Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various

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LORD SHELBURNE TO THE DUCHESS OF HAMILTON.

"_Holt Street, Tuesday._

"Madam,--I am honour'd with your Grace's letter, inclosing one from
Doctor Smollett. It is above a year since I was applied to by Doctor
Smollett, thro' a person I wish'd extremely to oblige; but there were
and still subsist some applications for the same office, of a nature
which it will be impossible to get over in favour of Mr. Smollett, which
makes it impossible for me to give him the least hopes of it. I could
not immediately recollect what had pass'd upon that subject, else I
should have had the honour to answer your Grace's letter sooner. I am
with great truth and respect your Grace's most obedient and most humble
servant.

"SHELBURNE."

* * * * *

The letter bears no month nor year, but is indorsed, apparently by
Smollett himself, as of 1762,--that is, in the year previous to his
expressed aversion to solicitations for place. Yet if there was a man in
England entitled to ask for and to receive some provision by his country
for his broken health and narrow fortunes, that man was Smollett. It is
perhaps a trifling thing to notice, but it may be observed that Lord
Shelburne's communication does not bear any marks of frequent perusal.
The silver sand with which the fresh lines were besprinkled still clings
to the fading ink, furnishing perhaps the only example remaining of the
use of that article. Rousseau, we remember, mentions such sand as the
proper material to be resorted to by one who would be very particular
in his correspondence,--"_employant pour cela le plus beau papier dore,
sechant l'ecriture avec de la poudre d'azur et d'argent_"; and Moore
repeats the precept in the example of M. le Colonel Calicot, according
to the text of Miss Biddy, in the "Fudge Family in Paris":--

"Upon paper gilt-edged, without blot or erasure
Then sanded it over with silver and azure."

Among the remaining letters in this collection we find some from John
Gray, "teacher of mathematics in Cupar of Fife,"--some from Dr. John
Armstrong, the author of "The Art of Health,"--and one from George
Colman the elder. In 1761, Gray writes to Smollett, thanking him for
kind notices in the "Critical Review," and asking his influence in
regard to certain theories concerning the longitude, of which Gray was
the inventor. In 1770, Colman thus writes:--

GEORGE COLMAN TO DR. SMOLLETT.

"Dear Sir,--I have some idea that Mr. Hamilton about two years ago told
me he should soon receive a piece from you, which he meant, at your
desire, to put into my hands; but since that time I have neither seen
nor heard of the piece.

"I hope you enjoy your health abroad, and shall be glad of every
opportunity to convince you that I am most heartily and sincerely, dear
Sir, your, &c.,

"G. COLMAN.

"London, 28 Sept. 1770."

* * * * *

The piece referred to here by Colman (who was at this period, we
believe, the manager of the Haymarket Theatre) may possibly have been
a farce that was brought out fifteen years later on the Covent-Garden
stage, with the title of "The Israelites, or the Pampered Nabob." Its
merits and its success are said by Scott to have been but slight, and
the proof of its having been written by Smollett very doubtful; so that
it was never printed, and was soon forgotten.

At this time, (1770,) it must be remembered, Smollett was established at
Leghorn, where a milder climate and sunnier skies tended to promote,
we fancy, a serener condition of mind than he had known for years. In
leaving England, he left behind him some friends, but many enemies. In
his literary career, as he himself had not been over-merciful, so he
was in return not always tenderly handled. As a sample of the invective
which was occasionally poured forth on him, we will quote some lines
from "The Race," a dull imitation of "The Dunciad," ascribed to one
Cuthbert Shaw, and published in 1766. Although reprinted in "Dilly's
Repository," (1790,) it has long ago been very properly forgotten, and
is now utterly worthless save for purposes of illustration. The Hamilton
referred to is the same person to whom Colman makes allusion; he was
indeed Smollett's _fidus Achaies._

"--Next Smollet came. What author dare resist
Historian, critic, bard, and novelist?
'To reach thy temple, honoured Fame,' he cried,
'Where, where's an avenue I have not tried?
But since the glorious present of to-day
Is meant to grace alone the poet's lay,
My claim I wave to every art beside,
And rest my plea upon the Regicide.
* * * * *
But if, to crown the labours of my Muse,
Thou, inauspicious, should'st the wreath refuse,
Whoe'er attempts it in this scribbling age
Shall feel the Scottish pow'rs of Crilic rage.
Thus spurn'd, thus disappointed of my aim,
I'll stand a bugbear in the road to Fame,
Each future author's infant hopes undo,
And blast the budding honours of his brow.'
He said,--and, grown with future vengeance big,
Grimly he shook his scientific wig.
To clinch the cause, and fuel add to fire,
Behind came Hamilton, his trusty squire:
Awhile _he_ paus'd, revolving the disgrace,
And gath'ring all the honours of his face;
Then rais'd his head, and, turning to the crowd,
Burst into bellowing, terrible and loud:--
'Hear my resolve; and first by--I swear,
By Smollet, and his gods, whoe'er shall date
With him this day for glorious fame to vie,
Sous'd in the bottom of the ditch shall lie;
And know, the world no other shall confess,
While I have crab-tree, life, or letter-press.'
Scar'd at the menace, _authors_ fearful grew,
Poor Virtue trembled, and e'en Vice look'd blue."

It is unnecessary to pursue this vapid composition to its most lame and
impotent conclusion; it is sufficient to cite it as a specimen-brick of
the hostility which many literary characters entertained against the
author of "Roderick Random." Despite his own birthplace being north of
the Tweed, many Scots were aggrieved at the incidental ridicule with
which characters from "the land o' cakes" are sometimes treated in that
and other works from the same hand; and the picture of Lismahago in
"Humphrey Clinker" is said to have still more violently inflamed their
ire. It is to this feeling on the part of his countrymen that Charles
Lamb alludes, in his essay upon "Imperfect Sympathies." "Speak of
Smollett as a great genius," he says, "and they [the Scots] will retort
upon Hume's History compared with _his_ continuation of it. What if the
historian had continued 'Humphrey Clinker'?" In fact, there were a good
many North Britons, a century ago, who seem to have felt, on the subject
of English censure or ridicule, pretty much as some of our own people do
to-day. No matter how well-founded the objection may be, or how justly
a local habit may be satirized, our sensitiveness is wounded and our
indignation aroused. That the portrait in Lismahago's case was not
altogether overcharged may be deduced from a passage in one of Walter
Scott's letters, in which he likens the behavior and appearance of one
of his oldest and most approved friends to that of the gallant Obadiah
in a similar critical moment. "The noble Captain Ferguson was married on
Monday last. I was present at the bridal, and I assure you the like
hath not been seen since the days of Lismahago. Like his prototype, the
Captain advanced in a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer on
his face that seemed to quiz the whole matter." That the sketch was a
portrait, though doubtless disguised to such an extent as rendered its
introduction permissible, is very probable; and as it is beyond question
one of the masterpieces of English fiction, a few lines may well be
given to the point. With great justice the Quarterly Reviewer pronounces
the character of Lismahago in no whit inferior to that of Scott's Dugald
Dalgetty; and who would not go out of his way to trace any circumstance
in the history of such a conception as that of the valiant Laird of
Drumthwacket, the service-seeking Rittmaster of Swedish Black Dragoons?

Scott himself tells us that he recollected "a good and gallant officer"
who was said to have been the prototype of Lismahago, though probably
the opinion had its origin in "the striking resemblance which he bore in
externals to the doughty Captain." Sir Walter names no name; but there
is a tradition that a certain Major Robert Stobo was the real original
from which the picture was drawn. Stobo may fairly be said to fulfil the
necessary requisites for this theory. That he was as great an oddity as
ever lived is abundantly testified by his own "Memorial," written about
1760, and printed at Pittsburg in 1854, from a copy of the MS. in the
British Museum. At the breaking out of the Seven-Years' War, he was in
Virginia, seeking his fortune under the patronage of his countryman,
Dinwiddie, and thus obtained a captaincy in the expedition which
Washington, in 1754, led to the Great Meadows. On the fall of Fort
Necessity, he was one of the hostages surrendered by Washington to the
enemy; and thus, and by his subsequent doings at Fort Du Quesne and in
Canada, he has linked his name with some interesting passages of our
national history.[A] That he was known to Smollett in after life appears
by a letter from David Hume to the latter, in which his "strange
adventures" are alluded to; and there is considerable resemblance
between these, as narrated by Stobo himself, and those assigned by
the novelist to Lismahago. And, bearing in mind the ineffable
self-complacency with which Stobo always dwells on himself and his
belongings, the description of his person given in the "Memorial"
coincides very well with that of the figure which the novelist makes to
descend in the yard of the Durham inn. One circumstance further may be
noted. We are told of "the noble and sonorous names" which Miss Tabitha
Bramble so much admired: "that Obadiah was an adventitious appellation,
derived from his great-grandfather, who had been one of the original
Covenanters; but Lismahago was the family surname, taken from a place
in Scotland, so called." Now we are not very well versed in Scottish
topography; but we well recollect, that in Dean Swift's "Memoirs of
Captain John Creichton," who was a noted Cavalier in the reigns of
Charles II., James II., and William III., and had borne an active part
in the persecution of "the puir hill-folk," there is mention made of the
name of Stobo. The Captain dwells with no little satisfaction upon the
manner in which, after he had been so thoroughly outwitted by Mass David
Williamson,--the Covenanting minister, who played Achilles among the
women at my Lady Cherrytree's,--he succeeded in circumventing and taking
prisoner "a notorious rebel, one Adam Stobow, a farmer in Fife near
Culross." And later in the same book occurs a very characteristic
passage:--"_Having drunk hard one night_, I dreamed that I had found
Captain David Steele, a notorious rebel, in one of the five farmers'
houses on a mountain in the shire of Clydesdale and parish of Lismahago,
within eight miles of Hamilton, a place I was well acquainted with."
Lest the marvellous fulfilment of Creichton's dream should induce other
seekers to have resort to a like self-preparation, we will merely add,
that the village of Hamilton is hard by the castle of the Duke of that
name, to whose family we have already seen Smollett was under some
obligations, and that it is described in the same pages with Lismahago.
It is not improbable, therefore, that, being at Hamilton, the novelist's
attention may have been attracted to "Creichton's Memoirs," which treat
of the adjacent districts, and that the mention of Stobo's name therein
may have suggested to his mind its connection with Lismahago. Certainly
there was no antecedent work to "Humphrey Clinker," in which, as we may
believe, either of these names finds a place, save this of Creichton;
and as, throughout the whole series of letters, Smollett does not
profess to avoid the introduction of actual persons and events, often
even with no pretence of disguise, we need not hesitate to think that
he would make no difficulty of turning the eccentricities of a half-pay
officer to some useful account.

[Footnote A: Some amusing particulars concerning Stobo may be found also
in the _Journal of Lieut. Simon Stevens:_ Boston 1760.--EDS. ATLANTIC.]

But we have wandered too far away from the business of his
correspondence. The next letter that we shall examine is one from John
Gray, dated at Florence, Nov. 15th, 1770, to Smollett, at Leghorn. It
abounds in details of the writer's attempts at the translation of a
French play for the English stage, on which he desires a judgment; and
cites verses from several of the songs it contains,--one of them being
that so familiar to American ears thirty years since, when Lafayette was
making his last tour through this country:--

"Ou peut on etre mieux
Qu'au sein de sa famille?"

Gray had been at Leghorn, on his way to Rome; and now amuses his
correspondent with the inconveniences of his journey under the auspices
of a tippling companion, with his notions about Pisa and Italy in
general, and with particulars of public intelligence from home, some
of which relate to Smollett's old antagonist, Admiral Knowles.--"I
despaired of executing Mrs. Smollett's commission," he says, "for there
was no ultramarine to be found in the shops; but I at length procured a
little from Mr. Patch, which I have sent along with the patterns in
Mrs. Varrien's letter, hoping that the word _Mostre_ on the back of the
letter will serve for a passport to all. The ultramarine costs nothing;
therefore, if it arrives safe, the commission is finished."

We next have a couple of letters from Dr. Armstrong; which, on account
of his ancient and enduring friendship for Smollett, and of the
similarity in their careers, may be given at large. Armstrong was a
wrongheaded, righthearted man,--a surgeon in the army, we believe,--and
a worshipper of Apollo, as well in his proper person as in that of
Esculapius. In these, and in the varied uses to which he turned his pen,
the reader will see a similarity to the story of his brother Scot. That
he was occasionally splenetic in his disposition is very manifest.
His quarrel with Wilkes, with whom he had been on terms of intimate
friendship, finds a parallel in Smollett's own history. The first
letter is without date; but the reference to the publication of his
"Miscellanies" fixes it as of 1770, and at London.

DR. ARMSTRONG TO DR. SMOLLETT.

"My dear Doctor,--I reproach myself;--but it is as insignificant as
embarrassing to explain some things;--so much for that. As to my
confidence in your stamina, I can see no reason to flinch from it; but I
wish you would avoid all unwholesome accidents as much as possible.

"I am quite serious about my visit to you next autumn. My scheme is now
to pass my June or July at Paris; from thence to set out for Italy,
either over the Alps or by sea from Marseilles. I don't expect the
company of my widow lumber, or any other that may be too fat and
indolent for such an excursion; and hope to pick up some agreeable
companion without being at the expense of advertising.

"You feel exactly as I do on the subject of State Politicks. But from
some late glimpses it is still to be hoped that some _Patriots_ may be
disappointed in their favourite views of involving their country in
confusion and destruction. As to the K. Bench patriot, it is hard to say
from what motive he published a letter of your's asking some trifling
favour of him on behalf of somebody for whom _the Cham of Literature_,
Mr. Johnson, had interested himself. I have within this month published
what I call my Miscellanies. Tho' I admitted my operator to an equal
share of profit and loss, the publication has been managed in such
a manner as if there had been a combination to suppress it:
notwithstanding which, it makes its way very tolerably at least. But I
have heard to-day that somebody is to give me a good trimming very soon.

"All friends remember you very kindly, and our little club at the Q.
Arms never fail to devote a bumper to you, except when they are in the
humour of drinking none but scoundrels. I send my best compliments to
Mrs. Smollett and two other ladies, and beg you'll write me as soon
as suits you: and with black ink. I am always, my dear Doctor, most
affectionately yours,--

"JOHN ARMSTRONG."

* * * * *

The letter to Wilkes had been written many years before, to obtain his
assistance in procuring the release of Johnson's black servant, who had
been impressed. It was couched in free terms respecting Dr. Johnson, and
was probably now given by Wilkes to the press in the hope that it might
do its author harm with the _Cham_, or at least cause the latter some
annoyance.

Armstrong's next letter finds him arrived in Italy, and on the eve of
repairing to his friend at Leghorn.

DR. ARMSTRONG TO DR. SMOLLETT.

"_Rome, 2nd June_, 1770.

"Dear Doctor,--I arrived here last Thursday night, and since that have
already seen all the most celebrated wonders of Rome. But I am most
generally disappointed in these matters; partly, I suppose, from my
expectations being too high. But what I have seen has been in such a
hurry as to make it a fatigue: besides, I have strolled about amongst
them neither in very good humour nor very good health.

"I have delayed writing till I could lay before you the plan of my
future operations for a few weeks. I propose to post it to Naples about
the middle of next week, along with a Colonel of our Country, who seems
to be a very good-natured man. After remaining a week or ten days there,
I shall return hither, and, after having visited Tivoli and Frascati,
set out for Leghorn, if possible, in some vessel from Civita Vecchia;
for I hate the lodgings upon the road in this country. I don't expect to
be happy till I see Leghorn; and if I find my Friend in such health as I
wish him, or even hope for him, I shall not be disappointed in the chief
pleasure I proposed to myself in my visit to Italy. As you talked of a
ramble somewhere towards the South of France, I shall be extremely happy
to attend you.

"I wrote to my brother from Genoa, and desired him to direct his answer
to your care at Pisa. If it comes, please direct it, with your own
letter, for which I shall long violently look, care of Mr. Francis
Barazzi at Rome. I am, with my best compliments to Mrs. Smollett and the
rest of the ladies, &c.,

"JOHN ARMSTRONG."

* * * * *

There is no reason to suppose that Armstrong found anything in the
condition of his friend to fulfil the anxious wishes of his letter. In
the following year, Smollett died, leaving to his widow little beyond
the empty consolations of his great fame. From her very narrow purse she
supplied the means of erecting the stone that marks the spot where he
lies; and the pen of his companion, whose letter we have just given,
furnished an appropriate inscription. The niggardly hands of government
remained as firmly closed against the relief of Mrs. Smollett as they
had been in answer to her husband's own application for himself; an
application which must have cost a severe struggle to his proud spirit,
and of which his most intimate literary friends were probably never
aware. He sought favors for others, says Dr. Moore; but "for himself
he never made an application to any great man in his life!" He was not
intemperate, nor yet was he extravagant, but by nature hospitable and of
a cheerful temperament; his housekeeping was never niggardly, so long as
he could employ his pen. Thus his genius was too often degraded to the
hackney-tasks of booksellers; while a small portion of those pensions
which were so lavishly bestowed upon ministerial dependants and placemen
would have enabled him to turn his mind to its congenial pursuits, and
probably to still further elevate the literary civilization of his
country. But if there be satisfaction in the thought that a neglect
similar to that which befell so bright a genius as his could no longer
occur in England, there is food likewise for reflection in the change
that has come over the position in which men of letters lived in those
days towards the public, and even towards each other. Let any one read
the account of the ten or a dozen authors whom Smollett describes
himself, in "Humphrey Clinker," as entertaining at dinner on
Sundays,--that being the only day upon which they could pass through the
streets without being seized by bailiffs for debt. Each character is
drawn with a distinctive minuteness that leaves us no room to doubt its
possessing a living original; yet how disgusting to suppose that such
a crew were really to be seen at the board of a brother writer! and in
what bad taste does their host describe and ridicule their squalor! That
such things were in those times cannot be doubted. Even in this century,
in the golden days of book-making, we are told how Constable and
how Ballantyne, the great publisher and the great printer of
Edinburgh,--"His Czarish Majesty," and "the Dey of All-jeers," as Scott
would call them,--delighted at their Sunday dinners to practise the
same exercises as those which Smollett relates,--how they would bring
together for their diversion Constable's "poor authors," and start
his literary drudges on an after-dinner foot-race for a new pair of
breeches, and the like! While it cannot justify the indifference with
which Shelburne treated his request, we cannot but perceive that
Smollett's contemptuous ridicule of his unfortunate or incapable
Grub-Street friends must rob him of much of the sympathy which would
otherwise accompany the ministerial neglect with which the claims of
literature were visited in his person.

* * * * *

BLOODROOT

"Hast thou loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?"

Beech-trees, stretching their arms, rugged, yet beautiful,
Here shade meadow and brook; here the gay bobolink,
High poised over his mate, pours out his melody.
Here, too, under the hill, blooms the wild violet;
Damp nooks hide, near the brook, bellworts that modestly,
Pale-faced, hanging their heads, droop there in silence; while
South winds, noiseless and soft, bring us the odor of
Birch twigs mingled with fresh buds of the hickory.

Hard by, clinging to rocks, nods the red columbine;
Close hid, under the leaves, nestle anemones,--
White-robed, airy and frail, tender and delicate.

Ye who, wandering here, seeking the beautiful,
Stoop down, thinking to pluck one of these favorites,
Take heed! Nymphs may avenge. List to a prodigy;--
One moon scarcely has waned since I here witnessed it.

One moon scarcely has waned, since, on a holiday,
I came, careless and gay, into this paradise,--
Found here, wrapped in their cloaks made of a leaf, little
White flowers, pure as the snow, modest and innocent,--
Stooped down, eagerly plucked one of the fairest, when
Forth rushed, fresh from the stem broken thus wickedly,
Blood!--tears, red, as of blood!--shed through my selfishness!

THE DIFFERENTIAL AND INTEGRAL CALCULUS.

[Greek: Polla ta deina, konden
anthropon deinoteron pelei ...
periphradaes anaer!]

SOPH. _Ant_. 822 [322] et seq.

"Many things are wonderful," says the Greek poet, "but nought more
wonderful than man, all-inventive man!" And surely, among many wonders
wrought out by human endeavor, there are few of higher interest than
that splendid system of mathematical science, the growth of so many
slow-revolving ages and toiling hands, still incomplete, destined to
remain so forever perhaps, but to-day embracing within its wide circuit
many marvellous trophies wrung from Nature in closest contest. There
are strange depths, doubtless, in the human soul,--recesses where the
universal sunlight of reason fails us altogether; into which if we
would enter, it must be humbly and trustfully, laying our right hands
reverentially in God's, that he may lead us. There are faculties
reaching farther than all reason, and utterances of higher import than
hers, problems, too, in the solution of which we shall derive very
little aid from any mere mathematical considerations. Those who think
differently should read once more, and more attentively, the sad history
of frantic folly and limitless license, written down forever under the
date, September, 1792, boastfully proclaimed to the world as the New
Era, the year 1 of the Age of Reason. Perhaps the number of those
who would to-day follow Momoro's pretty wife with loud adulation and
Bacchanalian rejoicings to the insulted Church of Notre Dame, thus
publicly disowning the God of the Universe and discarding the sweetest
of all hopes, the hope of immortality and eternal youth after the
weariness of age, would be found to be very small. This was indeed a new
version of the old story of Godiva, wherein implacable, inhuman hate
sadly enough took the place of the sweet Christian charity of that dear
lady. Let us recognize its deep significance, and acknowledge that many
things of very great importance lie beyond the utmost limits of human
reason.

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