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298 with her daughter, Mrs Telfer, it was arranged that he should be introduced to the old lady as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a very serious countenance, approaching to a frown; but while his mother's eyes were rivetted with the instinct of affection upon his countenance, ho could not refrain from smiling: she immediately sprang from her chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed "All! my son, my son!" She afterwards told him that, if he had kept his austere looks and continued to gloom, she might have perhaps been deceived; but "your old roguish smile," she added, "betrayed you at once."

After a little tour through the circle of his Scottish acquaintance, he returned to London, and commenced in 175(5, the " Critical Review," which professed to maintain Tory principles against the Whig work called the Monthly Review. His contributions to this periodical were numerous and excellent, though sometimes disgraced by intemperance of language. He soon after published his large collection of Voyages formerly alluded to.

Passing over a farce, entitled the " Reprisal," which was acted with success in 1757, Smollett's next work was his " Complete History of England," deduced from the descent of Julius Caesar, to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, which appeared in 1758 in 4 vols., 4to. As only a part of Hume's History had hitherto appeared, this work was the first of the kind, in which any large share of ability or any considerable elegance of composition had been displayed. The judgments of the writer upon political characters and transactions are by no means in the most popular strain, nor are they even consistent ; but, nevertheless, the spirit and sprightliness of the narrative secured it approbation. It met with so extensive a sale, that, with the continuation afterwards published in two similar quarto volumes, it brought him two thousand pounds, while half as much was made by the bookseller to whom he sold the Continuation, from a mere transference of the copyright of that part of the work. It has been declared, and never contradicted, that the four quarto volumes, embracing a period of thirteen hundred years, were composed and finished for the press in fourteen months; an effort to which nothing but the greatest abilities, and the most vigorous application, could have been equal. The shortness of time bestowed on the "Complete History of England," joined to the merit of the performance, and the consideration of the infinite pains and perseverance it must have cost him to form and digest a proper plan, compile materials, compare different accounts, collate authorities, and compose, polish, and finish the work, will make it be regarded as one of the most striking instances of facility in writing that is to be found in literary history. The work, in its entire shape, has long been superseded; but it has always been customary to supply the defect of Hume's work with a continuation from Smollett, embracing the period between the Revolution and the Accession of George III.

The one grand defect of Smollett's character was his propensity to satire. According to the report of an early companion, his conversation in company was a continued string of epigrammatic sarcasms against one or other of those present; a practice so disagreeable that no degree of talent could excuse it. When he wrote satirically, it was generally in reference to something mean, cowardly, selfish, or otherwise odious to his own upright and generous feelings. It did not occur to him—nor has it properly been considered either by satirists or those who delight in satire—that for a private individual to set him- self up in judgment upon a fellow being, and, without examining any evidence or hearing any defence, to condemn him at once and irremediably to the pillory of the press, is an invasion of the rights of the subjects just as wicked, as it