events
occurred about a year after the novel was published in 1751.

Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree from Aberdeen
University, and, after returning from France, he practised for a year or
two at Bath. But he could not expect to be successful among fashionable
invalids, and, in "Humphrey Clinker," he make Matthew Bramble give such
an account of the Bath waters as M. Zola might envy. He was still trying
to gain ground in his profession, when, in March 1751, Mr. D. Wilson
published the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle" "for the Author,"
unnamed. I have never seen this first edition, which was "very curious
and disgusting." Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talks
of "the art and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, by
certain booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, and
corrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of personal
satire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts of envy,
rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private and public, been
levelled at his reputation." Who were these base and pitiless dastards?
Probably every one who did not write favourably about the book. Perhaps
Smollett suspected Fielding, whom he attacks in several parts of his
works, treating him as a kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, and an
associate with thieves. Why Smollett thus misconducted himself is a
problem, unless he was either "meanly jealous," or had taken offence at
some remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly began the war,
in the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle." He made a kind of palinode
to the "trading justice" later, as other people of his kind have done.

A point in "Peregrine Pickle" easily assailed was the long episode about
a Lady of Quality: the beautiful Lady Vane, whose memoirs Smollett
introduced into his tale. Horace Walpole found that she had omitted the
only feature in her career of which she had just reason to be proud: the
number of her lovers. Nobody doubted that Smollett was paid for casting
his mantle over Lady Vane: moreover, he might expect a success of
scandal. The _roman a clef_ is always popular with scandal-mongers, but
its authors can hardly hope to escape rebuke.

It was not till 1752 that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Italy, received
"Peregrine," with other fashionable romances--"Pompey the Little," "The
Parish Girl," "Eleanora's Adventures," "The Life of Mrs. Theresa
Const