"is, I do believe, the most laughable
story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing
began." This is strong praise, though but of a single book; yet it falls
short of the general estimate that Walter Scott formed of the capacity
of our author. "We readily grant to Smollett," he says, "an equal rank
with his great rival, Fielding, while we place both far above any of
their successors in the same line of fictitious composition."

After the testimonies we have cited, it would be useless to seek other
approbation of Smollett's merits.

"From higher judgment-seats make no appeal
To lower."

Yet, with all his imaginative power and humorous perception, it cannot
be gainsaid that there was a great lack of delicacy in the composition
of his mind,--a deficiency which, even in his own days, gave just
offence to readers of the best taste, and which he himself was sometimes
so candid as to acknowledge and to correct. Its existence is too often
a sufficient cause to deter any but minds of a certain masculine vigor
from the perusal of such a work as "Roderick Random"; and yet this work
was an especial favorite with the most refined portion of the public in
the latter half of the last century. Burke delighted in it, and would
no doubt often read from it aloud to the circle of guests of both sexes
that gathered about him at Beaconsfield; and Elia makes his imaginary
aunt refer to the pleasure with which in her younger days she had read
the story of that unfortunate young nobleman whose adventures make such
a figure in "Peregrine Pickle." So great is the change in the habit of
thought and expression in less than half a century, that we believe
there is not in all America a gentleman who would now venture to read
either of these works aloud to a fireside group. Smollett's Muse was
free enough herself; in all conscience;--

"High-kirtled was she,
As she gaed o'er the lea";--

but in "Peregrine Pickle," beside the natural incidents, there are two
long episodes foisted upon the story, neither of which has any lawful
connection with the matter in hand, and one of which, indelicate and
indecent in the extreme, does not appear to have even been of his
own composition. Reference is here made to the "Memoirs of a Lady of
Quality," and to the passages respecting young Annesley; and since
biographers do not seem to have touched especially on the manner of
their introduction into the novel, we will give a word