FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144  
145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   >>  
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
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144  
145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   >>  



Top keywords:
Scotland
 

Smollett

 

Humphrey

 
author
 

Glasgow

 

native

 

grandfather

 

Dumbarton

 

entitled

 

Clinker


poetry

 
SMOLLETT
 

TOBIAS

 
ancient
 
woodlands
 

castle

 

surrounded

 

subject

 

assassination

 

stretches


double

 

scenery

 

calculated

 

devolved

 

education

 
inspire
 

genius

 

hollow

 

magnificent

 

pervaded


regions

 

beautiful

 
written
 

Regicide

 

provision

 

biographers

 

practitioner

 

medical

 

compelled

 

apprentice


Gordon
 
nineteen
 

Edinburgh

 

expired

 

proceeded

 
medicine
 

novelist

 
carrying
 
London
 

tragedy