North Briton, 127
Literary Magazine, 137nl3 Miles, Henry, 35 novels and performances, of Smollett, 84—95

[ 217
[216]
 I INDEX
INDEX

Oates, Titus, 118
O ’Brien, JCaren, 187n55
Observations Anatomical and Physiolo^cal
(Monro, Jr.), 19
Observations and Reflections Made in the course o f
a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany
(Piozzi), 8
Observations on the Baume De V/V,^31
Observations on the Diseases o f the firmy
(Pringle), 18, 38
The Occasional Critic (Shebbeare), 138n33
“O f Miracles” (Hume), 108
"O f the Imitative Arts” (Smith), 93
“O f National Characters” (Hume), 40
“O f the Standard of Taste” (Hume), 47, 65, 66
“O f the Study of History” (Hume), 103
Ogee, Frederic, 12
“On the Influence and Philosophy upon the
Fine Arts” (Moor, James), 49
“On the Nature of that Imitation which takes
place in what are called the Imitative Arts”
(Smith), 70
"On the study of the Belles Lettres,” 51
Oppenheimer, Jane, 152n224
Oswald, James, 80-81, 172n69
Parlement of Paris, 132
Paterson, James, 9, 27
I^triot drama, 78—79
Paulson, Ronald, 8
Peace of Aix la Chapelle, 127
Peace of Paris, 127
Peacock, Nathaniel, 12
Peregrine Pickle (Smollett), 6, 31, 79, 85, 86, 87,
8 8 -89,91,92
Pergolesi, G io^^ni Battista, 51
Peter III (czar of Russia), 124
Philosophical Transactions, 18, 32—35, 113, 123
Piet^ (Michelangelo), 59
Piozzi, Hester Lynch: Observations and
Reflections Made in the course o f a Journey
through France, Italy, and Germany, 8
Pisa, 30, 55, 59, 71. 134
Pitcairn, William, 18
Pitcairne, Archibald, 28
Pitcher, Edward W., 158n44
Pitt, William, 112, 129
Plato, 50
“Pleasures of the Imagination or Fancy”
(Addison), 65
Pliny: Natural History, 31
Political Discourses (Hume), 71—72
Pompadour, Marquise de, 126
Popish Plot, 113, 116, 118
Rome, 29-30, 56, 62, 69, 101, 123 Smollett, Tobias: attribution of works to,
Porter, Roy, I43nl7
Ross, Ian Simpson, I63nl71 10—13; carnival and, 95—102; early life in
Prance, Miles, 118
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 50, 68 Glasgow, 3-4; English Academy project, 73;
Presbyterian Church, 6, 27, 153n245
Rowe, Nicholas, 83 Enlightenment in Glasgow and, 2-6; fine arts
The Present State o f A ll Nations (Smollett), 4,
Royal Academy of Arts, 151 n 2 17 and, 48-53; history and, 104-9; journalistic
8-9, 23, 25, 134
Royal Society, 32—34, 35, 113 projects of, 7; medicine and illness of, 7, 15,
Pringle, John, 21; Observations on the Diseases o f
Russia, 124 138n43; natural history and, 32-45; novels
the Army, 18, 38
Rutty.John, 24-26 and performances, 84-95; Scots language
The Protean Scot (Simpson), 4
and, 12; theater and, 76-84; theories of
Protestantism, 95
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 174nl01 beauty and, 53—63. See also individual works
Proven9al language, 73
The Schoolfor Lovers (Whitehead), 82 Smollett and the Scottish School (Goldberg), 4
School for the Art of Design, 6, 49 Society for the Improvement of Arts, 52, 62
Quarterly Review, 158n58 >^ '
Scotland: Battle of CuUoden, 78; Church of, Socrates, 156nl5
Quin, James, 80, 85, 89, 94
100; Dumbarton, 3; Presbyterian Church A Sop in the Pan for a Physical Critic (Reed), 80
in, 6, 27, 153n245; Smollett and the Spectator, 6, 65, 159n73
Rabelais, Francois, 100
Enlightenment in, 2-6; stage plays in, 75; the Spector, Robert, 67
Raleigh, Walter, 114
Union and, 5. See also Glasgow speech, power of, 72
Ramsaj^ Allan: The Gentle Shepherd, 77
Scots language, 12 Spigelius, Adrian, 16
Raphael, 58
Scots Magazine, 5, 51, 53 Sterne, Laurence, 30, 53, 59, 63, 68; The Life
Raphael, D. D., I68n289
Scott, Samuel, 63 and Opinions o f Tristram Shandy, 22
Raynor, David, 65, I64nl88
Scott, Walter, 83, 86, 102, 184n322 Stirling, William, 20
Reed, Joseph, 32; A Sop in the Pan for a Physical
Seccombe, Thomas, 7 Strange, Robert, 52, 63
Critic, 80
Sekora, John, 8 Stuart, Charles Edward, 1
Regency Act, 123
Sena, John, 8 Stuart monarchy, 109-20
The Regicide (Smollett), 76, 77-80, 82, 83, 107,
sentiment, 116 Sutherland, A.: The Nature and Qualities of
170n33
Seven Years’ War, 53, 126, 139n62, 195n220 Bristol Water, 25, 29
Reid, Alexander, 9
Shakespeare, William, 77. 83, 173n91 Swift, Jonathan, 32, 33; Travels into Several
Reid, Ihomas, 2, 4. 5, 43, 44, 47, 4 8 ^ 9 , 53-
Shandeism, 30 Remote Nations o f the World, 32, 150nnl73—74
54, 58-63; Essays on the Intellectual Powers o f
Shebbeare, John: The Occasional Critic, 138n33 sympathy, 70, 74
Man, 58; Inquiry into the Human Mind, 60,
63; Lectures on the Fine Arts, 58, 60, 72 Shelburne, Earl of, 196n236
Sher, Richard, 156n8, 156nl2, I69n8; Church Tacitus, 104
religion, 66, 68; Calvinism, 96-97> 98;
and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 4 Tancred and Si^m unda (Thomson), 79
Catholicism, 95, 96, 97; of Glasgow, 95—96;
Short Remarks upon autumnal Disorders o f the taste, 51-52, 54-55, 60, 65, 66
Methodism, 97-98; Presbyterianism, 6, 27,
Bowels (Wilson, Andrew), 21 “The Tears of Scotland” (Smollett), 78
153n245; Protestantism, 95; theater and,
Sierbert, Donald, 192nl53 Temora (Macpherson), 73
95-100
silkworms, 35, 69 theater, 75-84; amphitheaters and, 95, 101;
The Reprisal {SmoWtxx), 80-81, 100, 171n67
Simmons, Samuel Foart, 36 audiences and, 100—101; Patriot drama,
Reproof 79
Simpson, Kenneth, 135; The Protean Scot, 4 78—79; religion and, 95—100
Rerum Scoticarum Historia (Buchanan), 107
Simson, Robert, 3 Theory o f Moral Sentiment (Smith), 63, 64,
The Revenge (Young), 89
Slater, Graham, 111 65-68, 70, 72, 73, 74
Reynolds, Joshua, 37
Sloane, Hans, 35 Thicknesse, Philip, 41—43
Riccoboni, Madame, I63nl79
Smellie, William, 5, 137n6; Collection o f Cases Thomson, James, 5, 170nn40; Coriolanus, 80,
Rice, Scott, 8
and Observations in Midwifery, 16-17, 94; Edward and Eleonora, 78, 80; Tancred
Rich, John, 79
19; A Treatise on the Theory and Practice o f and Si^munda, 79
Richard III, 61
Midwifery, 16, 30 Thrale, Hester, 22
Richardson, Samuel, 51
Smith, Adam, 2-3, 6, 48, 50, 53-54, 84, 107; Tivoli, 88
Richardson, William, 4, 5
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes o f the Tobias Smollett: Critic and Journalist (Basker), 11
Roberts, Marie Mulvey, I43nl7
Wealth o f Nations, 64, 74; Lectures on ^etoric “To Dr. Smollett” (anonymous ode), 186n22
Robertson, William, 4, 76, 105, 107, 111; The
and the Belles Lettres, 51, 71, 73; “O f the Tofts, Mary, 32
History o f Scotland, 106
Imitative Arts,” 93; “On the Nature of that Travels into Several Remote Nations o f the World
Robert the Bruce, 3
Imitation which takes place in what are (Swift), 32, 150nnl73-74
Rochette, Francis, 123
called the Imitative Arts,” 70; Theory o f Moral Travels through different Cities o f Germany, Italy,
Roderick I^ndom (Smollett), 6, 11, 72, 83, 85,
Sentiments, 63, 64, 65-68, 70, 72, 73, 74; Greece, and Several Parts o f Asia asfar as the
8 6 , 87-88, 90, 175nl30
visit to Voltaire, 64 Banks o f the Euphrates (Drummond), 9
RomaAntica, e Modema (Smollett), 108

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Travels through France and Italy (Smollett), 1-2, Letters concerning the English Nation, 132; A B O U T THE A U T H O R
6-10, 11-12,13, 53, 92, 93-94, 122-23, Micromigas, 133; “Miscellanies in History,
124, 126, 128-29, 133, 136; beauty and, 57, Literature and Philosophy,” 132; visits to, 64;
58-63, 68, 71; Florence and, 84; history and, Zadig, 133
108-9; medicine and, 20-23; natural history
and, 35-41, 42, 44-45; “R oister of the Wallace, William, 3
Weather,” 16; sympathy and, 66; water and, Walpole, Horace, 134—35
2 3 ,2 5 -2 9 ,3 1 ,3 2 Warner, John, 99
A Treatise o f Human Nature (Hume), 65, 111 Warton, Joseph, I67n255
A Treatise on the A rt o f Midwifery (Nihell), 34 water: benefits of, 18, 23-32; hydrophobia, 29,
A Treatise on Madness (Battle), 28 3 0 ,I48nl35
A Treatise on the Theory and Pmctice o f Midwifery Webb, Daniel; An Inquiry into the Beauties o f
(Smellie), 16, 30 Painting, 57, 59
A Treatise on the three medicinal M ineral Waters Wesley, John, 97
a t Llandrindod^ in Radnorshire, South Wales Westminster Bridge, 62 Richard J. Jones studied English literature at the universities of York and Orford
(Linden), 25 Whitefield, George, 95, 96 in the United Kingdom. He currently works at The Open University, develop­
“Two Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects” Whitehead, William: The Schoolfo r Lovers, 82
(Cibber), 81 Whytt, Robert, 23
ing arts courses for distance learning, and teaching as an associate lecturer. In his
Wilkes, John, 2, 127 research, he is interested in the culture of the long eighteenth century and, in
Uffizi Palace, 62 Wilmer, John, 35
particular, exploring the relationship of literature and philosophy.
Union of the Crowns, 125 Wilson, Adrian, l44n38
Uphaus, Robert, I49nl48 Wilson, Andrew, 19; Short Remarks upon
Urie, Robert, 6, 65 autumnal Disorders o f the Bowels, 21
Wilton, Joseph, 62
Venus de Medids, 59 Witherspoon, John, 75—76, 81, 83
Verona, 101 Wootton, David, 189nl05
A View o f Society and Manners in France, word derivations, 72—73
Switzerland, and Germany (Moore, John), 39
A View o f Society and Manners o f Italy (Moore, York, Duke of, 123
John), 39, 41 Young, Edward: The Revenge, 89
Virginia, a Tragedy (Brooke, F.), 174nl02
Voltaire, 7, 122, 131-33, l96nnl-2; Zadig 133
Dictionnaire philosophique portatif 136; Zofltany, Johann, 37

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