by which he was agitated owing to the conduct of refractory
postilions and extortionate innkeepers, contributed positively to brace
up and invigorate his constitution. He spoke of himself indeed as
"mended by ill-treatment" not unlike Tavernier, the famous
traveller,--said to have been radically cured of the gout by a Turkish
aga in Egypt, who gave him the bastinado because he would not look at
the head of the bashaw of Cairo. But Fizes was right after all in his
swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a radical
one. His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of incessant
labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still maturing and
developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later work might have
eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a severe relapse in the
winter. In 1770 he had once more to take refuge from overwork on the
sunny coast he had done so much to popularize among his countrymen, and
it was near Leghorn that he died on 17th September 1771.

ANNO AETATIS 51.
EHEV! QVAM PROCVL A PATRIA!
PROPE LIBVRNI PORTVM, IN ITALIA
JACET SEPVLTVS.

THOMAS SECCOMBE. ACTON, May 1907.

LETTER I

BOULOGNE SUR MER, June 23, 1763.

DEAR SIR,--You laid your commands upon me at parting, to communicate
from time to time the observations I should make in the course of my
travels and it was an injunction I received with pleasure. In
gratifying your curiosity, I shall find some amusement to beguile the
tedious hours, which, without some such employment, would be rendered
insupportable by distemper and disquiet.

You knew, and pitied my situation, traduced by malice, persecuted by
faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a
domestic calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.

You know with what eagerness I fled from my country as a scene of
illiberal dispute, and incredible infatuation, where a few worthless
incendiaries had, by dint of perfidious calumnies and atrocious abuse,
kindled up a flame which threatened all the horrors of civil dissension.

I packed up my little family in a hired coach, and attended by my
trusty servant, who had lived with me a dozen of years, and now refused
to leave me, took the road to Dover, in my way to the South of France,
where I hoped the mildness of the climate would prove favourable to the
weak state of my lungs.

You advised me to have recourse again to the Bath waters, from the use
of wh