SMOLLETT AS POET AND DRAMATIST
Tradition states that Smollett, on being asked on one occasion why he
did not write more poetry, replied that he had ‘no time to be a poet.’
The answer can be read in a dual sense—either that poetry demanded an
absorption so complete in its pursuit that all other interests were
as naught; or, on the other hand, that his time was so fully occupied
that he could not devote attention to poetical composition without
neglecting other things at that time of more value. As weighed against
his fiction, little regret can be felt by any admirer of Smollett, that
he did not pursue poetry more diligently. The specimens we possess
of these fruits of his genius are not of such value as to awaken any
desire to peruse more of his metrical essays. Small in bulk though his
poetical works are, even these, as well as his dramatic compositions,
we would gladly have spared in exchange for such another novel as
_Humphrey Clinker_.
Smollett’s genius was by no means of that purely imaginative, highly
spiritual type from which great poetical compositions are to be
expected. He was rather an unsurpassed observer, who, having noted
special characteristics of mind as being produced by the fortuitous
concourse of certain incidents, straightway proceeded to expand and
idealise them; than a mighty original genius, like Shakespeare, Milton,
Spenser, Shelley, or Keats, that from the depths of his spiritual
consciousness evolved original creations that are representative not
of any age, but of all time. Smollett had none of the isolating power
of the true poet, whereby for the time he raises his theme into the
pure ether of imagination, dissociated from the world and all its
concerns. Smollett loved the world too well to seek to sever himself
from it. His workshop, his studio, his school, and observatory, it
was in one. Like Balzac, he was more taken up with what men did than
with what they thought. From the outward evidence of action he worked
back to the predisposing thought, not predicting _à priori_ from the
thought what the action must necessarily be. Therefore, as Smollett’s
genius was more practical than imaginative, dealing more with the
reproduction of facts than the creation of fancies, his poetry rose
little above the dead level of commonplace. Only in two poems does he
rise into a distinctively higher altitude of poetic inspiration—these
are ‘The Tears of Scotland’ and ‘The Ode to Independence.’ In both
cases, however, the influence of patriotism and that keen sympathy with
the oppressed which he always entertained, contributed to impart to
the compositions in question loftier sentiments and more impassioned
feelings than would otherwise have been the case. We have already
seen that the horrors wrought in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 by
the Duke of Cumberland were on his mind when he wrote ‘The Tears of
Scotland’; while the heroism of the noble Corsican Paschal Paoli was
the stimulating motive in the composition of the latter.
There is a great difference between the two. The former was written in
1746, while the ‘Ode to Independence’ was not produced until the last
years of his life, and was not published until 1773, when the Messrs.
Foulis of Glasgow, printers to the University of Glasgow, put it out,
with a short Preface and Notes by Professor Richardson. In both, the
language is spirited and striking, the thoughts elevated and just.
In the ‘Ode’ he takes as his models Collins and Gray. The first and
last stanzas of it—or, more properly, the opening strophe and the
concluding antistrophe—are the finest in the poem, and are well worthy
of quotation—
‘Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion–heart and eagle eye:
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.
Deep in the frozen regions of the North,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime
Hath bleached the tyrant’s cheek in ever–varying clime.
What time the iron–hearted Gaul,
With frantic Superstition for his guide,
Armed with the dagger and the pall,
The Sons of Woden to the field defied;
The ruthless hag by Weser’s flood
In Heaven’s name urged the infernal blow,
And red the stream began to flow,
The vanquished were baptised with blood.
ANTISTROPHE.
Nature I’ll court in her sequestered haunts
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell,
Where the poised lark his evening ditty chants,
And Health and Peace and Contemplation dwell.
There Study shall with Solitude recline,
And Friendship pledge me to his fellow–swains;
And Toil and Temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains:
And fearless Poverty shall guard the door,
And Taste unspoiled the frugal table spread,
And Industry supply the frugal store,
And Sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed;
White–mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite,
Shall chase afar the goblins of the night,
And Independence o’er the day preside:
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.’
His two satires, _Advice_ and _Reproof_, evince on the part of their
author the qualities we have already noted—keen power of observation,
a felicitous deftness in wedding sound to sense, considerable force of
satiric presentation, with humour and wit in rich measure. But there is
no such elevation as we discover in Johnson’s _London_ or _The Vanity
of Human Wishes_, or in the satiric pieces of Pope or Dryden. The
moment the poems rise from the consideration of facts to principles,
Smollett becomes tedious and prosy. As a song–writer, however, he has
made some eminently successful essays, the well–known lyric—
‘To fix her: ‘twere a task as vain
To combat April drops of rain,’
which has been so often set to music, having been written by him soon
after the publication of _Roderick Random_. It possesses grace, point,
and rhythmic harmony—the three great desiderata in a good lyric.
The following verse has a faint echo of the subtle beauty of Wither,
Lovelace, Herrick, and the Cavalier poets:—
‘She’s such a miser eke in love,
Its joys she’ll neither share nor prove,
Though crowds of gallants gay await
From her victorious eyes their fate.’
Of his remaining poems there are only one or two that really merit
notice. Smollett was too apt to run into the opposite extreme from
sacrificing sense to sound, and prefer a repelling roughness both in
metre and assonance to altering the sequence of thought in a poem that
would not have been injured by the change. His Odes to Mirth and to
Sleep are marred by being too didactic. His images are frequently
so recondite as to awaken no corresponding ideas in the mind of the
reader. His ‘Love Elegy’ is in imitation of those of Tibullus, and
there are several lines that are well–nigh as tenderly pathetic
as those of its great original, while the verses ‘On a Young Lady
playing on the Harpsichord,’ so much admired by Sir Walter Scott, are
undoubtedly amongst his finest efforts for happy union of glowing
thought and graceful expression—
‘When Sappho struck the quivering wire,
The throbbing breast was all on fire;
And when she raised the vocal lay,
The captive soul was charmed away:
But had the nymph possessed with these
Thy softer, chaster power to please,
Thy beauteous air of sprightly youth,
Thy native smiles of artless truth,
The worm of grief had never preyed
On the forsaken, love–sick maid;
Nor had she mourned an hapless flame,
Nor dashed on rocks her tender frame.’
Had Smollett cultivated the art of metrical expression more
persistently and enthusiastically, there are sufficient indications to
show that he might have produced work which, if not in the very highest
grade of excellence in the school presided over by Collins, Gray, and
Goldsmith, would have attained a standard sufficiently worthy to be
ranked among the minor products of that decidedly prosaic epoch. We
need not regret his abstention.
Finally, in the drama Smollett’s restless genius sought expression at
two periods of his life when his hopes were at their highest. In his
nineteenth year, we have seen that the fruit of his historical studies,
and his wanderings in the glorious Elizabethan drama, had been given
to the world in _The Regicide_—a drama founded on the murder of James
I. of Scotland. Written at that point in a youth’s life when the Will
o’ the Wisp of literary fame seemed an angel of light, when the prizes
incident on intellectual eminence had only recently attracted his
gaze, and when his judgment, therefore, was dazzled by the expectation
of reaching such a reputation as his countrymen Thomson, Mallet, and
Arbuthnot had already won, it had all the faults though but few of
the merits of a youthful production. The other piece, _The Reprisal;
or, The Tars of Old England_, was executed when his fame was assured,
when he was no longer the tyro in composition, but the editor of the
_Critical Review_ and a critic of the works of others. It is widely
different from the _Regicide_, both in style, method, motive, and
execution. Yet a beginner in the work of criticism could detect that
both were written by the same hand. _The Regicide_, as a drama, is,
as we have already said, a very mediocre production. Dealing with a
period of Scottish history where there was scope for the aids of a
brilliant historic background and of the customs and costumes of the
time, Smollett has availed himself of none of these. The characters of
the drama are men and women of the eighteenth century, masquerading
in anomalous forms of speech and mysterious lines of action, which
no one out of Bedlam would have ever considered befitting a king or
his nobility. For example, in the play, in place of the _dramatis
personæ_ being designated as ‘James I., King of Scotland,’ and ‘Joanna
Beaufort, Queen of Scotland,’ we have simply ‘King’ and ‘Queen,’
while the nobles and conspirators bear such utterly inappropriate and
unhistoric names as Angus, Dunbar, Ramsay, Stuart, Grime, and Cattan.
The action is spasmodic and jerky, altogether lacking in artistic
dramatic dovetailing of incidents into each other and of symmetrical
consecutiveness of circumstance. James lacks heroism, dignity, and
power; Grime—probably meant for Sir Robert Graham—and Athol are very
declamatory villains, who, if they put off as much time in firing
off expletives at the real scene of the murder, must inevitably have
permitted their victim to escape. We seem to be reading a play of
Dekker’s or Greene’s, so very elementary is the stagecraft displayed
in contriving exits and entrances for the personages. The characters
are all more or less wooden. They talk in stilted, high–flown language,
such as a boy of nineteen would suppose the courtiers of a monarch
like James I. to employ. They never for a moment descend from their
stilts; and even in dying, Dunbar and Eleonora declaim to the audience
in rounded and rhetorical periods. Eleonora philosophises as follows
within a second or two of her death:—
‘Life has its various seasons as the year;
And after clustering autumn—but I faint,
Support me nearer—in rich harvest’s rear
Bleak winter must have lagged. Oh! now I feel
The leaden hand of death lie heavy on me—
Thine image swims before my straining eye,
And now it disappears. Speak—bid adieu
To the lost Eleonora. Not a word?
Not one farewell? Alas, that dismal groan
Is eloquent distress! Celestial powers,
Protect my father; show’r upon his—Oh! [_Dies._]’
Whereupon Dunbar also replies in similar heroics as death approaches—
‘There fled the purest soul that ever dwelt
In mortal clay! I come, my love, I come.
Where now the rosy tincture of these lips!
The smile that grace ineffable diffused!
The glance that smote the soul with silent wonder!
The voice that soothed the anguish of disease’—
After which he also cries ‘Oh!’ and dies. Now, it is very easy to
laugh at all this, and to make fun of the inappropriate ‘hifalutin.’
But, dangerously near bombast though it is, the scene has a pathetic
power in it, which, after discounting all its demerits, brings out the
balance on the right side of the ledger of praise and blame. Boyish and
immature, full of weak and silly passages as the drama is, there are,
nevertheless, portions of it which give presage of the genius lying
latent beneath the rant and fustian. Mediocre though the piece be,
viewed as a whole, isolated passages and lines could be selected from
it of the pure imaginative and intellectual ore,—lines and passages,
in fine, that lovers of Smollett’s genius treasure in their hearts as
worthy of the master. Such a passage as the following, being one of the
speeches addressed by Dunbar to Eleonora, is aflame with the fiery glow
of supreme passion—
‘O thy words
Would fire the hoary hermit’s languid soul
With ecstasies of pride! How then shall I,
Elate with every vainer hope that warms
The aspiring thought of youth, thy praise sustain
With moderation? Cruelly benign,
Thou hast adorned the victim; but alas!
Thou likewise giv’st the blow! Though Nature’s hand
With so much art has blended every grace
In thy enchanting form, that every eye
With transport views thee, and conveys unseen
The soft infection to the vanquished soul,
Yet wilt thou not the gentle passion own
That vindicates thy sway!’
And this, one of Eleonora’s replies to Dunbar, is pervaded by an
exquisite pathos, as tender as it is true—
‘O wondrous power
Of love beneficent! O generous youth,
What recompense (thus bankrupt as I am)
Shall speak my grateful soul? A poor return
Cold friendship renders to the fervid hope
Of fond desire!’
_The Reprisal_, on the other hand, is little more than a comedietta.
It has all the merits of a light, farcical, after–dinner piece, all
the faults of a composition that savours more of froth and folly
than aught else. The characters of the lovers, Heartly and Harriet,
are lightly etched in; but those of Oclabber, an Irish lieutenant,
and Maclaymore, a Scots captain, both in the French service, are
drawn with great humour and power. Haulyard the midshipman, Lyon the
lieutenant, and Block the sailor, all in the English navy, are spirited
creations, designed to represent the seamen of Old England at their
best. The incidents of the drama are full of life and movement, and the
characters are well contrasted as differentiated types. The language,
however, is still somewhat stilted and pedantic, so that one can easily
detect, amidst all the fun and frolic of _The Reprisal_, the same hand
that executed the dark and gloomy _Regicide_.
And now, with the great body of his work before us, looking back also
upon all he did, and thought, and said for the good of his brethren of
mankind, what is the ultimate verdict which Time has passed on his life
and labours? Secure of his niche in the very front rank of the great
fathers of English fiction, Smollett’s name and literary legacy are
precious possessions in the treasure–house of British fiction. Though
he is not a ‘Scots novelist’ in the restricted sense of the term as
applied to the writers of these latter days, he has done much to make
Scotsmen proud that their country had produced such a son. The works
he has executed are assuredly an imperishable memorial. But even more
than they do we cherish the example he has set of stern, unflinching
devotion to duty, of an honesty that has never been impugned, and of
a mighty love for the welfare and the improvement of his brethren of
mankind. Every line he wrote was permeated by this intense love of his
fellows, and for the amelioration of the lot of the downtrodden he was
ready to face both obloquy and danger. A Scot, in the narrow sense of
the word, he cannot be considered. As a Briton he will be loved and
cherished by a larger family of readers than would be the case did he
only appeal to the sympathies of Scotland and the Scots. But though
this is so, it does not lessen the regard wherewith his countrymen
regard him. After the inspired singer of ‘Auld Langsyne,’—after the
mighty magician who created such diverse types as Baron Bradwardine,
Vich Ian Vohr, Dominie Sampson, Di Vernon, Halbert Glendinning,
Jeannie Deans, Rob Roy, and Dugald Dalgetty,—comes he whose children
three—Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Matthew Bramble—will
find readers while our language lasts. Proud though we be as Britons to
own such a genius as of our tongue, prouder still are we, as Scots, to
hail him as akin to us in blood; and so in a double sense rejoicing in
his greatness and his glory, we once more bid him farewell!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] At this school the celebrated George Buchanan had been educated, as
Mr. Hume Brown indicates in his life of the Scots Scaliger.
[2] See _Sir James Y. Simpson_, by Eve Blantyre Simpson—‘Famous Scots’
Series.
[3] This was _The Regicide_. It was originally named ‘James i.,’ but
afterwards changed.
[4] Provost Stewart of Edinburgh was a warm Jacobite, and was suspected
of assisting the Prince to capture the town.
[5] _Works of John Home, now first collected, with a Life of the Author
by Henry Mackenzie._ London, Cadell, 1810.
[6] See _Minutes Select Society_, Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.
[7] See John Rae’s _Adam Smith_.
[8] _The Dawn of Radicalism._
[9] _Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of
Inveresk._
[10] Works of T. G. Smollett, edited by George Saintsbury. London:
Gibbings & Co.
[11] _Manual of English Prose Literature._
[12] The title Smollett gave to Johnson when requesting the aid of
Wilkes to free Francis Barber, Johnson’s black servant, from service on
board the _Stag_. It is the older form of _Khan_.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.