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Elizabethan Drama and The Works of Smollett

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lee Monroe Ellison
Lee Monroe Ellison*
Affiliation:
Texas State Teachers' College for Women
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Extract

“If fielding had superior taste,” declared Sir Walter Scott, “the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more inexhaustible riches of invention, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. In comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding walked was limited; and compared with the wealthy profusion of varied character and incident which Smollett has scattered through his works, there is a poverty of composition about his rival. . . . It is chiefly in his profusion, which amounts almost to prodigality, that we recognize the superior richness of Smollett's fancy. He never shows the least desire to make the most either of a character, or a situation, or an adventure, but throws them together with a carelessness which argues unlimited confidence in his own powers.” Few critical verdicts have been received with more general dissent. Apart from what most readers feel to be the injustice done to Fielding, the affirmations respecting Smollett have not gone unchallenged. Thackeray, although perhaps without having Scott in mind, has expressed an opinion almost diametrically opposite:

His [Smollett's] novels are recollections of his own adventures, his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow college, in the country apothecary's shop, in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as a surgeon, and in the hard life on shore where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1929 , pp. 842 - 862
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 842 Works of Tobias Smollet, with a memoir of His Life and Writings, by Sir Walter Scott, Prefatory memoir.

Note 2 in page 842 English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, ed. H. A. Watt, Chicago, p. 173.

Note 3 in page 843 See Roderick Random, Preface.

Note 4 in page 844 I Henry IV, I, ii.

Note 5 in page 845 I Henry IV, I, ii.

Note 6 in page 845 II Henry IV, III, ii.

Note 7 in page 845 The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, Chap XXV.

Note 8 in page 846 His quarrel with Dr. John Shebbeare, the novelist and Tory political writer. See Dict. Nat. Biog.

Note 9 in page 846 See I Henry IV, I, ii.

Note 10 in page 846 I Henry IV, II, ii.

Note 11 in page 847 The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Chap. XV.

Note 12 in page 847 Peregrine Pickle, Chap. LXXXVII.

Note 13 in page 847 II Henry IV, II, iv.

Note 14 in page 848 II Henry IV, II, iv.

Note 15 in page 848 Random, Chap. XI.

Note 16 in page 848 II Henry IV, II, i.

Note 17 in page 849 Roderick Random, Chap XII.

Note 18 in page 849 Henry V, IV, i.

Note 19 in page 850 Henry V, III, iii.

Note 20 in page 850 Roderick Random, Chap. XXV.

Note 21 in page 850 Henry V, V, i.

Note 22 in page 850 Roderick Random, Chap. XXXI.

* In one passage (Roderick Random, Chap. XLVI) Ranter gives an accurate imitation of “the looks, swagger, and phrase of Pistol”—Editor.

Note 23 in page 852 Introductory Memoir, p. 25.

Note 24 in page 853 Every Man in his Humor, Prologue.

Note 25 in page 853 Every Man Out of his Humor, III, ii, Induction.

Note 26 in page 854 Every Man Out of his Humor, III, i, Induction.

Note 27 in page 854 The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Chap. I.

Note 28 in page 855 Roderick Random, Preface.

Note 29 in page 855 Every Man Out of his Humor, Induction.

Note 30 in page 856 See Buck, A Study in Smollett (Yale University Press).

Note 31 in page 857 Roderich Random, Chap. XLVI.

Note 32 in page 857 Roderick Random, Chap. XLVIII.

Note 33 in page 857 See Every Man Out of his Humor, II, i. Note the correspondence with conspicuous elements in the character of Falstaff.

Note 34 in page 858 Random, Chap. XLVIII.

Note 35 in page 858 Ibid. Chap. L. This episode may have been suggested by Shadwell's Bury Fair.

Note 36 in page 858 Every Man out, Dramatis Personae.

Note 37 in page 858 Random, XEV.

Note 38 in page 858 Every Man out, II, i.

Note 39 in page 859 Every Man out, II, ii.

Note 40 in page 859 Random, XLV.

Note 41 in page 859 Every Man in, III, v.

Note 42 in page 859 Random, Chap. XLV.

Note 43 in page 860 Pickle, Chap. LXXII.

Note 44 in page 861 Pickle, Chap. LXXXIII.