People had not begun to know the extent of their own brutality in the slave trade, but Smollett probably did know it. If a curious prophetic letter attributed to him, and published more than twenty years after his death, be genuine; he had the strongest opinions about this form of commercial enterprise. But he did not wear his heart on his sleeve, where he wore his irritable nervous system.
It is probable enough that he felt for the victims of poverty, neglect, and oppression (despite his remarks on hospitals) as keenly as Dickens. We might regard his offensively ungrateful Roderick as a purely dramatic exhibition of a young man, if his other heroes were not as bad, or worse; if their few redeeming qualities were not stuck on in patches; and if he had omitted his remark about Roderick's "modest merit." On the other hand, the good side of Matthew Bramble seems to be drawn from Smollett's own character, and, if that be the case, he can have had little sympathy with his own humorous Barry Lyndons. Scott and Thackeray leaned to the favourable view: Smollett, his nervous system apart, was manly and kindly.
As regards plot, "Roderick Random" is a mere string of picturesque adventures. It is at the opposite pole from "Tom Jones" in the matter of construction. There is no reason why it should ever stop except the convenience of printers and binders. Perhaps we lay too much stress on the somewhat mechanical art of plot-building.
Fielding was then setting the first and best English example of a craft in which the very greatest authors have been weak, or of which they were careless. Smollett was always rather more incapable, or rather more indifferent, in plot-weaving, than greater men.
In our day of royalties, and gossip about the gains of authors, it would be interesting to know what manner and size of a cheque Smollett received from his publisher, the celebrated Mr. Osborne.
We do not know, but Smollett published his next novel "on commission," "printed for the Author"; so probably he was not well satisfied with the pecuniary result of "Roderick Random." Thereby, says Dr. Moore, he "acquired much more reputation than money." So he now published "The Regicide" "by subscription, that method of publication being then more reputable than it has been thought since" (1797). Of "The Regicide," and its unlucky preface, enough, or more, has been said. The public sided with the managers, not with the meritorious orphan.
For the sake of pleasure, or of new experiences, or of economy, Smollett went to Paris in 1750, where he met Dr. Moore, later his biographer, the poetical Dr. Akenside, and an affected painter. He introduced the poet and painter into "Peregrine Pickle"; and makes slight use of a group of exiled Jacobites, including Mr. Hunter of Burnside. In 1750, there were Jacobites enough in the French capital, all wondering very much where Prince Charles might be, and quite unconscious that he was their neighbour in a convent in the Rue St. Dominique. Though Moore does not say so (he is provokingly economical of detail), we may presume that Smollett went wandering in Flanders, as does Peregrine Pickle. It is curious that he should introduce a Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyed damsel, all in the Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles did live in Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walkenshaw, did go about disguised as a Capucin, and was tracked by a Jewish spy, while the other spy, Young Glengarry, styled himself "Pickle." But all those events occurred about a year after the novel was published in 1751.
Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree from Aberdeen University, and, after returning from France, he practised for a year or two at Bath. But he could not expect to be successful among fashionable invalids, and, in "Humphrey Clinker," he make Matthew Bramble give such an account of the Bath waters as M. Zola might envy. He was still trying to gain ground in his profession, when, in March 1751, Mr. D. Wilson published the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle" "for the Author," unnamed. I have never seen this first edition, which was "very curious and disgusting."Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talks of "the art and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, by certain booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, and corrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of personal satire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts of envy, rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private and public, been levelled at his reputation." Who were these base and pitiless dastards? Probably every one who did not write favourably about the book. Perhaps Smollett suspected Fielding, whom he attacks in several parts of his works, treating him as a kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, and an associate with thieves. Why Smollett thus misconducted himself is a problem, unless he was either "meanly jealous," or had taken offence at some remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly began the war, in the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle." He made a kind of palinode to the "trading justice" later, as other people of his kind have done.
A point in "Peregrine Pickle" easily assailed was the long episode about a Lady of Quality: the beautiful Lady Vane, whose memoirs Smollett introduced into his tale. Horace Walpole found that she had omitted the only feature in her career of which she had just reason to be proud: the number of her lovers. Nobody doubted that Smollett was paid for casting his mantle over Lady Vane: moreover, he might expect a success of scandal. The roman a clef is always popular with scandal-mongers, but its authors can hardly hope to escape rebuke.