Smollett's Old Chum, Dr. W. Smellie, Died 5th March 1763.] In The Circumstances (Bearing In Mind That It Was His Original Intention To Prune The Letters Considerably Before Publication) It Was Only Natural That He Should Say A Good Deal About The State Of His Health.

His letters would have been unsatisfying to these good people had he not referred frequently and at some length to his spirits and to his symptoms, an improvement in which was the primary object of his journey and his two years' sojourn in the South.

Readers who linger over the diary of Fielding's dropsy and Mrs. Fielding's toothache are inconsistent in denouncing the luxury of detail with which Smollett discusses the matter of his imposthume.

What I claim for the present work is that, in the first place, to any one interested in Smollett's personality it supplies an unrivalled key. It is, moreover, the work of a scholar, an observer of human nature, and, by election, a satirist of no mean order. It gives us some characteristic social vignettes, some portraits of the road of an unsurpassed freshness and clearness. It contains some historical and geographical observations worthy of one of the shrewdest and most sagacious publicists of the day. It is interesting to the etymologist for the important share it has taken in naturalising useful foreign words into our speech. It includes (as we shall have occasion to observe) a respectable quantum of wisdom fit to become proverbial, and several passages of admirable literary quality.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 17 of 535
Words from 4392 to 4643 of 143308