Project Gutenberg's Travels Through France and Italy, by Tobias Smollett

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Title: Travels Through France and Italy

Author: Tobias Smollett

Posting Date: November 28, 2009 [EBook #2311]
Release Date: September, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Martin Adamson. HTML version by Al Haines.

Travels Through France And Italy

By

Tobias Smollett

INTRODUCTION

By

Thomas Seccombe

I

Many pens have been burnished this year of grace for the purpose of
celebrating with befitting honour the second centenary of the birth of
Henry Fielding; but it is more than doubtful if, when the right date
occurs in March 1921, anything like the same alacrity will be shown to
commemorate one who was for many years, and by such judges as Scott,
Hazlitt, and Charles Dickens, considered Fielding's complement and
absolute co-equal (to say the least) in literary achievement.
Smollett's fame, indeed, seems to have fallen upon an unprosperous
curve. The coarseness of his fortunate rival is condoned, while his is
condemned without appeal. Smollett's value is assessed without
discrimination at that of his least worthy productions, and the
historical value of his work as a prime modeller of all kinds of new
literary material is overlooked. Consider for a moment as not wholly
unworthy of attention his mere versatility as a man of letters. Apart
from Roderick Random and its successors, which gave him a European
fame, he wrote a standard history, and a standard version of Don
Quixote (both of which held their ground against all comers for over a
century). He created both satirical and romantic types, he wrote two
fine-spirited lyrics, and launched the best Review and most popular
magazine of his day. He was the centre of a literary group, the founder
to some extent of a school of professional writers, of which strange
and novel class, after the "Great Cham of Literature," as he called Dr.
Johnson, he affords one of the first satisfactory specimens upon a
fairly large scale. He is, indeed, a more satisfactory, because a more
independent, examp