y sympathising verse shall flow."

The "Tears" are better than the "Ode to Blue-Eyed Ann," probably Mrs.
Smollett. But the courageous author of "The Tears of Scotland," had
manifestly broken with patrons. He also broke with Rich, the manager at
Covent Garden, for whom he had written an opera libretto. He had failed
as doctor, and as dramatist; nor, as satirist, had he succeeded. Yet he
managed to wear wig and sword, and to be seen in good men's company.
Perhaps his wife's little fortune supported him, till, in 1748, he
produced "Roderick Random." It is certain that we never find Smollett in
the deep distresses of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. Novels were now in
vogue; "Pamela" was recent, "Joseph Andrews" was yet more recent,
"Clarissa Harlowe" had just appeared, and Fielding was publishing "Tom
Jones." Smollett, too, tried his hand, and, at last, he succeeded.

His ideas of the novel are offered in his preface. The Novel, for him,
is a department of Satire; "the most entertaining and universally
improving." To Smollett, "Roderick Random" seemed an "improving" work!
_Ou le didacticisme va t'il se nicher_? Romance, he declares, "arose in
ignorance, vanity, and superstition," and declined into "the ludicrous
and unnatural." Then Cervantes "converted romance to purposes far more
useful and entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out the
follies of ordinary life." Romance was to revive again some twenty years
after its funeral oration was thus delivered. As for Smollett himself,
he professedly "follows the plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Blas" (a plan as
old as Petronius Arbiter, and the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius); but he gives
more place to "compassion," so as not to interfere with "generous
indignation, which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and
vicious disposition of the world." As a contrast to sordid vice, we are
to admire "modest merit" in that exemplary orphan, Mr. Random. This
gentleman is a North Briton, because only in North Britain can a poor
orphan get such an education as Roderick's "birth and character require,"
and for other reasons. Now, as for Roderick, the schoolmaster "gave
himself no concern about the progress I made," but, "should endeavour,
with God's help, to prevent my future improvement." It must have been at
Glasgow University, then, that Roderick learned "Greek very well, and was
pretty far advanced in the mathematics," and here he must have used his
genius for t