we can scarcely criticise it. Of course it is absolutely
unhistorical; of course it is empty of character, and replete with
fustian, and ineffably tedious; but perhaps it is not much worse than
other luckier tragedies of the age. Naturally a lover calls his wounded
lady "the bleeding fair." Naturally she exclaims--

"Celestial powers
Protect my father, shower upon his--oh!" (Dies).

Naturally her adorer answers with--

"So may our mingling souls
To bliss supernal wing our happy--oh!" (Dies).

We are reminded of--

"Alas, my Bom!" (Dies).
"'Bastes' he would have said!"

The piece, if presented, must have been damned. But Smollett was so
angry with one patron, Lord Lyttelton, that he burlesqued the poor man's
dirge on the death of his wife. He was so angry with Garrick that he
dragged him into "Roderick Random" as Marmozet. Later, obliged by
Garrick, and forgiving Lyttelton, he wrote respectfully about both. But,
in 1746 (in "Advice"), he had assailed the "proud lord, who smiles a
gracious lie," and "the varnished ruffians of the State." Because
Tobias's play was unacted, people who tried to aid him were liars and
ruffians, and a great deal worse, for in his satire, as in his first
novel, Smollett charges men of high rank with the worst of unnamable
crimes. Pollio and Lord Strutwell, whoever they may have been, were
probably recognisable then, and were undeniably libelled, though they did
not appeal to a jury. It is improbable that Sir John Cope had ever tried
to oblige Smollett. His ignoble attack on Cope, after that unfortunate
General had been fairly and honourably acquitted of incompetence and
cowardice, was, then, wholly disinterested. Cope is "a courtier Ape,
appointed General."

"Then Pug, aghast, fled faster than the wind,
Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind;
While every band for orders bleat in vain,
And fall in slaughtered heaps upon the plain,"--

of Preston Pans.

Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or more unjustly cruel.
Smollett had not here even the excuse of patriotism. Sir John Cope was
no Butcher Cumberland. In fact the poet's friend is not wrong, when, in
"Reproof," he calls Smollett "a flagrant misanthrope." The world was out
of joint for the cadet of Bonhill: both before and after his very trying
experiences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept "The
Regicide." This was reason good why Smo