antia Phipps," "The Adventures of Mrs. Loveil," and so on. Most of
them contained portraits of real people, and, no doubt, most of them were
therefore successful. But where are they now? Lady Mary thought Lady
Vane's part of "Peregrine" "more instructive to young women than any
sermon that I know." She regarded Fielding as with Congreve, the only
"original" of her age, but Fielding had to write for bread, and that is
"the most contemptible way of getting bread." She did not, at this time,
even know Smollett's name, but she admired him, and, later, calls him "my
dear Smollett." This lady thought that Fielding did not know what sorry
fellows his Tom Jones and Captain Booth were. Not near so sorry as
Peregine Pickle were they, for this gentleman is a far more atrocious
ruffian than Roderick Random.

None the less "Peregrine" is Smollett's greatest work. Nothing is so
rich in variety of character, scene, and adventure. We are carried along
by the swift and copious volume of the current, carried into very queer
places, and into the oddest miscellaneous company, but we cannot escape
from Smollett's vigorous grasp. Sir Walter thought that "Roderick"
excelled its successor in "ease and simplicity," and that Smollett's
sailors, in "Pickle," "border on caricature." No doubt they do: the
eccentricities of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., are exaggerated, and Pipes is
less subdued than Rattlin, though always delightful. But Trunnion
absolutely makes one laugh out aloud: whether he is criticising the
sister of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle in that gentleman's presence, at a
pot-house; or riding to the altar with his squadron of sailors, tacking
in an unfavourable gale; or being run away into a pack of hounds, and
clearing a hollow road over a waggoner, who views him with "unspeakable
terror and amazement." Mr. Winkle as an equestrian is not more entirely
acceptable to the mind than Trunnion. We may speak of "caricature," but
if an author can make us sob with laughter, to criticise him solemnly is
ungrateful.

Except Fielding occasionally, and Smollett, and Swift, and Sheridan, and
the authors of "The Rovers," one does not remember any writers of the
eighteenth century who quite upset the gravity of the reader. The scene
of the pedant's dinner after the manner of the ancients, does not seem to
myself so comic as the adventures of Trunnion, while the bride is at the
altar, and the bridegroom is tacking and veering with his convoy about
th