Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/163

Rh would be to take away from an ordinary culprit the trial by jury, and the privilege of being heard by counsel. Smollett was in the habit of indulging his propensity very frequently in the Critical Review, and, as a natural result of his warm and hasty temper, he often censured and ridiculed without a proper cause. Hence, he was perpetually subject to counter assaults from provoked authors, and occasionally to legal prosecutions, the effect of which was so severe that he is found, September 28, 1758, describing himself to Dr Moore, as sick of both praise and blame, and praying to his God that circumstances might permit him to consign his pen to oblivion ! In the end of this year, in consequence of some severe expressions he had used in the Review regarding admiral Knowles, a prosecution was raised against the printer ; chiefly for the purpose of ascertaining the author of the offensive article, from whom, in the event of his proving a gentleman, the complainant threatened to demand the usual satisfaction. After every attempt to soften admiral Knowles had failed, Smollett came boldly forward and screened the printer by avowing himself the author of the article, and offering any satisfaction that might be required. Knowles, who had sailed as a captain in the expedition to Carthagena, probably thought it beneath him to fight a man who had been a surgeon's mate in the same fleet, even though that surgeon's mate boasted of some good Caledonian blood, and was besides booked for immortality in the scrolls of fame. The penalty paid by Smollett for his rashness was a fine of one hundred pounds and an imprisonment for three months in the King's Bench prison. Yet, in this misfortune, he was not without consolation. His conduct was generally pronounced very magnanimous, and his friends continued to visit him in prison the same as in his neat villa at Chelsea.

To beguile the tedium of confinement, he wrote a fantastic novel, entitled " The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves," which appeared in detached portions through the successive numbers of the British Magazine for 1760 and 1761. This is deservedly ranked among the least happy of Smollett's performances. The drollery entirely lies in the adventures of a crazy English gentleman, who sets out armed cap-a-pie, in the character of a knight-errant, and roams through modern England, to attack vice wherever it can be found, to protect defenceless virtue, and remedy the evils which the law cannot reach. While some amusement is afforded by the contrast of such a character with the modern commonplace beings amongst whom he moves, it is only the imperfect amusement yielded by the exhibition of natural madness : the adventures of an imaginary sovereign broken loose from a mad house could hardly be less drearily entertaining. Smollett, in the haste with which he wrote his novel, has evidently proceeded upon the idea of an English Don Quixote ; without recollecting that the work of the illustrious Cervantes had a rational aim, in proposing to counteract the rage of the Spanish people for tales of knightly adventure. His own work, having no such object, labours under the imputation of being an imitation, without any countervailing advantage. Yet, strange to say, such was the prestige of Smollett's name and example, that the work not only sold to a great extent as a separate work, but was followed by many sub-imitations, such as the Spiritual Quixote, the Amicable Quixote, the Female Quixote, &c.

In 1760, Smollett became engaged, with other literary adventurers, in a large and important work, which was finished in 1764, in 42 volumes, under the title of "The Modern Part of an Universal History." He is supposed to have contributed the histories of France, Italy, and Germany, to this work, and to have received altogether, for his share of the labour, no less a sum than 1575. Throughout the same period, he was engaged in his "Continuation of the His-