antagonistic features, just and generous in theory, quarrelsome and
overbearing in practice. From the year 1746 his pen seems to have been
always busy. He first tried his hand on some satires, which gained for him
numerous enemies; and in 1748 he produced his first novel, _Roderick
Random_, which, in spite of its indecency, the world at once acknowledged
to be a work of genius: the verisimilitude was perfect; every one
recognized in the hero the type of many a young North countryman going out
to seek his fortune. The variety is great, the scenes are more varied and
real than those in Richardson and Fielding, the characters are numerous
and vividly painted, and the keen sense of ridicule pervading the book
makes it a broad jest from beginning to end. Historically, his
delineations are valuable; for he describes a period in the annals of the
British marine which has happily passed away,--a hard life in little
stifling holds or forecastles, with hard fare,--a base life, for the
sailor, oppressed on shipboard, was the prey of vile women and land-sharks
when on shore. What pictures of prostitution and indecency! what obscenity
of language! what drunken infernal orgies! We may shun the book as we
would shun the company, and yet the one is the exact portraiture of the
other.

Roderick Random was followed, in 1751, by _Peregrine Pickle_, a book in
similar taste, but the characters in which are even more striking. The
forms of Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, Pipes the boatswain, and
Ap Morgan the choleric Welsh surgeon, are as familiar to us now as at the
first.

Smollett had now retired to Chelsea, where his facile pen was still hard
at work. In 1753 appeared his _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, the portraiture of
a complete villain, corresponding in character with Fielding's _Jonathan
Wild_, but with a better moral.

About this time he translated _Don Quixote_; and although his version is
still published, it is by no means true to the idiom of the language, nor
to the higher purpose of Cervantes.

Passing by his _Complete History of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages_,
we come to his _History of England from the Descent of Julius Caesar to the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748_. It is not a profound work; but it is
so currently written, that, in lieu of better, the latter portion was
taken to supplement Hume; as a work of less merit than either, that of
Bissett was added in the later editions to supplement Smollett and H