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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Smollett, like all great writers, is forgiven his failures; it is for his successes he is condemned. Ferdinand Fathom and Launcelot Greaves neither add to nor detract much from his reputation, but certain aspects of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker have won him a critical thrashing as sound as any cudgeling he described. Because these qualities appear with least relief in Peregrine Pickle that novel has been the one most abused. Critics assert that there more than elsewhere Smollett showed himself unable to distinguish between brutality and humor, between a ruffian and a hero. But the most serious charge is the complaint that the novel is completely formless, that the loose picaresque structure, in a measure characteristic of Smollett, is especially offensive here. These commonplaces of Smollett criticism are founded on misconceptions which ignore the nature and purpose of this novel. It will not be difficult to show that Peregrine Pickle, far from being a haphazard collection of episodes, was composed according to a plan that accounts for most of the aspects to which critics object. In particular, Smollett's modification of the picaresque form has not been explicitly stated. When the purpose and the essential structure of Peregrine Pickle are understood, it becomes apparent that the real cause of Smollett's inferiority to the greatest English novelists is neither carelessness regarding form nor inability to tell a blackguard from a hero, but other more important intellectual and spiritual limitations as a satiric novelist.
1 Lord Ernie, for example, wrote: “In the art of the novelist, Smollett represented a decline rather than an advance. He stepped backwards rather than forwards. His novels are straggling narratives which hurry toward no particular end. They are collections of comic episodes, the sequence of which might be transposed at will—medleys of disconnected adventures encountered by the hero and the actors whom he picks up on his travels.” (The Light Reading of Our Ancestors [London, n. d.], p. 230.)
2 A typical specimen of such criticism is the following comment by E. A. Baker, whose acerbity is offset only by the admission that Smollett was “the prince of story-tellers”: “By far the best and freshest part of the new story is the business of the garrison and the doings of its inmates, Trunnion, Hatchway, and Pipes. The remainder is but a further installment of the farcical adventures, practical jokes, and amorous escapades that formed the staple of Roderick's history ashore. The book might have been thrown together anyhow, and the insertion of the ‘Memoirs of the Lady of Quality’ in the third volume severs the thread even of Peregrine's fortunes and exploits, which alone gives any connection to the rambling structure. Peregrine is a cruder and more insufferable Roderick, though Smollett rarely betrays any suspicion that he is celebrating the deeds of an arrant young blackguard.” (The History of the English Novel, iv, 209.)
3 Roderick Random, ed. Saintsbury (London, 1899), i, xxxix.
4 Idem, i, xli, xlii.
5 Ferdinand Fathom, ed. Saintsbury (London, 1895), i, v.
6 Peregrine Pickle, ed. Saintsbury (London, 1900), i, 79.
7 Idem, i, 122; i, 124.
8 Smollett's summary of Peregrine's attitude at this point reveals the development of his plan: “He had in the heyday of his gallantry, received a letter from his friend Gauntlet, with a kind postscript from his charming Emilia; but it arrived at a very unseasonable juncture, when his imagination was engrossed by conquests that more agreeably flattered his ambition; so that he could not find leisure and inclination from that day to honour the correspondence which he himself solicited. His vanity had, by this time, disapproved of the engagement he had contracted in the rawness and inexperience of youth, suggesting that he was born to make such an important figure in life as ought to raise his ideas above any such middling connexions, and fix his attention upon objects of the most sublime attraction. These dictates of ridiculous pride had almost effaced the remembrance of his amiable mistress—or, at least, so far warped his morals and integrity, that he actually began to conceive hopes of her altogether unworthy of his own character, and her deserts.” (Idem, ii, 44.)
9 Idem, ii, 216, 17.
10 Idem, iv, 263.
11 Idem, iv, 274. The Miltonic echo in the final phrase is paralleled in Roderick Random by two quotations from Milton's descriptions of Eve, employed by Smollett to enhance the loveliness of Narcissa. In describing his first meeting with her after his return from South America, Roderick exclaims, “Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, in every gesture dignity and love.” Following their marriage, he says, “I withdrew the curtain and enjoyed the unspeakable satisfaction of contemplating those angelic charms, which were now in my possession! Beauty which whether sleeping or awake, shot forth peculiar graces.” (Roderick Random, iii, 201, 209; Paradise Lost, Bk. viii, ll. 487, 488; Bk. v, ll. 15, 16.) It is interesting that Smollett knew Paradise Lost well enough to quote lines so little celebrated as these. His use of them may prove only that Roderick and Peregrine, often censured for their uxoriousness, were legitimate sons of Adam, but I believe that these quotations give us a brief glimpse of an attractive aspect of Smollett's own character, a sincere if somewhat sentimental idealization of woman.
12 The Monthly Review, March, 1751, iv, 363.
13 In this connection, the novel contains a passage that sadly illuminates Smollett's untranquil spirit. Peregrine, by this time deep sunk in misfortune, “lived, therefore, incessantly exposed to all the pangs of envy and disquiet. When I say envy, I do not mean that sordid passion, in consequence of which a man repines at his neighbour's success, howsoever deserved; but that self-tormenting indignation which is inspired by the prosperity of folly, ignorance, and vice.” (iv, 117.) Conscious of his own genius and integrity, Smollett found it pitifully easy to undervalue the merits of more successful men.
14 Idem, iv, 32.
15 Idem, ii, 77.
16 Roderick Random, i, xli.
17 The suggestion that the first volume was conceived and composed independently of the others is now seen to be impossible, but nothing is more likely than the supposition that the first volume had been written prior to Smollett's trip to France in the summer of 1750 and that the other three were composed during and after his visit. Cf. Howard S. Buck, A Study in Smollett; New Haven, 1925, pp. 1, 2; also the same writer's “Smollett and Dr. Akenside,” JEGP, xxxi (January, 1932), 10.