hnson, or that between the
lieutenant and Tom in the Seventh Book of Tom Jones, but, more
particularly, the sermon delivered by Johnson on this subject a propos
of General Oglethorpe's story of how he avoided a duel with Prince
Eugene in 1716. "We were sitting in company at table, whence the Prince
took up a glass of wine and by a fillip made some of it fly in
Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him
instantly might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young
soldier: to have taken no notice of it might have been counted as
cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye on the Prince, and
smiling all the time, as if he took what His Highness had done in jest,
said, "Mon Prince" (I forget the French words he used), "that's a good
joke; but we do it much better in England," and threw a whole glass of
wine in the Prince's face. An old general who sat by said, "Il a bien
fait, mon Prince, vous l'avez commence," and thus all ended in good
humour."

In Letter XIII. Smollett settles down to give his correspondents a
detailed description of the territory and people of Nice. At one time
it was his intention to essay yet another branch of authorship and to
produce a monograph on the natural history, antiquities, and topography
of the town as the capital of this still unfamiliar littoral; with the
late-born modesty of experience, however, he recoils from a task to
which he does not feel his opportunities altogether adequate. [See p.
152.] A quarter of Smollett's original material would embarrass a
"Guide"-builder of more recent pattern.

Whenever he got near a coast line Smollett could not refrain from
expressing decided views. If he had lived at the present day he would
infallibly have been a naval expert, better informed than most and more
trenchant than all; but recognizably one of the species, artist in
words and amateur of ocean-strategy. [Smollett had, of course, been
surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Cumberland, 1740-41.] His first curiosity at
Nice was raised concerning the port, the harbour, the galleys moored
within the mole, and the naval policy of his Sardinian Majesty. His
advice to Victor Amadeus was no doubt as excellent and as unregarded as
the advice of naval experts generally is. Of more interest to us is his
account of the slave-galleys. Among the miserable slaves whom "a
British subject cannot behold without horror and compassion," he
observes a Piedmontese count in Turkish attire, r