y. Perhaps the good surgeon became the victim of that "one
continued string of epigrammatic sarcasms," such as Mr. Colquhoun told
Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Smollett used to play off on his companions, "for
which no talents could compensate." Judging by Dr. Carlyle's Memoirs
this intolerable kind of display was not unusual in Caledonian
conversation: but it was not likely to make Tobias popular in England.

Thither he went in 1739, with very little money, "and a very large
assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intended
to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in the
other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that their
liberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not
"kinless loons"; they had connections: but who, in Scotland, had money?
Tobias had passed his medical examinations, but he rather trusted in his
MS. tragedy, "The Regicide." Tragical were its results for the author.
Inspired by George Buchanan's Latin history of Scotland, Smollett had
produced a play, in blank verse, on the murder of James I. That a boy,
even a Scottish boy, should have an overweening passion for this unlucky
piece, that he should expect by such a work to climb a step on fortune's
ladder, is nowadays amazing. For ten years he clung to it, modified it,
polished, improved it, and then published it in 1749, after the success
of "Roderick Random." Twice he told the story of his theatrical mishaps
and disappointments, which were such as occur to every writer for the
stage. He wailed over them in "Roderick Random," in the story of Mr.
Melopoyn; he prolonged his cry, in the preface to "The Regicide," and
probably the noble whom he "lashed" (very indecently) in his two satires
("Advice," 1746, "Reproof," 1747, and in "Roderick Random") was the
patron who could not get the tragedy acted. First, in 1739, he had a
patron whom he "discarded." Then he went to the West Indies, and,
returning in 1744, he lugged out his tragedy again, and fell foul again
of patrons, actors, and managers. What befell him was the common fate.
People did not, probably, hasten to read his play: managers and
"supercilious peers" postponed that entertainment, or, at least, the
noblemen could not make the managers accept it if they did not want it.
Our taste differs so much from that of the time which admired Home's
"Douglas," and "The Regicide" was so often altered to meet objections,
that