the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad ; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of passages from writers, ancient and modern, to the purposes of a grave burlesque; and for the application of these, by a contrivance not very artificial, it is sometimes necessary to recur to the notes. The style, if it be not distinguished by any remarkable strength or elegance, is at least free and unaffected. The imitations of Horace are often happy that addressed to Lord Bathurst, particularly towards the latter part, is perhaps the best. Of the original jeux d'esprits, the verses occasioned by the Marriage and Game Acts, both passed the same session, have, I think, most merit. The Fable of Jotham, or the Borough Hunters, does not make up by ingenuity for what it wants in reverence. In the Fakeer, a tale professedly borrowed from Voltaire, the story takes a less humorous turn than as it is told in the extracts frome Pere Le Comte's memoirs in the preface. 119 TOBIAS SMOLLETT. TOBIAS SMOLLETT was born in the parish of Cardross, in Dumbartonshire, in the year 1721. His father, Archibald, a Scotch gentleman of small fortune, was the youngest son of Sir James Smollett, who was knighted on King William's accession, represented the borough of Dumbarton in the last Scotch Parliament, and was of weight enough to be chosen one of the commissioners for framing the treaty of union between the two countries. On his return from Leyden, where it was then the custom for young Scotchmen to complete their education, Archibald married Barbara, the daughter of Mr. Cunningham, of Gilbertfield, near Glasgow; and died soon after the birth of our poet, leaving him, with another son and a daughter, dependent on the bounty of their grandfather. The place of Smollett's nativity was endeared to him by its natural beauties; insomuch that, when he had an opportunity of comparing it with foreign countries, he preferred the neighbouring lake of Loch Lomond to those most celebrated in Switzerland and Italy. Being placed at the school of Dumbarton, which was conducted by John Love, a man of some distinction as a scholar, he is said to have exercised his poetical talents in writing satires on the other boys, and in panegyrising his heroic countryman Wallace. From hence, at the usual age, he was removed to Glasgow; and there making choice of the study of medicine, was apprenticed to Mr. John Gordon, a chirurgeon, who afterwards took out a diploma, and practised as a physician. His irresistible propensity to burlesque did not suffer the peculiarities of this man, whom he has represented under the character of Potion, in Roderick Random, to escape him. He made some amends for the indignity, by introducing honourable mention of the name of Dr. Gordon in the last of his novels. A more overt act of contumacy to his superiors, into which his vivacity hurried him, trifling as it may appear, is so characteristic, that I cannot leave it untold. A lad, who was apprenticed to a neighbouring chirurgeon, and with whom he had been engaged in frolic on a winter's evening, was receiving a severe reprimand from his master for quitting the shop; and having alleged in his excuse, that he had been hit by a snow-ball, and had gone out in pursuit of the person who had thrown it, was listening to the taunts of his master, on the improbability of such a story. "How long," said the son of Esculapius, with the confident air of one fearless of contradiction, "might I stand here, and such a thing not happen to me?" when Smollett, who stood behind the pillar of the shopdoor, and heard what passed, snatching up a snowball, quickly delivered his playmate from the dilemma in which this question had placed him, by an answer equally prompt and conclusive. Not content with this attack, he afterwards made the offender sit for his whole-length portrait, in the person, as it is supposed, of Crab, in the same novel. In the midst of these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and discovering that he must thenceforth rely on his own exertions for a maintenance, he set forth with his juvenile production for London. On his arrival there, failing as might be expected, to persuade the managers to bring his tragedy on the stage, he solicited and obtained the place of a chirurgeon's mate, on board the fleet destined for the attack of Carthagena. Of this ill-conducted and unfortunate expedition, he not only made a sketch in his Roderick Random, but afterwards inserted a more detailed account of it in the Compendium of Voyages. After a short time, he was so little pleased with his employment, that he determined to relinquish it, and remain in the West Indies. During his residence in Jamaica, he met with Miss Anne Lascelles, to whom, after a few years, he was married, and with whom he expected to receive a fortune of three thousand pounds. In the islands he probably depended for a subsistence on the exercise of his skill as a chirurgeon. He returned to London in the year 1746; and though his family had distinguished themselves by their revolutionary principles, testified his sympathy with the late sufferings of his countrymen, in their expiring struggle for the house of Stuart, by some lines, entitled the Tears of Scotland. When warned of his indiscretion, he added that concluding stanza of reproof to his timid counsellors : While the warm blood bedews my veins, His first separate publication was, Advice, a satire, in the autumn of this year. At the beginning of the next it was followed by a second part, called Reproof, in which he took an occasion of venting his resentment against Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, with whom he had quarrelled concerning an opera, |