ollett returning in him to a favourite
type. It might be thought that he would have exhausted the possibilities
of this type in Bowling and Trunnion and Pipes and Hatchway. In point
of fact, Crowe is by no means the equal of the first two of these. And
yet, with his heart in the right place, and his application of sea terms
to land objects, Captain Samuel Crowe has a good deal of the rough charm
of his prototypes. Still more distinct, and among Smollett's personages
a more novel figure, is the Captain's nephew, the dapper, verbose,
tender-hearted lawyer, Tom Clarke. Apart from the inevitable Smollett
exaggeration, a better portrait of a softish young attorney could hardly
be painted. Nor, in enumerating the characters of Sir Launcelot Greaves
who fix themselves in a reader's memory, should Tom's inamorata, Dolly,
be forgotten, or the malicious Ferret, or that precious pair, Justice and
Mrs. Gobble, or the Knight's squire, Timothy Crabshaw, or that very
individual horse, Gilbert, whose lot is to be one moment caressed, and
the next, cursed for a "hard-hearted, unchristian tuoad."

Barring the Gobbles, all these characters are important in the book from
first to last. Sir Launcelot Greaves, then, is significant among
Smollett's novels, as indicating a reliance upon the personages for
interest quite as much as upon the adventures. If the author failed in a
similar intention in Fathom, it was not through lack of clearly conceived
characters, but through failure to make them flesh and blood. In that
book, however, he put the adventures together more skilfully than in Sir
Launcelot Greaves, the plot of which is not only rather meagre but also
far-fetched. There seems to be no adequate reason for the baronet's whim
of becoming an English Don Quixote of the eighteenth century, except the
chance it gave Smollett for imitating Cervantes. He was evidently
hampered from the start by the consciousness that at best the success of
such imitation would be doubtful. Probably he expresses his own
misgivings when he makes Ferret exclaim to the hero: "What! . . . you
set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is rather too stale and
extravagant. What was a . . . well-timed satire in Spain near two
hundred years ago, will . . . appear . . . insipid and absurd
. . . at this time of day, in a country like England." Whether from
the author's half-heartedness or from some other cause, there is no
denying that the