llett should try to make a little
money and notoriety by penning satires. They are fierce, foul-mouthed,
and pointless. But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; he had the
examples of Pope and Swift before him; which, as far as truculence went,
he could imitate. Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men of
letters that some peer or other ought to aid and support them; and, as no
peer did support Smollett, obviously they were "varnished ruffians." He
erred as he would not err now, for times, and ways of going wrong, are
changed. But, at best, how different are his angry couplets from the
lofty melancholy of Johnson's satires!

Smollett's "small sum of money" did not permit him long to push the
fortunes of his tragedy, in 1739; and as for his "very large assortment
of letters of recommendation," they only procured for him the post of
surgeon's mate in the _Cumberland_ of the line. Here he saw enough of
the horrors of naval life, enough of misery, brutality, and
mismanagement, at Carthagena (1741), to supply materials for the salutary
and sickening pages on that theme in "Roderick Random." He also saw and
appreciated the sterling qualities of courage, simplicity, and
generosity, which he has made immortal in his Bowlings and Trunnions.

It is part of a novelist's business to make one half of the world know
how the other half lives; and in this province Smollett anticipated
Dickens. He left the service as soon as he could, when the beaten fleet
was refitting at Jamaica. In that isle he seems to have practised as a
doctor; and he married, or was betrothed to, a Miss Lascelles, who had a
small and far from valuable property. The real date of his marriage is
obscure: more obscure are Smollett's resources on his return to London,
in 1744. Houses in Downing Street can never have been cheap, but we find
"Mr. Smollett, surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster," and, in 1746, he
was living in May Fair, not a region for slender purses. His tragedy was
now bringing in nothing but trouble, to himself and others. His satires
cannot have been lucrative. As a dweller in May Fair he could not
support himself, like his Mr. Melopoyn, by writing ballads for street
singers. Probably he practised in his profession. In "Count Fathom" he
makes his adventurer "purchase an old chariot, which was new painted for
the occasion, and likewise hire a footman . . . This equipage, though
much more expensive than his finances could bear,