uation, would grant me the least succor or regard,
on pretence of my being committed for theft; and my landlord
refused to part with some of my own clothes, which I sent for,
because I was indebted to him for a week's lodging. Overwhelmed
with calamity, I grew desperate, and resolved to put an end to my
grievances and life together; for this purpose I got up in the
middle of the night, when I thought everybody around me asleep, and
fixing one end of my handkerchief to a large hook in the ceiling
that supported the scales on which the hemp is weighed, I stood
upon a chair, and making a noose on the other end, put my neck into
it with an intention to hang myself; but before I could adjust the
knot, I was surprised and prevented by two women who had been awake
all the while, and suspected my design. In the morning my attempt
was published among the prisoners, and punished with thirty
stripes, the pain of which co-operating with my disappointment and
disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me into an ecstasy of
madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones with my teeth,
and dashed my head against the pavement.[179]

While Smollett mingled such scenes of misery with coarse adventures and
coarse humor, he is yet always true to nature and always picturesque.
He keeps the reader's attention even when he offends his taste. He
impaired the literary merit of "Perigrine Pickle," but at the same time
added to its dissolute character and its immediate popularity by the
forced insertion of the licentious "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." Now
a serious blemish, these memoirs formed at the time an added attraction
to the book. They were eagerly read as the authentic account of Lady
Vane, a notorious woman of rank, and were furnished to Smollett by
herself, in the hope, fully gratified, that her infamous career might
be known to future generations.[180]

That the standard of public taste was rising, would appear from the
fact that in the second edition of "Perigrine Pickle," Smollett found
it advisable to "reform the manners and correct the expression" of the
first; but when "he flatters himself that he has expunged every
adventure, phrase, and insinuation that could be construed by the most
delicate reader into a trespass upon the rules of decorum," he does not
give a high idea of the standard of the "most delicate reader." But
Smollett has left an account of