SMOLLETT AS A NOVELIST
Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature,
was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote
it well; drama, and wrote it only passably; travels but little better,
and poetry decidedly mechanically, save in the ‘Ode to Independence.’
In the novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in
the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then lay his
strength, and in what respects did he differ from Richardson and
Fielding? To institute any comparative estimate between the three is
foolish in the last degree. The grounds for such a comparison do not
exist, save in the initial fact that all three wrote novels!
Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. Nothing missed his
‘inevitable eye,’ either in a situation, an incident, or a landscape.
If he had not Fielding’s keen power of vision into the mental and
moral characteristics of his fellow–men, he had twice his aptness
of objective photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance
or of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to forget the
humorous bearings of any experience through which he had passed, or
of which he had learned. The _affaire de cœur_ with Melinda in
_Roderick Random_, the challenge and arrest through the affection of
Strap, also the inimitable ‘banquet after the manner of the ancients’
in _Peregrine Pickle_, were described from incidents occurring in
Smollett’s own history. To few writers has the faculty been given in
measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes he was describing
upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, whence he transferred them to
his pages. The naturalness of setting in the case of all the incidents
is so marked, and stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded
in the _Memoirs of a Lady of Quality_ (published in _Peregrine
Pickle_), that one scarcely knows which to admire most—the originality
of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and impressiveness of the
painter’s reproduction.
Smollett’s strength lay in his great power of self–restraint. He knew
what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept himself within the
limits of his imaginative ability. He could very easily have made
either Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist,
sighing after his mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and
fears and ups and downs of the knights–errant of love. But therein he
would have trenched upon Richardson’s province, and placed himself in
a decidedly unfavourable comparison with the author of _Pamela_ and
_Clarissa Harlowe_. He might have developed a splendid character–study
out of the colossal Borgia–like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom,
who can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime which
possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of Shakespeare’s
early days, Aaron in _Titus Andronicus_, who, when dying, curses the
world with the words—
‘If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.’
But had he done so, he would have entered into direct competition
with Fielding; a competition he knew he was unfitted to support. But
in his own department he was supreme. In fertility of invention and
apt adaptation of means to end he had no rival. His novels present
one bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes,
imprisonments, love–makings, and what not, until the mind positively
becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident provided for it. A less
profound genius than Smollett would in all probability have worn
itself out in a vain attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the
principle ‘never venture, never win.’ Smollett was a surer critic, on
this point at least, than many of his friends, who were continually
urging him to attempt something in the mode of Fielding. ‘There is
but one husbandman can reap that field,’ he replied. He knew what he
_could_ do and what he _could not_ do, and therein, as has been said,
lay his strength.
Viewing his novels as a whole,—_Roderick Random_, _Peregrine Pickle_,
_Ferdinand Count Fathom_, _Launcelot Greaves_, _The Adventures of an
Atom_, and _Humphrey Clinker_,—the first quality which strikes a
critical reader is the family likeness existing between all the leading
characters. Dissimilar though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count
Fathom may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Peregrine
Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, and Lismahago in
what may be termed his nobler qualities, there is nevertheless in
all that happy–go–lucky carelessness, that supreme indifference to
consequences, that courage that never flinches from the penalties of
its own misdeeds, but accepts them without a murmur—in a word, a
_bonhomie_ diversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in
no other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that sentimental,
melodramatic, watery ‘gush’ which the taste of last century
denominated pathos—the sort of thing Dickens long after described
in the phrase ‘drawing tears from his eyes and a handkerchief from
his pocket’; but of that quality there is not the faintest trace
in Smollett. If anything, his characters are too callous, too fond
of the rough–and–tumble Tom–and–Jerry life in which their creator
so perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently
elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there a curve,
heightening the light in one place, deepening the shading in another,
never picturing an incident or a trait without some definite end to
be served in perfecting the final portrait. Smollett never takes time
for such microscopic character studies. He is a veritable pen–and–ink
draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he sketches, through
the agency of incident, the outlines of his characters, filling in
these outlines with but few subsidiary details regarding the feelings
and moral impulses of his creations. For such he has neither the time
nor the space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick Random,
or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of the setting of the story
and study them apart, paying no heed to anything affecting the other
personages, and he will see at once how completely Smollett relied
on incident to do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings
of his heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better
story–teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, Smollett the
more vigorous painter of contemporary manners. Further, let the reader
carefully study Lovelace in Richardson’s _Clarissa Harlowe_, Blifil in
Fielding’s novel of _Tom Jones_, and Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom,
and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse method of
the three great novelists. Richardson builds up what might be called
the ‘architectonic’ of the creation by a series of great scenes wherein
dialogue plays the greatest part. Lovelace has all the light–hearted
villainy of a man to whom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and
whose standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richardson
does everything by square and rule. He expends at the outset a wealth
of ingenuity in portraying the most insignificant qualities of
Lovelace’s nature. And so fully does he make us acquainted with his
nature, that at the end of the novel we know in reality very little
more of him than we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand,
winds his way into the very heart of a character, ‘like a serpent
round its prey,’ as Goldsmith said of Burke’s treatment of a subject
in conversation. Every chapter gives us some addition to the creation,
even to the very close of the novel. But when that is reached, the
great synthesis is complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master
Blifil stands pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is
contemptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of Ferdinand
Count Fathom the initial description of the character is reduced to a
minimum. Everything is left to the effect produced by incident. All
Fathom’s pitilessness, his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his
colossal selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader’s
own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not formally
labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson and Fielding the
author is constantly present in his creation. So with Smollett, he is
ever in evidence. None of them attain that superb art of Walter Scott,
who simply effaces himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says: ‘He
sits like a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights
to the view; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria the author
himself never appears to take part with his characters. It is the
perfection of art to conceal art, and this is here done so completely,
that, while it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away
from the merit of the author. As he does not thrust himself into the
foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.’
By the critical student closely attentive to the development of
Smollett’s genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that in the gallery
of his characters, chronologically considered, there is a definitely
progressive growth or increase in the power wherewith he limned
character. Bearing in mind our initial position, that in Smollett’s
art incident was the prime element, and the delineation of character
subordinate to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of
circumstance, I would invite attention to the following analysis, as
being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be deduced from a patient,
faithful, and impartial study of the personages named. My contention
is that in the character sequence we have a series of ascending
psychologic gradations, each one presenting features of greater
complexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more clearly
the value of a system in that concatenation of event which influenced
so intimately his personages.
_Roderick Random_ is little else than the _Gil Blas_ of Le Sage
Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellent _Lazarillo
de Tormes_ of Hurtado de Mendoza. In his Preface to the novel
Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness to French and Spanish fiction,
and announces his conviction of the superiority of the novel of
circumstance over all others. _Roderick Random_, therefore, as a
novel consists of a succession of incidents, some startling, some
improbable, some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely
strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative affinity
to each other. The book is a record of the ‘adventures’ of the hero
from his cradle to his marriage. As in the case of all such books,
the peg whereon the incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose
and disjointed, happy–go–lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and
evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick is only a big
schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal passions, far, very far
from being a saint, yet as far from being an irreclaimable sinner. He
is the plaything of his passions, carried like a straw on the stream
of circumstance. He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it
woe, be it good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows
little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. He treats
his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his fidelity, worse than
indifferently. He is not by any means faithful, and certainly not
very respectful, to his lady–love, Narcissa; nay, he even takes the
discovery of his long–lost father—a circumstance materially altering
his social station—quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was
the spirit incarnate of the cold–blooded, coarse–fibred, religionless
eighteenth century—a century wherein virtue was perpetually on the
lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts of its men, a century
wherein its women were colourless puppets, without true individuality
or definite aims, but oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism
to escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true culture.
Roderick Random as a creation was a purely adventitious one, resulting
from the fortuitous concourse of incidents. How the character was
to shape itself, morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator
little, provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, and
the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. Incidents were
piled up, whether tending to heighten the effect of the _dramatis
personæ_, or not. There was no conservation of material, no wise
economy, no evidence of careful selection. Prodigality and profusion
were everywhere present, with the signs of youth and inexperience writ
large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick Random, critically
estimated as a work of art, is little better than Lobeyra’s Amadis de
Gaul, a portrait limned wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas
without premeditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and
conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of character
contemporaneously with the evolution of event. The character has
gathered no wisdom during its course. It is represented to us in quite
as immature a state at the end of the story as at the beginning. There
is a heartlessness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his
experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive is this phase
of the hero’s character; nay, the novel is only saved from being as
darkly shaded and as morally repellent as Count Fathom, by the pathetic
doglike fidelity of poor Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of
nature in a chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book.
From the criticisms on _Roderick Random_, Smollett learned many
lessons. He noted that, though his free and easy method of letting
character shape itself through the medium of incident had its
advantages, these were liable to be counterbalanced unless the chain of
incident was so forged that each link would be related to the leading
characters of the novel, so as to promote their development and tend
to fill in the bare black and white outlines by some distinguishing
trait, mannerism, or eccentricity. In _Peregrine Pickle_, therefore,
the characters are seen to be more vertebrate. They are no longer the
stalking lay figures of the first novel. Albeit Peregrine is only
Roderick under another name, and endowed with a year or two more of
experience and sense,—the subtle differentiation of personages visible
in _Humphrey Clinker_ having yet to be learned,—there is a marked
improvement in the _technique_ of the novel. The chain of incident
is every whit as varied, the events as events are more stirring and
startling than in the first novel, but there is now the attempt—though
as yet but an attempt—to subject the unflagging flow of incident to
an artistic adaptation towards definite ends. Incident is no longer
piled on incident regardless of the fact whether it tend to advance the
development of the characters or not. Then Smollett has learned the
value of contrast in character–painting. Peregrine is contrasted with
such humorous creations as Godfrey Gauntlet, Commodore Hawser Trunnion,
Lieutenant Hatchway, and Bo’sun Tom Pipes. The virtue of relative
proportion among his characters according to their ratio of importance
in influencing the story, though still faulty, has been carefully
studied. Peregrine therefore is supreme as hero. There is no Strap to
dispute the honours with him, and as a portrait he is more consistent
than in the case of Roderick. Though the same callous indifference to
morality is manifest, though the likeness to Lazarillo de Tormes is
even more patent in this latter creation than in the former, though
the same polite villainy passes current under the name of gallantry,
the same cheap appreciation of female honour,—witness that degrading
scene so reprobated by Sir Walter Scott, where Peregrine assails Emilia
Gauntlet’s chastity,—the hero is not so glaring a moral imbecile as
Roderick. He has gleams of better things. But, as in the former novel
so in the latter, the noblest character of the book is the foil or
contrast to Peregrine—Godfrey Gauntlet, on whom Smollett seems to
lavish all his powers.
Then comes _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, indicating a still further
advance in the _technique_ of novel–writing. In this work the stage
is not so crowded as in _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_. The
whole interest centres in the career of crime of this archfiend,
this pitiless Nero, Iago, and Cæsar Borgia in one. A more terrible
picture of human depravity has never been drawn unless in _Othello_
and _Titus Andronicus_. But Smollett had now learned the lesson of the
conservation of imaginative power. There are no needless incidents
in this novel. Everyone reveals the character of the hero in a new
light. Relative proportion, differentiation, and contrast have all
been carefully studied. Notwithstanding our loathing of crimes so
unspeakable, notwithstanding our hatred of animalism so unbridled
as would sacrifice the trustful Monimia to his base passions, a
sort of sneaking sympathy with Fathom begins to find entrance into
the breast. As in _Paradise Lost_ one feels a sorrow for Satan’s
position after his magnificent resistance to the Almighty, so here
the same sentiment finds place. One hopes Fathom may have time given
him wherein to repent. But Smollett was now too consummate an artist
for that concession to sentimentalism. In _Roderick Random_ he might
have committed such an artistic mistake. Not now. Fathom receives
retributive justice, and only repents when he has expiated to the
uttermost his sins and wrong–doings.
Passing by _Sir Launcelot Greaves_ and _The History of an Atom_ as
outside the pale of our criticism, inasmuch as they were written when
he was worried and distracted with other matters, besides being in
wretched health, so that they are unworthy of his genius, we come
to the consideration of Matthew Bramble and Lieutenant Lismahago in
_Humphrey Clinker_. They are undoubtedly the two greatest characters
in the Smollett gallery of imaginative portraits. They must be viewed
together. To separate them is to lose the reflected lustre they cast
by contrast on each other. Likenesses many and important they have.
Both are sufferers from the world’s fickle changes. Both are weary
and irritated with society’s meannesses and petty falsehoods. Both
are testy, tetchy, and prickly–tempered. But how truly men! Smollett
had now reached the meridian of his powers. He realised now that in
a great novel incident and the delineation of character must occupy
co–ordinate positions. To assign excessive predominance to either, is
to mar the ultimate effect. Therefore in _Humphrey Clinker_, while
still revelling in inexhaustible variety of incident, Smollett assigns
to the synthesis of character its proper place. In place of portraying
the characters himself, he adopted the course, so favoured by his
great rival Richardson, and long years after to be employed with
such rare effect by Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray, of
achieving the evolution of character through the medium of letters, a
mutual analysis as well as a distinctive synthesis. Risky though the
expedient was, for it demanded a man of the highest genius to make the
letters popular, in Smollett’s hands it proved eminently successful. We
accordingly have Matthew Bramble alternately described by himself and
Jerry Melford, each giving varying phases of the same kindly, dogmatic,
generously obstinate, and wholly noble–hearted fellow. Lismahago’s
character, besides being drawn by the two above–named fellow–travellers
in that expedition to Scotland wherein Humphrey Clinker was the footman
and hero, has the blanks in the portrait filled in by Miss Tabitha
Bramble, the bitter–sweet spinster whom he afterwards married, and
the inimitably delightful lady’s–maid, Winnifred Jenkins. More highly
finished pictures could scarcely be desired. Side by side with Scott’s
Dugald Dalgetty and Thackeray’s Esmond, Lismahago may assuredly be
placed, while Matthew Bramble falls little short, in completeness
of details, of Jonathan Oldbuck in the _Antiquary_. Yet Bramble is
still Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle purged of their faults and
follies, and with the experience of years upon them. We realise that
Bramble possesses all their shortcomings, albeit held in check by his
strong good sense, while they potentially had all his virtues, though
the fever of youth i’ the blood obscured them for the nonce. A noble
gallery do these five characters compose. If Fathom be the Cain or the
Esau of the company, he has many of the family features to show to what
race he belongs.
In one imaginative type Smollett has never been approached as a
creator, to wit, in his delineation of British seamen. Captain Marryat
exhibits a greater knowledge of nautical affairs than Smollett, but
nothing in the younger novelist quite touches the racy humour of
Commodore Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Bowling, Hatchway, and Pipes.
David Hannay, in his introduction to _Japhet in Search of a Father_,
says: ‘Captain Savage of the _Diomede_, Captain M—— of the _King’s
Own_, Captain Hector Maclean in _Jacob Faithful_, Terence O’Brien, the
mate Martin, the midshipman Gascoigne, Thomas Saunders the boatswain’s
mate, and Swinburne the quartermaster, are beyond all question not
less lifelike portraits of the officers and men of the navy than
Trunnion and Bowling, Pipes and Hatchway. In one respect Marryat had
an inevitable advantage over his predecessor. Smollett never shows
us the seaman at his work. He could not, because he did not know it
sufficiently well to understand it himself.’ That is perfectly true.
But, on the other hand, Marryat’s intimate knowledge was often a
hindrance to his art. It led him to inflict the minutiæ of the service
on his readers more than was needful. Hence the reason why some parts
of Marryat’s books are decidedly tiresome. Smollett’s are never so.
His sense of artistic proportion was finer than Marryat’s, and he
avoided the pitfall whereinto the other fell. As a delineator of the
nautical character, Mr. Clark Russell is the greatest we have had
since Smollett, and in him the latter finds his most dangerous rival.
Yet, if Mr. Russell has equalled his master in many other respects, it
is doubtful if he has quite reached the high–water mark of Commodore
Trunnion and Lismahago.
Finally, Smollett’s women are deserving of a word. Sainte Beuve said he
judged a novelist’s powers by the manner in which he drew his female
characters. If so, Smollett would not have excited much sympathy in the
mind of the brilliant author of the _Causeries du Lundi_. His women
are of varying excellence. Narcissa in _Roderick Random_ and Emilia in
_Peregrine Pickle_ are only sweet dolls. Until his closing years he
could not differentiate between puling sentimentality and piquancy.
Into the charming perversity, the delightful contradictoriness,
that often make up for us one–half the attractiveness of the female
character, he could not enter. To rise to the height of spiritual
insight that was requisite to conceive and execute a Di Vernon, an
Ethel Newcome, or a Rose Vincy, was for him impossible, simply because
he could not realise in his earlier years of authorship that women
are the equals, not the inferiors of man. The hapless Miss Williams
in _Roderick Random_ exhibits this feeling on the part of Smollett.
She was nobility itself in character, yet she was made over to Strap.
One of the finest of his creations is the hapless Monimia in _Count
Fathom_. Tenderness, purity, grace, and beauty are all united in her.
She falls, it is true, but her fall left her virtue unimpugned, seeing
that her betrayer resorted to means as cruel as they were irresistible
to accomplish his diabolic purpose. Monimia occupies a pedestal apart,
but, she excepted, the two most delightful creations in all his works
are those in _Humphrey Clinker_, Tabitha Bramble and Winnifred Jenkins.
Lydia Melford is too milk–and–waterish, but the two first–named are
drawn with masterly precision and force. Tabitha Bramble is a capital
portrait of the soured, disappointed old maid, whose lover had died
long before, but to whose memory she had been ever faithful—a woman
whose nature is only encrusted with prejudice, not inter–penetrated
by it, so that we may justly hope that, under the loving care of
Lieutenant Lismahago, her frigidity may thaw, and that in matrimony
she may discover the world not to be so very bad after all. Winnifred
Jenkins is the prototype of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s _Rivals_, and
is infinitely more amusing. All the vanity, self–assertiveness, and
jealousy of a small mind, conjointly with the love of appearing to
move in a higher circle of society than she really does, are admirably
sketched, while her misappropriate use of the language of that circle
is most felicitously rendered. The portrait is Smollett’s best, and
no touch is finer than Winnifred’s conduct in the menagerie. Let her
speak for herself. ‘Last week I went with mistress to the Tower to see
the crowns and wild beastis. There was a monstracious lion with teeth
half a quarter long, and a gentleman bid me not go near him if I wasn’t
a maid, being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens.
Now I had no mind to go near him, for I cannot abide such dangerous
honeymils, not I—but mistress would go, and the beast kept such a
roaring and bouncing that I tho’t he would have broke his cage and
devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I’ll go death
upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firgkin as the child unborn;
and therefore either the gentleman told a phib, or the lion ought to
be set in the stocks for bearing false witness against his neighbour.’
Tabitha Bramble and Win Jenkins are those two in Smollett’s gallery of
fiction which the world will not willingly let die.
Such, then, is Smollett as a novelist—the great master of incident
and humorous narration, the painter of the faults, foibles, and
eccentricities of his fellow–men. In his own sphere he was unrivalled,
and he in nothing showed more saliently his good sense than by refusing
to attempt works for which he knew he was both by temperament and
training unfitted. I cannot quite agree with Professor Saintsbury’s
view in his charming and sympathetic Life of Smollett, prefixed to what
bids fair to be the standard edition of his works.[10] ‘The only one of
the deeper and higher passions which seems to have stirred Smollett was
patriotism, in which a Scot rarely fails, unless he is an utter gaby
or an utter scoundrel.’ Does not the worthy Professor, following the
popular definition, fail to differentiate between an _emotion_ and a
_passion_. In depicting the passions, Smollett, I grant, was singularly
deficient; in such emotions as patriotism, sympathy with the oppressed,
and a pure devotion to the cause of truth, he showed himself a man
whose heart was permeated with the warmest and deepest enthusiasm.