satirised him, under the name of Smelfungus. The same year he again visited Scotland. In 1767 he published his "Adventures of an Atom,"-a. political romance, displaying, under Japanese names, the different parties of Great Britain. A recurrence of ill health drove him back to Italy in 1770. At Monte Nuovo, near Leghorn, he wrote his delightful "Humphrey Clinker." This was his last work. He died at Leghorn on the 21st October 1771, in the fifty-first year of his age. His widow erected a plain monument to his memory, with an inscription by Dr Armstrong. In 1774 a Tuscan monument was erected on the banks of the Leven by his cousin, James Smollett, Esq., of Bonhill. As his wife was left in poor circumstances, the tragedy of "Venice Preserved" was acted at Edinburgh for her benefit, and the money remitted to Italy.

Smollett, for variety of powers, and indefatigable industry, has seldom been surpassed. He was a politician, a poet, a physician, a historian, a translator, a writer of travels, a dramatist, a novelist, a writer on medical subjects, and a miscellaneous author. It is only, however, as a novelist and a poet that he has any claims to the admiration of posterity. His history survives solely because it is usually bound up with Hume's. His translation of "Don Quixote" has been eclipsed by after and more accurate versions. His "Tour to Italy" is a succession of asthmatic gasps and groans. His "Regicide," and other plays, are entirely forgotten. So also are his critical, medical, political, and miscellaneous effusions.

In fiction he is undoubtedly a great original. He had no model, and has had no imitator. His qualities as a novelwriter are rapidity of narrative, variety of incident, ease of style, graphic description, and an exquisite eye for the humours, peculiarities, and absurdities of character and life. In language he is generally careless, but whenever a great occasion occurs, he rises to meet it, and writes with dignity, correctness, and power. His sea-characters, such as Bowling, and his characters of low-life, such as Strap, have never been excelled. His tone of morals is always low, and often offensively coarse. In wit, constructiveness, and general style, he

is inferior to Fielding; but surpasses him in interest, ease, variety, and humour. "Roderick Random" is the most popular and bustling of his tales. "Peregrine Pickle" is the filthiest and least agreeable; its humours are forced and exaggerated, and the sea-characters seem caricatures of those in "Roderick Random;" just as Norna of the Fitful Head, and Magdalene Græme, are caricatures of Meg Merrilees. "Sir Lancelot Greaves" is a tissue of trash, redeemed only here and there by traits of humour. "The Adventures of an Atom" we never read. "Humphrey Clinker" is the most delightful novel, with the exception of the Waverley series, in the English language. "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," contains much that is disgusting, but parts of it surpass all the rest in originality and profundity. We refer especially to the description of the pretended English Squire in Paris, who bubbles the great bubbler of the tale; to Count Fathom's address to Britain, when he reaches her shores,—a piece of exquisite mockheroic irony; to the narrative of the seduction in the west of England; and to the matchless robber-scene in the forest,-a passage in which one knows not whether more to admire the thrilling interest of the incidents, or the eloquence and power of the language. It is a scene which Scott has never surpassed, nor, except in the cliff-scene in the "Antiquary," and, perhaps, the barn-scene in the "Heart of Midlothian,” ever equalled.

Smollett's poetry need not detain us long. In his twin satires, "Advice" and "Reproof," you see rather the will to wound than the power to strike. There are neither the burnished compression, and polished, pointed malice of Pope, nor the gigantic force and vehement fury of Churchill. His "Tears of Scotland" is not thoroughly finished, but has some delicate and beautiful strokes. "Leven Water" is sweet and murmuring as that stream itself. His "Ode to Independence," as we have said elsewhere, "should have been written by Burns. How that poet's lips must have watered, as he repeated the line

'Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye,

and remembered he was not their author! He said he would have given ten pounds to have written 'Donochthead '—he would have given ten times ten, if, poor fellow! he had had them, to have written the 'Ode to Independence'—although, in his 'Vision of Liberty,' he has matched Smollett on his own ground." Grander lines than the one we have quoted above, and than the following

"A goddess violated brought thee forth,"

are not to be found in literature. Round this last one, the whole ode seems to turn as on a pivot, and it alone had been sufficient to stamp Smollett a man of lofty poetic genius.

ENOUGH, enough; all this we knew before;
'Tis infamous, I grant it, to be poor:
And who, so much to sense and glory lost,
Will hug the curse that not one joy can boast?
From the pale hag, oh! could I once break loose,
Divorced, all hell should not re-tie the noose!
Not with more care shall H avoid his wife,
Nor Cope1 fly swifter, lashing for his life,

Than I to leave the meagre fiend behind.

1 'Cope:' a general famous for an expeditious retreat, though not quite so deliberate as that of the ten thousand Greeks from Persia; having unfor tunately forgot to bring his army along with him.