f
adventure.

In February 1753, Smollett "obliged the town" with his "Adventures of
Ferdinand, Count Fathom," a cosmopolitan swindler and adventurer. The
book is Smollett's "Barry Lyndon," yet as his hero does not tell his own
story, but is perpetually held up as a "dreadful example," there is none
of Thackeray's irony, none of his subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, a
foreigner too," Smollett seems to say, "do not be misled, oh maidens, by
the wiles of such a Count! Impetuous youth, play not with him at
billiards, basset, or gleek. Fathers, on such a rogue shut your doors:
collectors, handle not his nefarious antiques. Let all avoid the path
and shun the example of Ferdinand, Count Fathom!"

Such is Smollett's sermon, but, after all, Ferdinand is hardly worse than
Roderick or Peregrine. The son of a terrible old sutler and
camp-follower, a robber and slayer of wounded men, Ferdinand had to live
by his wits, and he was hardly less scrupulous, after all, than Peregrine
and Roderick. The daubs of casual generosity were not laid on, and that
is all the difference. As Sophia Western was mistaken for Miss Jenny
Cameron, so Ferdinand was arrested as Prince Charles, who, in fact,
caused much inconvenience to harmless travellers. People were often
arrested as "The Pretender's son" abroad as well as in England.

The life and death of Ferdinand's mother, shot by a wounded hussar in her
moment of victory, make perhaps the most original and interesting part of
this hero's adventures. The rest is much akin to his earlier novels, but
the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to the
vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that
Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he
promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated
almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance,
hovers about like a fantastic shadow."

Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow of decency never
haunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement. Smollett avers
that he "has had the courage to call in question the talents of a pseudo-
patron," and so is charged with "insolence, rancour, and scurrility." Of
all these things, and of worse, he had been guilty; his offence had never
been limited to "calling in question the talents" of persons who had been
unsuccessful in getting his play represented. Remonstrance merely
irrit