ore
than Burns, in a time of patronage he was recalcitrant against patrons.
But, unlike Burns, he was _farouche_ to an extreme degree; and, unlike
Burns, he carried very far his prejudices about his "gentrice," his
gentle birth. Herein he is at the opposite pole from the great peasant
poet.

Two potent characteristics of his country were at war within him. There
was, first, the belief in "gentrice," in a natural difference of kind
between men of coat armour and men without it. Thus Roderick Random, the
starving cadet of a line of small lairds, accepts the almost incredible
self-denial and devotion of Strap as merely his due. Prince Charles
could not have taken the devotion of Henry Goring, or of Neil MacEachain,
more entirely as a matter of course, involving no consideration in
return, than Roderick took the unparalleled self-sacrifice of his barber
friend and school-mate. Scott has remarked on this contemptuous and
ungrateful selfishness, and has contrasted it with the relations of Tom
Jones and Partridge. Of course, it is not to be assumed that Smollett
would have behaved like Roderick, when, "finding the fire in my apartment
almost extinguished, I vented my fury upon poor Strap, whose ear I
pinched with such violence that he roared hideously with pain . . . " To
be sure Roderick presently "felt unspeakable remorse . . . foamed at the
mouth, and kicked the chairs about the room." Now Strap had rescued
Roderick from starvation, had bestowed on him hundreds of pounds, and had
carried his baggage, and dined on his leavings. But Strap was not gently
born! Smollett would not, probably, have acted thus, but he did not
consider such conduct a thing out of nature.

On the other side was Smollett's Scottish spirit of independence. As
early as 1515, James Ingles, chaplain of Margaret Tudor, wrote to Adam
Williamson, "You know the use of this country. . . . The man hath more
words than the master, and will not be content except he know the
master's counsel. There is no order among us." Strap had the instinct
of feudal loyalty to a descendant of a laird. But Smollett boasts that,
being at the time about twenty, and having burdened a nobleman with his
impossible play, "The Regicide," "resolved to punish his barbarous
indifference, and actually discarded my Patron." _He_ was not given to
"booing" (in the sense of bowing), but had, of all known Scots, the most
"canty conceit o' himsel'." These qualities, with a viol