To return now to the Doctor's immediate contemplation of Boulogne, a
city described in the Itineraries as containing rien de remarquable.
The story of the Capuchin [On page 21. A Capuchin of the same stripe is
in Pickle, ch. Ill. sq.] is very racy of Smollett, while the vignette
of the shepherd at the beginning of Letter V. affords a first-rate
illustration of his terseness. Appreciate the keen and minute
observation concentrated into the pages that follow, [Especially on p.
34 to p. 40.] commencing with the shrewd and economic remarks upon
smuggling, and ending with the lively description of a Boulonnais
banquet, very amusing, very French, very life-like, and very
Smollettian. In Letter V. the Doctor again is very much himself. A
little provocation and he bristles and stabs all round. He mounts the
hygienic horse and proceeds from the lack of implements of cleanliness
to the lack of common decency, and "high flavoured instances, at which
even a native of Edinburgh would stop his nose." [This recalls
Johnson's first walk up the High Street, Edinburgh, on Bozzy's arm. "It
was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the
evening effluvia of Edinburgh. . . . As we marched along he grumbled in
my ear, 'I smell you in the dark!'"] And then lest the southrons should
escape we have a reference to the "beastly habit of drinking from a
tankard in which perhaps a dozen filthy mouths have slabbered as is the
custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was a
pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most nations are
gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious boasting of the
French is well hit off in the observation of the chevalier that the
English doubtless drank every day to the health of the Marquise de
Pompadour. The implication reminded Smollett of a narrow escape from a
duello (an institution he reprobates with the utmost trenchancy in this
book) at Ghent in 1749 with a Frenchman who affirmed that Marlborough's
battles were purposely lost by the French generals in order to mortify
Mme. de Maintenon. Two incidents of some importance to Smollett
occurred during the three months' sojourn at Boulogne. Through the
intervention of the English Ambassador at Paris (the Earl of Hertford)
he got back his books, which had been impounded by the Customs as
likely to contain matter prejudicial to the state or religion of
France, and had them sent south by shipboard to Bordeaux. Secondly, h