HE POETICAL WORKS

OF

TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

THE

LIFE OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

The combination of a great writer and a small poet, in one and the
same person, is not uncommon. With not a few, while other, and severer
branches of study are the laborious task of the day, poetry is the
slipshod amusement of the evening. Dr Parr calls Johnson _probabilis
poeta_--words which seem to convey the notion that the author of "The
Rambler," who was great on other fields, was in that of poetry only
respectable. This term is more applicable to Smollett, whose poems
discover only in part those keen, vigorous, and original powers which
enabled him to indite "Roderick Random" and "Humphrey Clinker." Yet
the author of "Independence," and "The Tears of Scotland," must not be
excluded from the list of British poets--an honour to which much even
of his prose has richly entitled him.

The incidents in Smollett's history are not very numerous, and some of
them are narrated, under faint disguises, with inimitable vivacity and
_vraisemblance_ in his own fictions. Tobias George Smollett was born
in Dalquhurn House, near the village of Renton, Dumbartonshire, in
1721. His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill,
having died early, the education of the poet devolved on his
grandfather. The scenery of his native place was well calculated to
inspire his early genius. It is one of the most beautiful regions in
Scotland. A fine hollow vale, pervaded by the river Leven, and
surrounded by rich woodlands and bold hills, stretches up from
Dumbarton, with its double peaks and ancient castle, to the
magnificent Loch Lomond; and in one of the loops of this winding vale
was the great novelist born and bred. He called his native region, in
"Humphrey Clinker," the "Arcadia of Scotland," and has sung the Leven
in one of his small poems. He was sent to the Grammar School of
Dumbarton, and thence to Glasgow College. He was subsequently placed
apprentice to one M. Gordon, a medical practitioner in Glasgow; and
from thence, according to some of his biographers, he proceeded to
study medicine in Edinburgh. When he was about nineteen years of age,
his grandfather expired, without having made any provision for him;
and he was compelled, in 1739, to repair to London, carrying with him
a tragedy entitled "The Regicide,"--the subject being the
assassination of James the First of Scotland,--which he had written
the year before, and which he in vain sough