s not prepared to see everything couleur
de rose now. His was quite unlike the frame of mind of the ordinary
holiday-seeker, who, partly from a voluntary optimism, and partly from
the change of food and habit, the exhilaration caused by novel
surroundings, and timidity at the unaccustomed sounds he hears in his
ears, is determined to be pleased with everything. Very temperamental
was Smollett, and his frame of mind at the time was that of one
determined to be pleased with nothing. We know little enough about
Smollett intime. Only the other day I learned that the majority of
so-called Smollett portraits are not presentments of the novelist at
all, but ingeniously altered plates of George Washington. An
interesting confirmation of this is to be found in the recently
published Letters of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Robert Chambers.
"Smollett wore black cloaths--a tall man--and extreamly handsome. No
picture of him is known to be extant--all that have been foisted on the
public as such his relations disclaim--this I know from my aunt Mrs.
Smollett, who was the wife of his nephew, and resided with him at
Bath." But one thing we do know, and in these same letters, if
confirmation had been needed, we observe the statement repeated,
namely, that Smollett was very peevish. A sardonic, satirical, and
indeed decidedly gloomy mood or temper had become so habitual in him as
to transform the man. Originally gay and debonnair, his native
character had been so overlaid that when he first returned to Scotland
in 1755 his own mother could not recognise him until he "gave over
glooming" and put on his old bright smile. [A pleasant story of the
Doctor's mother is given in the same Letters to R. Chambers (1904). She
is described as an ill-natured-looking woman with a high nose, but not
a bad temper, and very fond of the cards. One evening an Edinburgh
bailie (who was a tallow chandler) paid her a visit. "Come awa',
bailie," said she, "and tak' a trick at the cards." "Troth madam, I hae
nae siller!" "Then let us play for a pound of candles."] His was
certainly a nervous, irritable, and rather censorious temper. Like Mr.
Brattle, in The Vicar of Bulhampton, he was thinking always of the evil
things that had been done to him. With the pawky and philosophic Scots
of his own day (Robertson, Hume, Adam Smith, and "Jupiter" Carlyle) he
had little in common, but with the sour and mistrustful James Mill or
the cross and querulous Carlyle of a later