In Point Of Date (1763-65) It Is Fortunate, For The Writer Just
Escaped Being One Of A Crowd.
On the whole, I maintain that it is
more than equal in interest to the Journey to the Hebrides, and
that it deserves a very considerable proportion of the praise
that has hitherto been lavished too indiscriminately upon the
Voyage to Lisbon.
On the force of this claim the reader is
invited to constitute himself judge after a fair perusal of the
following pages. I shall attempt only to point the way to a
satisfactory verdict, no longer in the spirit of an advocate, but
by means of a few illustrations and, more occasionally,
amplifications of what Smollett has to tell us.
III
As was the case with Fielding many years earlier, Smollett was
almost broken down with sedentary toil, when early in June 1763
with his wife, two young ladies ("the two girls") to whom she
acted as chaperon, and a faithful servant of twelve years'
standing, who in the spirit of a Scots retainer of the olden time
refused to leave his master (a good testimonial this, by the way,
to a temper usually accredited with such a splenetic sourness),
he crossed the straits of Dover to see what a change of climate
and surroundings could do for him.
On other grounds than those of health he was glad to shake the
dust of Britain from his feet. He speaks himself of being
traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false
patrons, complaints which will remind the reader, perhaps, of
George Borrow's "Jeremiad," to the effect that he had been
beslavered by the venomous foam of every sycophantic lacquey and
unscrupulous renegade in the three kingdoms.
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