ple in Roderick Random
or Peregrine Pickle. In the second of these, we saw Smollett beginning
to understand the use of incident to indicate consistent development of
character. In Count Fathom, he seems fully to understand this principle
of art, though he has not learned to apply it successfully. And so, in
spite of an excellent conception, Fathom, as I have said, is unreal.
After all his villainies, which he perpetrates without any apparent
qualms of conscience, it is incredible that he should honestly repent of
his crimes. We are much inclined to doubt when we read that "his vice
and ambition was now quite mortified within him," the subsequent
testimony of Matthew Bramble, Esq., in Humphry Clinker, to the contrary,
notwithstanding. Yet Fathom up to this point is consistently drawn, and
drawn for a purpose:--to show that cold-blooded roguery, though
successful for a while, will come to grief in the end. To heighten the
effect of his scoundrel, Smollett develops parallel with him the virtuous
Count de Melvil. The author's scheme of thus using one character as the
foil of another, though not conspicuous for its originality, shows a
decided advance in the theory of constructive technique. Only, as I have
said, Smollett's execution is now defective.

"But," one will naturally ask, "if Fathom lacks the amusing, and not
infrequently stimulating, hurly-burly of Smollett's former novels; if its
characters, though well-conceived, are seldom divertingly fantastic and
never thoroughly animate; what makes the book interesting?" The surprise
will be greater than ever when the answer is given that, to a large
extent, the plot makes Fathom interesting. Yes, Smollett, hitherto
indifferent to structure, has here written a story in which the plot
itself, often clumsy though it may be, engages a reader's attention. One
actually wants to know whether the young Count is ever going to receive
consolation for his sorrows and inflict justice on his basely ungrateful
pensioner. And when, finally, all turns out as it should, one is amazed
to find how many of the people in the book have helped towards the
designed conclusion. Not all of them, indeed, nor all of the adventures,
are indispensable, but it is manifest at the end that much, which, for
the time, most readers think irrelevant--such as Don Diego's history--is,
after all, essential.

It has already been said that in Count Fathom Smollett appears to some
extent as a romantic