Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/164

300 tory of England, from 1748 to 1765," which first appeared in five successive octavo volumes, and finally in 2 vols., 4to, 1766. It has been already mentioned that, for this work, he is supposed to have received such a price as enabled the purchaser to sell it to a bookseller at a profit of one thousand pounds.

Smollett had been originally a Whig, but he gradually became something very like a Tory. A diffusive philanthropy, by which he was inspired, with perhaps Boms impressions from early education, had made him the first ; a disgust at the conduct of some of his party appears to have inclined him to the second. The accession of a Scottish prime minister in the earl of Bute, as it excited much opposition among the English, so it attracted a proportionate degree of support from the Scotch, who now very generally became adherents of the government, from a motive of nationality, without regard to their former political sentiments. Smollett went into this enthusiasm, and on the very day of the earl of Bute's elevation, May 29th, 1762, he started a newspaper entitled "The Briton," in which he laboured to break down the prejudices of the English against a Scottish premier, and undertook the defence of the new administration upon its own merits. Within a week after this event, an opposition journal was started by Wilkes, with whom Smollett had previously lived on the most intimate terms of friendship, but who now became his political antagonist. The North Briton, (so was this paper called,) supported by the overpowering national feelings of England, very soon proved too much for its rival; and on the 12th February, 1763, Smollett abandoned the publication. He did not shine as a party writer, wanting that coolness which is necessary in forming replies and repartees to all the paragraphs with which he was assailed ' like the most of professed satirists, he could endure nothing so ill as satire. Lord Bute, who resigned in the April following, is said to have never sufficiently acknowledged the services of Smollett

Among the publications with which Smollett was connected about this time, were, a translation of the works of Voltaire in twenty-seven volumes, and a work in eight volumes, entitled "The Present State of all Nations." In the first his name was associated with that of the Rev. T. Francklin, translator of Sophocles ; but in neither is it probable that much was written by his own hand.

He had now for many years prosecuted the sedentary and laborious employment of an author by profession. Though little more than forty years of age, and possessed originally of a most robust frame, he began to suffer from ill health. His life, which ought to have been rendered comfortable by the large sums he procured for his works, was embittered by "the stings and arrows" which his own satirical disposition had caused to be directed against himself, and by the loss of friends, which he was perpetually suffering, either from that cause, or from political differences. To add to his other miseries, he had the misfortune at this time to lose his daughter and only child, Elizabeth, a girl of fifteen, whose amiable disposition and elegant accomplishments had become the solace of his life, and promised to be in future a still more precious blessing. Under this accumulation of distresses, he was prevailed upon by his wife to seek consolation in travel; and accordingly, in June, 1763, he went abroad, and continued in France about two years.

In the course of his travels, Smollett seems to have laboured under a constant fit of ill humour, the result of morbid feelings, and a distempered bodily system. This is amply visible in the work which he published on his return, entitled, "Travels through France and Italy," 2 vols. 8vo., of which two passages may be here extracted.