In Letter V. The Doctor Again Is Very Much Himself.
A little
provocation and he bristles and stabs all round.
He mounts the
hygienic horse and proceeds from the lack of implements of
cleanliness to the lack of common decency, and "high flavoured
instances, at which even a native of Edinburgh would stop his
nose." [This recalls Johnson's first walk up the High Street,
Edinburgh, on Bozzy's arm. "It was a dusky night: I could not
prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh.
. . . As we marched along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in
the dark!'"] And then lest the southrons should escape we have a
reference to the "beastly habit of drinking from a tankard in
which perhaps a dozen filthy mouths have slabbered as is the
custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was
a pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most
nations are gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious
boasting of the French is well hit off in the observation of the
chevalier that the English doubtless drank every day to the
health of the Marquise de Pompadour. The implication reminded
Smollett of a narrow escape from a duello (an institution he
reprobates with the utmost trenchancy in this book) at Ghent in
1749 with a Frenchman who affirmed that Marlborough's battles
were purposely lost by the French generals in order to mortify
Mme. de Maintenon. Two incidents of some importance to Smollett
occurred during the three months' sojourn at Boulogne.
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