He Spoke Of Himself Indeed As "Mended By Ill-Treatment" Not Unlike Tavernier, The Famous Traveller, - Said To Have Been Radically Cured Of The Gout By A Turkish Aga In Egypt, Who Gave Him The Bastinado Because He Would Not Look At The Head Of The Bashaw Of Cairo.

But Fizes was right after all in his swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a radical one.

His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of incessant labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still maturing and developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later work might have eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a severe relapse in the winter. In 1770 he had once more to take refuge from overwork on the sunny coast he had done so much to popularize among his countrymen, and it was near Leghorn that he died on 17th September 1771.

ANNO AETATIS 51. EHEV! QVAM PROCVL A PATRIA! PROPE LIBVRNI PORTVM, IN ITALIA JACET SEPVLTVS.

THOMAS SECCOMBE. ACTON, May 1907.

LETTER I

BOULOGNE SUR MER, June 23, 1763.

DEAR SIR, - You laid your commands upon me at parting, to communicate from time to time the observations I should make in the course of my travels and it was an injunction I received with pleasure. In gratifying your curiosity, I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which, without some such employment, would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.

You knew, and pitied my situation, traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.

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