on his own efforts for a living, he mixed familiarly with varied
classes of men. As a surgeon in London, he came in contact with the
middle and lower ranks of the city, from which many of his best
characters are taken. As surgeon's mate on board a man-of-war, he
obtained that acquaintance with a seafaring life which was afterward
turned to such excellent account.

Of Smollett's works, "Humphrey Clinker" is the most humorous, "Roderick
Random" the simplest and most natural, "Perigrine Pickle," the most
elaborate and brilliant. The reader is conducted from adventure to
adventure with an unfailing interest, sustained by the distinctness of
the picture and the brightness of the coloring. The characters met with
are natural and well studied. Trunnion, Hatchway, Pipes, Lieutenant
Bowling, and Jack Rattlin are all distinctly seamen, and yet each has a
marked individuality of his own. Matthew Bramble and Winifred Jenkins
are among the best-drawn and most entertaining of fictitious
personages. Smollett's humor is usually of the broadest and most
elementary kind. It consists largely of hard blows, _a-propos_
knockdowns, and practical jokes. More than any novelist, he illustrates
the coarseness of his time. His pages are filled with cruelties and
blackguardism. Many of his principal characters are dissolute without
enjoyment, and brutal without good nature. Modern taste is shocked by
the succession of repulsive scenes and degrading representations of
vice which are often intended to amuse, and always to entertain. But it
is because life in the eighteenth century had so many repulsive
features, that the novels of the time often repel the modern reader,
There is nothing strained or uncommon in the experiences of Miss
Williams while in prison:

There I saw nothing but rage, anguish, and impiety; and heard
nothing but groans, curses, and blasphemy. In the midst of this
hellish crew, I was subjected in the tyranny of a barbarian, who
imposed upon me tasks that I could not possibly perform, and then
punished my incapacity with the utmost rigor and inhumanity. I was
often whipped into a swoon, and lashed out of it, during which
miserable intervals I was robbed by my fellow-prisoners of every
thing about me, even to my cap, shoes, and stockings; I was not
only destitute of necessaries, but even of food, so that my
wretchedness was extreme. Not one of my acquaintance, to whom I
imparted my sit