n Smollett, who stood behind the pillar of the
shop-door, and heard what passed, snatching up a snow-ball, quickly
delivered his playmate from the dilemma in which this question had
placed him, by an answer equally prompt and conclusive. Not content with
this attack, he afterwards made the offender sit for his whole-length
portrait, in the person, as it is supposed, of Crab, in the same novel.

In the midst of these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and
the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to
the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a
tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that
time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and
discovering that he must thenceforth rely on his own exertions for a
maintenance, he set forth with his juvenile production for London. On
his arrival there, failing as might be expected, to persuade the
managers to bring his tragedy on the stage, he solicited and obtained
the place of a chirurgeon's mate, on board the fleet destined for the
attack of Carthagena. Of this ill-conducted and unfortunate expedition,
he not only made a sketch in his Roderick Random, but afterwards
inserted a more detailed account of it in the Compendium of Voyages.
After a short time, he was so little pleased with his employment, that
he determined to relinquish it, and remain in the West Indies. During
his residence in Jamaica, he met with Miss Anne Lascelles, to whom,
after a few years, he was married, and with whom he expected to receive
a fortune of three thousand pounds. In the islands he probably depended
for a subsistence on the exercise of his skill as a chirurgeon. He
returned to London in the year 1746; and though his family had
distinguished themselves by their revolutionary principles, testified
his sympathy with the late sufferings of his countrymen, in their
expiring struggle for the house of Stuart, by some lines, entitled the
Tears of Scotland. When warned of his indiscretion, he added that
concluding stanza of reproof to his timid counsellors:--

While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpair'd remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country's fate
Within my filial breast shall beat;
And spite of her insulting foe,
My sympathizing verse shall flow:
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn!

His first separate publication was, Advice, a sat