Like Prior, Fielding, Shenstone, And
Dickens, Smollett Was A Connoisseur In Inns And Innkeepers.
He
knew good food and he knew good value, and he had a mighty keen
eye for a rogue.
There may, it is true, have been something in
his manner which provoked them to exhibit their worst side to
him. It is a common fate with angry men. The trials to which he
was subjected were momentarily very severe, but, as we shall see
in the event, they proved a highly salutary discipline to him.
To sum up, then, Smollett's Travels were written hastily and
vigorously by an expert man of letters. They were written ad
vivum, as it were, not from worked-up notes or embellished
recollections. They were written expressly for money down. They
were written rather en noir than couleur de rose by an
experienced, and, we might almost perhaps say, a disillusioned
traveller, and not by a naif or a niais. The statement that they
were to a certain extent the work of an invalid is, of course,
true, and explains much. The majority of his correspondents were
of the medical profession, all of them were members of a group
with whom he was very intimate, and the letters were by his
special direction to be passed round among them. [We do not
know precisely who all these correspondents of Smollett were, but
most of them were evidently doctors and among them, without a
doubt, John Armstrong, William Hunter, George Macaulay, and above
all John Moore, himself an authority on European travel, Governor
on the Grand Tour of the Duke of Hamilton (Son of "the beautiful
Duchess"), author of Zeluco, and father of the famous soldier.
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