No More Learning

A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune, may gen-
erally find an excellent companion for all vicissitudes of his life;
but it is not so easy to find a companion for his understanding,
who has similar pursuits with himself, or who can comprehend
the pleasure he derives from them. We really can see no reason
why it should not be otherwise; nor comprehend how the pleas-
ures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the num-
ber of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives.
together take a common interest.
One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the
respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Men
rise in character often as they increase in years: they are vener-
able from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they
can impart; if they outlive their faculties, the mere frame itself


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13562
SYDNEY SMITH
is respected for what it once contained. But women (such is
their unfortunate style of education) hazard everything upon one.
cast of the die: when youth is gone, all is gone. No human
creature gives his admiration for nothing: either the eye must
be charmed or the understanding gratified. A woman must talk
wisely or look well. . Every human being must put up with the
coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the
wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for
decayed accomplishments; no man mourns over the fragments of
a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill,- they
are flowers destined to perish: but the decay of great talents is
always the subject of solemn pity; and even when their last
memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with
pious affection.
There is no connection between the ignorance in which women
are kept, and the preservation of moral and religious principle;
and yet certainly there is, in the minds of some timid and re-
spectable persons, a vague, indefinite dread of knowledge, as if
it were capable of producing these effects. It might almost be
supposed, from the dread which the propagation of knowledge
has excited, that there was some great secret which was to be
kept in impenetrable obscurity; that all moral rules were a spe-
cies of delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the
improvement of the understanding, would be attended with the
most fatal consequences to all, and particularly to women. If
we could possibly understand what these great secrets were, we
might perhaps be disposed to concur in their preservation; but
believing that all the salutary rules which are imposed on women
are the result of true wisdom, and productive of the greatest
happiness, we cannot understand how they are to become less
sensible of this truth in proportion as their power of discovering
truth in general is increased, and the habit of viewing questions.
with accuracy and comprehension established by education. There
are men, indeed, who are always exclaiming against every species
of power, because it is connected with danger: their dread of
abuses is o much stronger than their admiration of uses, that
they would cheerfully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and
printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It
is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render
depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength
of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on


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SYDNEY SMITH
13563
its application. But trust to the natural love of good where there
is no temptation to be bad,-it operates nowhere more forcibly
than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or
friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to
acquire; but giving the power, he gives it with a taste for the
wise and rational exercise of that power: so that an educated
person is not only one with stronger and better faculties than
others, but with a more useful propensity, a disposition better
cultivated, and associations of a higher and more important class.
In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which
we have insisted: Why the disproportion in knowledge between
the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural
talents is so small; or why the understanding of women should
be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of bet-
ter and higher things, we profess ourselves not able to under-
stand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best
cured by making that knowledge more general; and the economy
devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and
inconvenience which proceed from neglecting it. For the care
of children, nature has made a direct and powerful provision;
and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural conse-
quence of that desire to please which is productive of the great-
est part of civilization and refinement, and which rests upon a
foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in
education as we have proposed. If you educate women to attend
to dignified and important subjects, you are multiplying beyond
measure the chances of human improvement, by preparing and
medicating those early impressions which always come from the
mother, and which in a great majority of instances are quite
decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business
of education that women would influence the destiny of man.
If women knew more, men must learn more; for ignorance
would then be shameful, and it would become the fashion to
be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of
national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and
amusement of the world; it increases the pleasures of society,
by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a com-
mon interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understand-
ing as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance
to the female character. The education of women favors public
morals: it provides for every season of life, as well as for the
―


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13564
SYDNEY SMITH
brightest and the best; and leaves a woman, when she is stricken.
by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything
and neglected by all, but with the full power and the splendid
attractions of knowledge,—diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite
literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accom-
plished men.
JOHN BULL'S CHARITY SUBSCRIPTIONS
THE
HE English are a calm, reflecting people; they will give time
and money when they are convinced; but they love dates,
names, and certificates. In the midst of the most heart-
rending narratives, Bull requires the day of the month, the year
of our Lord, the name of the parish, and the countersign of
three or four respectable householders. After these affecting
circumstances, he can no longer hold out; but gives way to the
kindness of his nature-puffs, blubbers, and subscribes.
WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS
"O⁰
UR Wise Ancestors" "The Wisdom of our Ancestors >>>
"The Wisdom of Ages" "Venerable Antiquity". - "Wis-
dom of Old Times. "— This mischievous and absurd fallacy
springs from the grossest perversion of the meaning of words.
Experience is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old have
of course a greater experience than the young; but the question
is, Who are the old? and who are the young? Of individuals
living at the same period, the oldest has of course the greatest
experience; but among generations of men, the reverse of this is
true. Those who come first (our ancestors) are the young people,
and have the least experience. We have added to their experience
the experience of many centuries; and therefore, as far as expe-
rience goes, are wiser and more capable of forming an opinion
than they were. The real feeling should be, not, Can we be so
presumptuous as to put our opinions in opposition to those of our
ancestors? but, Can such young, ignorant, inexperienced persons
as our ancestors necessarily were, be expected to have understood
a subject as well as those who have seen so much more, lived so
much longer, and enjoyed the experience of so many centuries?
-
-


## p. 13565 (#379) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13565
All this cant, then, about our ancestors, is merely an abuse of
words, by transferring phrases true of contemporary men to suc-
ceeding ages.
Whereas (as we have before observed) of living
men the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the most experience; of gen-
erations the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the least experience. Our
ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms; chubby
boys in the time of Edward the First; striplings under Elizabeth;
men in the reign of Queen Anne: and we only are the white-
bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are
prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can.
supply. We are not disputing with our ancestors the palm of
talent, in which they may or may not be our superiors; but the
palm of experience, in which it is utterly impossible they can be
our superiors. And yet, whenever the Chancellor comes forward
to protect some abuse, or to oppose some plan which has the
increase of human happiness for its object, his first appeal is
always to the wisdom of our ancestors; and he himself, and many
noble lords who vote with him, are to this hour persuaded that
all alterations and amendments on their devices are an unblushing
controversy between youthful temerity and mature experience!
and so in truth they are; only that much-loved magistrate mis-
takes the young for the old and the old for the young, and is
guilty of that very sin against experience which he attributes to
the lovers of innovation.
We cannot, of course, be supposed to maintain that our ances-
tors wanted wisdom, or that they were necessarily mistaken in
their institutions, because their means of information were more
limited than ours. But we do confidently maintain, that when
we find it expedient to change anything which our ancestors have
enacted, we are the experienced persons, and not they. The
quantity of talent is always varying in any great nation. To say
that we are more or less able than our ancestors, is an assertion
that requires to be explained. All the able men of all ages, who
have ever lived in England, probably possessed, if taken alto-
gether, more intellect than all the able men now in England
can boast of. But if authority must be resorted to rather than
reason, the question is, What was the wisdom of that single age
which enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of the age
which proposes to alter it? What are the eminent men of one
and the other period? If you say that our ancestors were wiser
than us, mention your date and year. If the splendor of names
is equal, are the circumstances the same? If the circumstances


## p. 13566 (#380) ##########################################

13566
SYDNEY SMITH
are the same, we have a superiority of experience, of which the
difference between the two periods is the measure.
It is necessary to insist upon this; for upon sacks of wool,
and on benches forensic, sit grave men, and agricolous persons
in the Commons, crying out, "Ancestors, Ancestors! hodie non!
Saxons, Danes, save us! Fiddlefrig, help us! Howel, Ethel-
wolf, protect us! " Any cover for nonsense-any veil for trash
-any pretext for repelling the innovations of conscience and of
duty!
LATIN VERSES
THA
HAT vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical
learning, there can be no doubt. The advantages which
are derived from classical learning by the English manner
of teaching, involve another and a very different question; and
we will venture to say that there never was a more complete
instance in any country of such extravagant and overacted attach-
ment to any branch of knowledge, as that which obtains in this
country with regard to classical knowledge. A young English-
man goes to school at six or seven years old; and he remains in
a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of
age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learn-
ing Latin and Greek: he has scarcely a notion that there is any
other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with
which he is the most perfectly acquainted are the intrigues of
the heathen gods: with whom Pan slept? - with whom Jupiter?
-whom Apollo ravished? These facts the English youth get
by heart the moment they quit the nursery; and are most sedu-
lously and industriously instructed in them till the best and most
active part of life is passed away. Now, this long career of
classical learning we may, if we please, denominate a foundation;
but it is a foundation so far above-ground, that there is abso-
lutely no room to put anything upon it. If you occupy a man
with one thing till he is twenty-four years of age, you have
exhausted all his leisure time: he is called into the world, and
compelled to act; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks and
reads no more. If you have neglected to put other things in
him, they will never get in afterward; if you have fed him.
only with words, he will remain a narrow and limited being to
the end of his existence.


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SYDNEY SMITH
13567
The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no
uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their
gray hairs and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for schoolboys.
Their talk is of Latin verses; and it is quite clear, if men's ages
are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that
such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their
minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions
of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great
school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness.
Attend, too, to the public feelings; look to all the terms of
applause. A learned man! a scholar! a man of erudition! Upon
whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they
given to men acquainted with the science of government? thor-
oughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of
Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their
action upon each other? No; this is not learning: it is chem-
istry or political economy-not learning. The distinguishing
abstract term, the epithet of "scholar," is reserved for him who
writes on the Eolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Syl-
burgian method of arranging defectives in and μ. The pict-
ure from which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of
knowledge, draws his beau idéal of human nature-his top and
consummation of man's powers-is a knowledge of the Greek
language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent;
but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imagi-
nary glory which he draws for himself are the detection of an
anapæst in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case
which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti
failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet
the greatest chemist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most
profound political economist, of his time, in company with the
greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between
them ever come across his mind? would he ever dream that
such men as Adam Smith or Lavoisier were equal in dignity of
understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne?
We are inclined to think that the feeling excited would be a
good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the
praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained consider-
able doubt whether the King, with all his victories, knew how to
conjugate a Greek verb in μ.
Another misfortune of classical learning as taught in Eng-
land is, that scholars have come, in process of time and from


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13568
SYDNEY SMITH
the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the
end; not the luxury which the difficulty incloses, but the diffi-
culty; not the filbert, but the shell; not what may be read in
Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has
mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who
displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is
conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scholar.
The good
sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient
authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of
pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something posi
tive; I establish my pretensions to the name of a scholar, and
gain the credit of learning while I sacrifice all its utility.
Another evil in the present system of classical education is
the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those
languages; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought
for in nothing else. There are few boys who remain to the age
of eighteen or nineteen at a public school, without making above
ten thousand Latin verses,- a greater number than is contained
in the Æneid; and after he has made this quantity of verses in
a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very
weak man indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives.
It may be urged, and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching
the delicacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this
purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and trouble
sacrificed in gaining these little delicacies. It would be of use
that we should go on till fifty years of age making Latin verses,
if the price of a whole life were not too much to pay for it.
We effect our object; but we do it at the price of something
greater than our object. And whence comes it that the expendi-
ture of life and labor is totally put out of the calculation, when
Latin and Greek are to be attained? In every other occupation,
the question is fairly stated between the attainment and the
time employed in the pursuit: but in classical learning, it seems
to be sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the great-
est possible exertion; if the end is anything, and the means
everything. It is of some importance to speak and write French,
and innumerable delicacies would be gained by writing ten thou-
sand French verses; but it makes no part of our education to
write French poetry. It is of some importance that there should
be good botanists; but no botanist can repeat by heart the names
of all the plants in the known world: nor is any astronomer
acquainted with the appellation and magnitude of every star in


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SYDNEY SMITH
13569
the map of the heavens. The only department of human knowl-
edge in which there can be no excess, no arithmetic, no balance
of profit and loss, is classical learning.
The prodigious honor in which Latin verses are held at public
schools is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You
rest all reputation upon doing that which is a natural gift, and
which no labor can attain. If a lad won't learn the words of
a language, his degradation in the school is a very natural pun-
ishment for his disobedience or his indolence; but it would be as
reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty, or beautiful,
as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to
make an accidental, unattainable, and not a very important gift
of nature, the only, or the principal, test of merit. This is the
reason why boys who make a very considerable figure at school
so very often make no figure in the world; and why other lads,
who are passed over without notice, turn out to be valuable,
important men. The test established in the world is widely
different from that established in a place which is presumed to
be a preparation for the world; and the head of a public school,
who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself
shrink into absolute insignificance, because he has nothing else to
command respect or regard but a talent for fugitive poetry in a
dead language.
The present state of classical education cultivates the imagi-
nation a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great
deal too little; and trains up many young men in a style of
elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which
nature has endowed them. It may be said there are profound
investigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any under-
standing, to be met with in classical literature. So there are:
but no man likes to add the difficulties of a language to the diffi-
culties of a subject; and to study metaphysics, morals, and poli-
tics in Greek, when the Greek alone is study enough without
them. In all foreign languages, the most popular works are
works of imagination. Even in the French language, which we
know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in
this country, we have twenty which are mere works of imagina-
tion. This is still more true in classical literature, because what
their poets and orators have left us is of infinitely greater value
than the remains of their philosophy: for as society advances,
men think more accurately and deeply, and imagine more tamely;
works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. So that
XXIII-849


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13570
SYDNEY SMITH
the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or
twenty-four years of age is a man principally conversant with
works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively,
and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry
he has none; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of push-
ing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and
unamusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the solid and
masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cul-
tivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man
whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opin-
ions and prove his assertions.
MRS. SIDDONS
I
NEVER go to tragedies: my heart is too soft. There is too
much real misery in life. But what a face she had! The
gods do not bestow such a face as Mrs. Siddons's on the stage
more than once in a century. I knew her very well, and she
had the good taste to laugh heartily at my jokes; she was an
excellent person, but she was not remarkable out of her profes-
sion, and never got out of tragedy even in common life. She
used to stab the potatoes; and said, "Boy, give me a knife! "
as she would have said, "Give me the dagger! "
DOGS
N°
.
I DON'T like dogs: I always expect them to go mad. A
lady asked me once for a motto for her dog Spot. I
proposed, "Out, damned Spot! " but she did not think it
sentimental enough. You remember the story of the French
marquise, who, when her pet lap-dog bit a piece out of her foot-
man's leg, exclaimed, "Ah, poor little beast! I hope it won't
make him sick. " I called one day on Mrs.
and her lap-
dog flew at my leg and bit it. After pitying her dog, like the
French marquise, she did all she could to comfort me by assur-
ing me the dog was a Dissenter, and hated the Church, and
was brought up in a Tory family. But whether the bite came
from madness or Dissent, I knew myself too well to neglect it;
and went on the instant to a surgeon and had it cut out, making
a mem. on the way to enter that house no more.


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SYDNEY SMITH
13571
HAND-SHAKING
ON
MEETING a young lady who had just entered the garden,
and shaking hands with her, "I must," he said, "give you
a lesson in shaking hands, I see. There is nothing more
characteristic than shakes of the hand. I have classified them.
Lister, when he was here, illustrated some of them. Ask Mrs.
Sydney to show you his sketches of them when you go in.
There is the high official,-the body erect, and a rapid, short
shake, near the chin. There is the mortmain,-the flat hand in-
troduced into your palm, and hardly conscious of its contiguity.
The digital,- one finger held out, much used by the high clergy.
There is the shakus rusticus, where your hand is seized in
an iron grasp, betokening rude health, warm heart, and distance
from the Metropolis; but producing a strong sense of relief on
your part when you find your hand released and your fingers
unbroken. The next to this is the retentive shake,—one which,
beginning with vigor, pauses as it were to take breath, but with-
out relinquishing its prey, and before you are aware begins
again, till you feel anxious as to the result, and have no shake
left in you.
There are other varieties, but this is enough for
one lesson. ”
SMALL MEN
AN
ARGUMENT arose, in which my father observed how many
of the most eminent men of the world had been diminutive
in person; and after naming several among the ancients,
he added, "Why, look there, at Jeffrey; and there is my little
friend
who has not body enough to cover his mind decently
with, his intellect is improperly exposed. "
MACAULAY
T
TAKE Macaulay out of literature and society, and put him
in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician
out of London during a pestilence.
"Oh yes! we both talk a great deal; but I don't believe
Macaulay ever did hear my voice," he exclaimed laughing.
"Sometimes when I have told a good story, I have thought to


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13572
SYDNEY SMITH
myself, Poor Macaulay! he will be very sorry some day to have
missed hearing that. "
I always prophesied his greatness from the first moment I saw
him, then a very young and unknown man on the Northern Cir-
cuit. There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as
well as great; he is like a book in breeches.
Yes, I agree, he is certainly more agreeable since his return
from India. His enemies might have said before (though I never
did so) that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional
flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
But what is far better and more important than all this is, that
I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons,
stars, garters, wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an hon-
est genuine love of his country, and the world could not bribe
him to neglect her interests.
SPECIE AND SPECIES
ST
YDNEY SMITH, preaching a charity sermon, frequently repeated
the assertion that of all nations, Englishmen were most dis-
tinguished for generosity and the love of their species. The
collection happened to be inferior to his expectations, and he said
that he had evidently made a great mistake, and that his expres
sion should have been that they were distinguished for the love
of their specie.
ANIEL
DAN
trousers.
DANIEL WEBSTER
WEBSTER struck me much like a steam-engine in
REVIEW OF THE NOVEL (GRANBY'
HE main question as to a novel is, Did it amuse? Were you
Tsurprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven
for ten, and twelve for eleven? were you too late to dress?
and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces
these effects, it is good; if it does not,-story, language, love,
scandal itself, cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it


## p. 13573 (#387) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13573
must do that, or it does nothing. Now, 'Granby '* seems to
us to answer this test extremely well: it produces unpunctuality,
makes the reader too late for dinner, impatient of contradiction,
and inattentive, even if a bishop is making an observation, or
a gentleman lately from the Pyramids or the Upper Cataracts is
let loose upon the drawing-room. The objection indeed to these
compositions, when they are well done, is, that it is impossible to
do anything or perform any human duty while we are engaged
in them. Who can read Mr. Hallam's 'Middle Ages,' or extract
the root of an impossible quantity, or draw up a bond, when he
is in the middle of Mr.
Trebeck and Lady Charlotte Duncan ?
How can the boy's lesson be heard, about the Jove-nourished
Achilles, or his six miserable verses upon Dido be corrected, when
Henry Granby and Mr. Courtenay are both making love to Miss
Jermyn ? Common life palls in the middle of these artificial
scenes. All is emotion when the book is open; all dull, flat, and
feeble, when it is shut.
-
Granby, a young man of no profession, living with an old
uncle in the country, falls in love with Miss Jermyn, and Miss
Jermyn with him; but Sir Thomas and Lady Jermyn, as the
young gentleman is not rich, having discovered by long living in
the world, and patient observation of its ways, that young people
are commonly Malthus-proof and have children, and that young
and old must eat, very naturally do what they can to discourage
the union. The young people, however, both go to town; meet
at balls; flutter, blush, look and cannot speak; speak and cannot
look; suspect, misinterpret, are sad and mad, peevish and jealous,
fond and foolish: but the passion, after all, seems less near to
its accomplishment at the end of the season than the beginning.
The uncle of Granby, however, dies, and leaves to his nephew a
statement, accompanied with the requisite proofs, that Mr. Tyrrel,
the supposed son of Lord Malton, is illegitimate, and that he,
Granby, is the heir to Lord Malton's fortune. The second vol-
ume is now far advanced, and it is time for Lord Malton to die.
Accordingly Mr. Lister very judiciously dispatches him; Granby
inherits the estate; his virtues (for what shows off virtue like
land? ) are discovered by the Jermyns; and they marry in the
last act.
*Granby,' a novel by Thomas Henry Lister, noticed by Sydney Smith in
the Edinburgh Review of February 1826.


## p. 13574 (#388) ##########################################

13574
SYDNEY SMITH
Upon this slender story, the author has succeeded in making
a very agreeable and interesting novel: and he has succeeded,
we think, chiefly by the very easy and natural picture of man-
ners as they really exist among the upper classes; by the de-
scription of new characters, judiciously drawn and faithfully
preserved; and by the introduction of many striking and well-
managed incidents. And we are particularly struck throughout
the whole with the discretion and good sense of the author. He
is never nimious; there is nothing in excess: there is a good deal
of fancy and a great deal of spirit at work, but a directing and
superintending judgment rarely quits him.
Tremendous is the power of a novelist!
If four or five men
are in a room, and show a disposition to break the peace, no
human magistrate (not even Mr. Justice Bayley) could do more
than bind them over to keep the peace, and commit them if they
refused. But the writer of the novel stands with a pen in his
hand, and can run any of them through the body,- can knock
down any one individual and keep the others upon their legs;
or like the last scene in the first tragedy written by a young
man of genius, can put them all to death. Now, an author
possessing such extraordinary privileges should not have allowed
Mr. Tyrrel to strike Granby. This is ill managed; particularly
as Granby does not return the blow, or turn him out of the
house. Nobody should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or to
be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would never have come down
to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on
the ear. We should have trembled for the Eneid if any Tyr-
ian nobleman had kicked the pious Eneas in the fourth book.
Æneas may have deserved it; but he could not have founded the
Roman Empire after so distressing an accident.


## p. 13575 (#389) ##########################################

13575
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
(1721-1771)
BY PITTS DUFFIELD
MOLLETT is probably one of the least "literary" of the names
that live in English literature. For a long time, it is true,
the critics took him over-seriously. The people who first
had the task of writing his biography and estimating his genius set
the example. There is an edition of his works in 1797, twenty-six
years after his death, in which Dr. John Moore, before beginning the
life of his subject, feels obliged to expend
himself upon 'A View of the Commence-
ment and Progress of Romance. ' It is a dis-
sertation which the eighteenth-century folks
would have called "learned and ingenious. "
It begins with a "contrast between the
manners of the Greeks and Romans and
those of the Goths," examines the condition
of knight-errantry in the Middle Age, pos-
tulates Prince Arthur and Charlemagne as
the two original heroes of romance, touches
upon the troubadours, Dante, Cervantes, and
concludes with the products of Tobias Smol-
lett. Subsequent writers, continuing the in-
quiries thus set on foot, have tried, though
in vain, to ascribe to him some special contribution to letters, or some
special importance in the evolution of the English novel. The fact
is, that Smollett himself would have been the first to jeer at these
attempts to deal scientifically with him. He might have exclaimed,
as he makes some one do in Humphrey Clinker,' that he would
as soon expect "to see the use of trunk-hose and buttered ale"
deriving itself from the feudal system. Altogether, it is not hard to
find reasons why his popularity survives most genuinely among peo-
ple whose interests are uncritical and unliterary.
For one thing, he is nothing if not typical of the English writers.
who, without the genius which invents or the subtler genius which
makes old matter new, succeed nevertheless by the sheer force of
their British vigor in gaining a place by their more laborious broth-
In all Smollett's novels, where there is little anyway that is not
ers.

SMOLLETT


## p. 13576 (#390) ##########################################

13576
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
external in its aspects and observations, one finds nothing which has
not its origin in the actual experiences of his own life. Born in 1721
in Dalquhurn, in Dumbartonshire, of a good family but of a younger
son, he was dependent all his life on what he could earn himself;
and believing himself to be of a literary taste, he set out, after some
education and an apprenticeship to a surgeon in Glasgow, upon the
high-road to London. His tragedy, with which he had armed him-
self,The Regicide,' a story drawn from the powerful romance of
Scottish history, but treated in the hopeless pseudo-classic manner,-
came to nothing; and in 1741 he got an appointment as surgeon's
mate on one of the ships of the expedition to Carthagena.
It was
on this voyage that he met Miss Anne Lascelles, a reputed Jamaica
heiress, whose name he characteristically converted into Nancy Las-
sells. Next, after unsuccessful attempts at practice in London and in
Bath, he cooked up some of his adventures in 'Roderick Random,'
and for the first time was fairly successful. 'Peregrine Pickle,'
'Ferdinand, Count Fathom,' a translation of 'Don Quixote,' the edit-
orship of the Critical Review, his 'History of England,' 'Sir Laun-
celot Greaves,' and occasional poems and satires, were some of the
means by which he sought subsistence. In the mean time he had
traveled for his health in France and Italy; in 1771, soon after fin-
ishing Humphrey Clinker,' he died at Leghorn; and is celebrated
there, and on the banks of the Leven in Scotland, by monuments
with ponderous Latin epitaphs. One of the epitaphs is on the
theme of genius unappreciated; and the life on the whole was indeed
not happy. Macaulay is not much too rhetorical when he says Smol-
lett was most of the time "surrounded by printers' devils and fam-
ished scribblers. "
It is from such company and such adventures - the same, be it
noted, which are supposed to be valuable in the modern reporter's
stock in trade- that Smollett gets his distinguishing characteristic:
a fund of coarse but lively humor. Dr. John Moore says somewhat
mildly that "in the ardor of his satirical and humorous chase, Dr.
Smollett sometimes leaves delicacy too far behind. " The frankest
and healthiest way to state the question is to say that it is not a
question of delicacy at all. A certain coarseness of fibre in the
English, often their strength and not always their reproach, was first
touched upon fearlessly by the shrewd and observant Hawthorne.
What many brave or useful or wise men in many ages have sel-
dom been completely without, can hardly be condemned in Smollett
because with him it is undisguised. He had not the grace of the
French, the specious pathos of Sterne, or the deliberate euphemism
of the mawkish modern drama, to conceal the primal instincts of his
nature. People have called Smollett foul; but this, in certain moods,


## p. 13577 (#391) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13577
may seem as wide of the mark as to call him simply indelicate.
'The Adventures of an Atom' are mentioned with a shudder when it
is necessary to mention them at all, yet they are scarcely worse than
the occasional conversation of very reputable medical students in all
times. It may be questioned, finally, whether it is any hurt to a lan-
guage to have nothing but specifically vulgar names for vulgar things,
and so escape the deification of lubricity to which less robust nations
commit themselves. Vigorous and outspoken, irreverent, and some-]
times too high-tempered, Smollett is a pervading exemplar of the
British humorist. He has indeed the scorn of affectation, which, in
spite of his exclusion from any evolutionary scheme of things, may
be regarded as one distinguishing trait of the modern funny man.
His attitude toward the Venus de Medici and the Pantheon in Rome
- which, in the case of the Venus at any rate, is after all not so very
discordant with modern æsthetic appreciation-may be said, half in
earnest, to stand for the kind of thing Mark Twain and others have
done in our own day. "The Pantheon," he declares, "after all that
has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top;" and
the world of connoisseurs was in arms at once. Sterne satirized him
as the "learned Smelfungus, who set out with the spleen and the
jaundice. " But whether it was the jaundice or the spleen, the people
who read Smollett- who are rarely the people who read only for
the name of the thing. are just the ones to like him for being thor-
oughly, if a bit brutally, honest. People who read him to study him,
moreover, may remember with advantage that it is just this direct
and unaffected habit of expression that gives him his hold on life.
Editions of his works have been numerous and handy; and many a
reader who would yawn over more delicate tales, however seductive,
finds himself diverted by his pages. "Since Granville was turned
out," he says,
"there has been no minister in this nation worth the
meal that whitened his periwig. " That is the way to say things for
the average man, bent less on the speculations of art than on hearty
sense. The coarseness, or the foulness, which people condemn in
him, is perhaps the same at bottom with the instinct that makes his
style to-day still readable and vigorous.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Sir Walter Scott-both interest-
ing critics have made what later critics call the mistake of crediting
Smollett with the gift of invention. Lady Mary was perhaps the
more excusable, since the extraordinary variety of incident in his
novels could not have been known to her to be transcripts from the
man's life. The language and the characters of British seamen and
surgeons' apprentices - the idiosyncrasies of Commodore Trunnion,
Pipes, Hatchway, and the famous Tom Bowling-had in the eigh-
teenth century a novelty which must have seemed more than mere
―――
-


## p. 13578 (#392) ##########################################

13578
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
reproductions. Thackeray, though he did abundant justice to Smol-
lett's humor, discerned that he depended less on invention than on
copying. The point now is that he had the resources to copy from,
and instinctively drew upon them. In this again he may have fore-
shadowed a modern method of procedure, which travels about the
earth in search of literary capital. In Smollett are found many of
the types which have since been elaborated in special departments
of fiction. His sea people, of course, may have had their prototypes
in the drama and in some of the older romances; but Smollett goes
further in carefully reproducing their talk, and the scenes and inci-
dents of their lives. Similarly, though unconsciously, his medical
episodes and similitudes may be forerunners of the medico-literary
and psycho-physical novels which find vogue in our own days. Wini-
fred Jenkins, also, in Humphrey Clinker,' is one of the most laugh-
able of the Malaprop breed; and her bad spelling, though it has been
often imitated, has rarely been improved on. So that if Smollett
cannot have been a force in evolution, he may at least have had a
few germs, whether of good or evil.
It is to be remembered lastly, whatever strictures may be passed
on his life and writings, that his valedictory was becoming. The
Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' is remarkable for the transforma-
tion and chastening which overspread his method and his manner.
That his vicissitudes troubled him, and sharpened his temper, may
be excused in the fact that when all was done he looked beneficently
on the world, and was willing to amuse it without making it laugh
over-loudly or cruelly. If his literary reputation suffers by what
the exigencies of his times and fortunes compelled him to do, he
lived through them to retrieve it. The style of 'Humphrey Clinker'
is easy and familiar, and the epistolary form in it more than usually
adapted to the desultory manner in which the narrative goes forward.
Here the critics are willing to admit that Smollett created charac-
ters over and above mere types, and put himself for once in a line
with Sterne and Fielding. Tabitha Bramble, Matthew Bramble, and
Lismahago, are really charming additions to the galleries of English
portraiture. Smollett is unusually hard to represent by a limited.
number of excerpts; his range is too wide to be surely represented
by less than a variety of his pages. Yet if one selection were to be
made, it should in justice to him be taken from the book in which
the worker has lived through the years of drudgery to become at
last, for once anyway, the artist.
Like his great contemporary Fielding, the author of 'Humphrey
Clinker' was born to the lot of literary hack. His case has many
resemblances to the literary workers of these days,-the days of in-
numerable hacks. He had in more ways than one the instincts, the


## p. 13579 (#393) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13579
The jour-
temper, and the method of the modern newspaper man.
nalist who travels about confessedly to get material differs not essen-
tially from the writer who uses what fortuitous travel has brought
him. A ready humor, quick wit, and real though acrid sympathy,
are other details of the analogy. The sequel is only too apt to be a
story of dull routine and ultimate mediocrity. In the obscurity of
hackdom it must be, in some essence at least, a fine nature that
will not relax its efforts to do well what it has to do, and ends by
doing it better than ever. Smollett was, throughout his twenty-five
years of work, a conscientiously careful employer of the English
language. Perhaps, therefore, a point of view more grateful to him
and more adequately estimating him, would be not that which com-
pares him disadvantageously on the same level with Richardson,
Fielding, and Sterne; but that which credits him with having raised
himself from lower regions to a place near them.
Pits Duffica
A NAVAL SURGEON'S EXAMINATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
From Roderick Random>
MR.
R. JACKSON'S exordium did not at all contribute to the recov-
ery of my spirits, but on the contrary, reduced me to
such a situation that I was scarce able to stand: which
being perceived by a plump gentleman who sat opposite to
me with a skull before him, he said Mr. Snarler was too severe
upon the young man; and turning towards me, told me I need
not be afraid, for nobody would do me any harm; then bidding
me take time to recollect myself, he examined me touching the
operation of the trepan, and was very well satisfied with my
answers.
The next person who questioned me was a wag, who began
by asking if I had ever seen an amputation performed; and I
replying in the affirmative, he shook his head and said, “What!
upon a dead subject, I suppose? If," continued he, "during an
engagement at sea, a man should be brought to you with his
head shot off, how would you behave? " After some hesitation,
I owned such a case had never come under my observation, nei-
ther did I remember to have seen any method of cure proposed


## p. 13580 (#394) ##########################################

13580
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
for such an accident in any of the systems of surgery I had
perused. Whether it was owing to the simplicity of my answer
or the archness of the question, I know not; but every mem-
ber of the board deigned to smile except Mr. Snarler, who seemed
to have very little of the animal risible in his constitution.
The facetious member, encouraged by the success of his last
joke, went on thus: "Suppose you was called to a patient of
a plethoric habit who had been bruised by a fall, what would
you do? »
I answered, "I would
would bleed him immediately. '
«< What," said he, "before you had tied up his arm? " But this
stroke of wit not answering his expectation, he desired me to
advance to the gentleman who sat next him, and who, with a
pert air, asked what method of cure I would follow in wounds of
the intestines. I repeated the method of cure as it is prescribed
by the best chirurgical writers; which he heard to an end, and
then said with a supercilious smile, "So you think by such a
treatment the patient might recover? " I told him I saw nothing
to make me think otherwise. "That may be," resumed he; "I
won't answer for your foresight: but did you ever know a case
of this kind succeed? " I answered I did not: and was about to
tell him I had never seen a wounded intesine; but he stopped
me by saying with some precipitation, "Nor never will. I affirm
that all wounds of the intestines, whether great or small, are
mortal. " "Pardon me, brother," says the fat gentleman, "there
is very good authority-" Here he was interrupted by another
with "Sir, excuse me, I despise all authority. Nullius in verba.
I stand upon my own bottom. " "But, sir, sir," replied his an-
tagonist, "the reason of the thing shows—» "A fig for reason,"
cried this sufficient member: "I laugh at reason,—give me
ocular demonstration. " The corpulent gentleman began to wax
warm, and observed that no man acquainted with the anatomy
of the parts would advance such an extravagant assertion. This
innuendo enraged the other so much that he started up, and in
a furious tone exclaimed, "What, sir! do you question my knowl
edge in anatomy? " By this time all the examiners had espoused
the opinion of one or the other of the disputants, and raised
their voices all together; when the chairman commanded silence,
and ordered me to withdraw.
In less than a quarter of an hour I was called in again,
received my qualification sealed up, and was ordered to pay five
shillings. I laid down my half-guinea upon the table, and stood


## p. 13581 (#395) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13581
some time until one of them bade me begone: to this I replied,
"I will, when I have got my change; " upon which another threw
me five shillings and sixpence, saying I would not be a true
Scotchman if I went away without my change. I was afterwards
obliged to give three shillings and sixpence to the beadles, and
a shilling to an old woman who swept the hall. This disburse-
ment sunk my finances to thirteen pence halfpenny, with which
I was sneaking off; when Jackson, perceiving it, came up to me
and begged I would tarry for him, and he would accompany me
to the other end of the town as soon as his examination should
be over.
I could not refuse this to a person that was so much my
friend; but I was astonished at the change of his dress, which
was varied in half an hour from what I have already described,
to a very grotesque fashion. His head was covered with an
old smoked tie-wig that did not boast one crooked hair, and
a slouched hat over it which would have very well become a
chimney-sweeper or a dustman; his neck was adorned with a
black crape, the ends of which he had twisted and fixed in the
buttonhole of a shabby greatcoat that wrapt up his whole body;
his white silk stockings were converted into black worsted hose;
and his countenance was rendered venerable by wrinkles and a
beard of his own painting. When I expressed my surprise at
this metamorphosis, he laughed, and told me it was done by the
advice and assistance of a friend who lived over the way, and
would certainly produce something very much to his advan-
tage; for it gave him the appearance of age, which never fails
of attracting respect.
I applauded his sagacity, and waited with impatience for the
effects of it. At length he was called in: but whether the
oddness of his appearance excited a curiosity more than usual
in the board, or his behavior was not suitable to his figure, I
know not; he was discovered to be an impostor, and put into
the hands of the beadle, in order to be sent to bridewell. So
that instead of seeing him come out with a cheerful counte-
nance and a surgeon's qualification in his hand, I perceived him
led through the outward hall as a prisoner, and was very much
alarmed and anxious to know the occasion; when he called with
a lamentable voice and piteous aspect to me, and some others
who knew him, "For God's sake, gentlemen, bear witness that
I am the same individual, John Jackson, who served as surgeon's


## p. 13582 (#396) ##########################################

13582
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
second mate on board the Elizabeth,- or else I shall go to
bridewell. " It would have been impossible for the most aus-
tere hermit that ever lived to have refrained from laughing at
his appearance and address: we therefore indulged ourselves a
good while at his expense, and afterwards pleaded his cause so
effectually with the beadle, who was gratified with half a crown,
that the prisoner was dismissed, and in a few moments resumed
his former gayety; swearing, since the board had refused his
money, he would spend it every shilling before he went to bed
in treating his friends; at the same time inviting us all to favor
him with our company.
RODERICK IS "PRESSED » INTO THE NAVY
From Roderick Random>
I
saw no resource but the army or navy; between which I hesi-
tated so long that I found myself reduced to a starving
condition. My spirit began to accommodate itself to my beg
garly fate, and I became so mean as to go down towards Wap-
ping, with an intention to inquire for an old schoolfellow, who,
I understood, had got the command of a smail coasting vessel,
then in the river, and implore his assistance. But my destiny
prevented this abject piece of behavior; for as I crossed Tower
Wharf, a squat, tawny fellow, with a hanger by his side and a
cudgel in his hand, came up to me, calling, "Yo! ho! brother:
you must come along with me! " As I did not like his appear-
ance, instead of answering his salutation I quickened my pace,
in hope of ridding myself of his company; upon which he whis-
tled aloud, and immediately another sailor appeared before me,
who laid hold of me by the collar and began to drag me along.
Not being in a humor to relish such treatment, I disengaged
myself of the assailant, and with one blow of my cudgel laid
him motionless on the ground; and perceiving myself surrounded
in a trice by ten or a dozen more, exerted myself with such dex-
terity and success that some of my opponents were fain to attack
me with drawn cutlasses: and after an obstinate engagement, in
which I received a large wound on my head and another on my
left cheek, I was disarmed, taken prisoner, and carried on board
a pressing-tender; where, after being pinioned like a malefactor,
I was thrust down into the hold among a parcel of miserable


## p. 13583 (#397) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13583
wretches, the sight of whom well-nigh distracted me. As the
commanding officer had not humanity enough to order my
wounds to be dressed, and I could not use my own hands, I
desired one of my fellow-captives, who was unfettered, to take
a handkerchief out of my pocket, and tie it round my head to
stop the bleeding. He pulled out my handkerchief, 'tis true; but
instead of applying it to the use for which I designed it, went
to the grating of the hatchway, and with astonishing composure
sold it before my face to a bumboat woman then on board, for
a quart of gin, with which he treated my companions, regardless
of my circumstances and entreaties.
I complained bitterly of this robbery to the midshipman on
deck, telling him at the same time that unless my hurts were
dressed I should bleed to death. But compassion was a weak-
ness of which no man could justly accuse this person, who,
squirting a mouthful of dissolved tobacco upon me through the
gratings, told me "I was a mutinous dog, and that I might die
and be d-d. " Finding there was no other remedy, I appealed
to patience, and laid up this usage in my memory, to be recalled
at a fitter season. In the mean time, loss of blood, vexation, and
want of food, contributed with the noisome stench of the place
to throw me into a swoon; out of which I was recovered by a
tweak of the nose, administered by the tar who stood sentinel over
us, who at the same time regaled me with a draught of flip, and
comforted me with the hopes of being put on board the Thunder
next day, where I should be freed of my handcuffs, and cured of
my wounds by the doctor. I no sooner heard him name the
Thunder, than I asked if he had belonged to that ship long? and
he giving me to understand he had belonged to her five years,
I inquired if he knew Lieutenant Bowling? "Know Lieutenant
Bowling? " said he, "odds my life! and that I do: and a good
seaman he is as ever stepped upon forecastle; and a brave fellow
as ever cracked biscuit: none of your guinea-pigs, nor your fresh-
water, wishy-washy, fair-weather fowls. Many a tough gale of
wind has honest Tom Bowling and I weathered together. Here's
his health with all my heart, wherever he is, aloft or alow; in
heaven or in hell; all's one for that - he needs not be ashamed
to show himself. " I was so much affected with this eulogium
that I could not refrain from telling him that I was Lieuten-
ant Bowling's kinsman; in consequence of which connection he
expressed an inclination to serve me; and when he was relieved,
-


## p. 13584 (#398) ##########################################

13584
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
brought some cold boiled beef in a platter, and biscuit, on which
we supped plentifully, and afterwards drank another can of flip
together.
While we were thus engaged, he recounted a great many
exploits of my uncle, who I found was very much beloved by
the ship's company, and pitied for the misfortune that had
happened to him in Hispaniola, which I was very glad to be
informed was not so great as I imagined; for Captain Oakum
had recovered of his wounds, and actually at that time com-
manded the ship. Having by accident in my pocket my uncle's
letter, written from Port Louis, I gave it to my benefactor (whose
name was Jack Rattlin) for his perusal; but honest Jack told me.
frankly he could not read, and desired to know the contents, -
which I immediately communicated. When he heard that part
of it in which he says he had written to his landlord in Deal,
he cried, "Body o' me! that was old Ben Block: he was dead
before the letter came to hand. Ey, ey, had Ben been alive,
Lieutenant Bowling would have had no occasion to skulk so long.
Honest Ben was the first man that taught him to hand, reef,
and steer. Well, well, we must all die, that's certain; we must
all come to port sooner or later, at sea or on shore; we must
be fast moored one day; death's like the best bower-anchor, as
the saying is,- it will bring us all up.
>>
I could not but signify my approbation of the justness of
Jack's reflections; and inquired into the occasion of the quar-
rel between Captain Oakum and my uncle, which he explained
in this manner. "Captain Oakum, to be sure, is a good man
enough; besides, he's my commander: but what's that to me? I
do my duty, and value no man's anger of a rope's-end. Now
the report goes as how he's a lord, or baron-knight's brother,
whereby, d'ye see me, he carries a straight arm, and keeps aloof
from his officers, thof mayhap they may be as good men in the
main as he. Now, we lying at anchor in Tuberoon Bay, Lieu-
tenant Bowling had the middle watch: and as he always kept
a good lookout, he made, d'ye see, three lights in the offing,
whereby he ran down to the great cabin for orders, and found
the captain asleep; whereupon he waked him, which put him in
a main high passion, and he swore woundily at the lieutenant,
and called him swab and lubber, whereby the lieutenant returned
the salute, and they jawed together, fore and aft, a good spell,
till at last the captain turned out, and laying hold of a rattan,
――――――――


## p. 13585 (#399) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13585
came athwart Mr. Bowling's quarter; whereby he told the cap-
tain that if he was not his commander he would heave him
overboard, and demanded satisfaction ashore; whereby in the
morning watch the captain went ashore in the pinnace, and
afterwards the lieutenant carried the cutter ashore; and so they,
leaving the boats' crews on their oars, went away together; and
so, d'ye see, in less than a quarter of an hour we heard firing,
whereby we made for the place, and found the captain lying
wounded on the beach, and so brought him on board to the doc-
tor, who cured him in less than six weeks. But the lieutenant
clapped on all the sail he could bear, and had got far enough
ahead before we knew anything of the matter, so that we could
never after get sight of him; for which we were not sorry,
because the captain was mainly wroth, and would certainly have
done him a mischief; for he afterwards caused him to be run or
the ship's books, whereby he lost all his pay, and if he should be
taken would be tried as a deserter. "
This account of the captain's behavior gave me no advan-
tageous idea of his character; and I could not help lament-
ing my own fate, that had subjected me to such a commander
However, making a virtue of necessity, I put a good face on the
matter, and next day was, with the other pressed men, put on
board the Thunder, lying at the Nore. When we came alongside,
the mate who guarded us thither ordered my handcuffs to be
taken off, that I might get on board the easier. This circumstance
being perceived by some of the company who stood upon the
gang-boards to see us enter, one of them called to Jack Rattlin,
who was busy in doing this friendly office for me,-"Hey, Jack,
what Newgate galley have you boarded in the river as you came.
along? have we not thieves enow among us already? " Another,
observing my wounds which remained exposed to the air, told
me my seams were uncalked, and that I must be new payed.
A third, seeing my hair clotted together with blood, as it were,
into distinct cords, took notice that my bows were manned with
the red ropes instead of my side. A fourth asked me if I could
not keep my yards square without iron braces? And in short,
a thousand witticisms of the same nature were passed upon me
before I could get up the ship's side. After we had been all
entered upon the ship's books, I inquired of one of my shipmates
where the surgeon was, that I might have my wounds dressed;
and had actually got as far as the middle deck-for our ship
XXIII-850


## p. 13586 (#400) ##########################################

13586
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
carried eighty guns-in my way to the cockpit, when I was
met by the same midshipman who had used me so barbarously
in the tender. He, seeing me free from my chains, asked with
an insolent air who had released me?