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"is, I do believe, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." This is strong praise, though but of a single book; yet it falls short of the general estimate that Walter Scott formed of the capacity of our author. "We readily grant to Smollett," he says, "an equal rank with his great rival, Fielding, while we place both far above any of their successors in the same line of fictitious composition." After the testimonies we have cited, it would be useless to seek other approbation of Smollett's merits. "From higher judgment-seats make no appeal To lower." Yet, with all his imaginative power and humorous perception, it cannot be gainsaid that there was a great lack of delicacy in the composition of his mind,--a deficiency which, even in his own days, gave just offence to readers of the best taste, and which he himself was sometimes so candid as to acknowledge and to correct. Its existence is too often a sufficient cause to deter any but minds of a certain masculine vigor from the perusal of such a work as "Roderick Random"; and yet this work was an especial favorite with the most refined portion of the public in the latter half of the last century. Burke delighted in it, and would no doubt often read from it aloud to the circle of guests of both sexes that gathered about him at Beaconsfield; and Elia makes his imaginary aunt refer to the pleasure with which in her younger days she had read the story of that unfortunate young nobleman whose adventures make such a figure in "Peregrine Pickle." So great is the change in the habit of thought and expression in less than half a century, that we believe there is not in all America a gentleman who would now venture to read either of these works aloud to a fireside group. Smollett's Muse was free enough herself; in all conscience;-- "High-kirtled was she, As she gaed o'er the lea";-- but in "Peregrine Pickle," beside the natural incidents, there are two long episodes foisted upon the story, neither of which has any lawful connection with the matter in hand, and one of which, indelicate and indecent in the extreme, does not appear to have even been of his own composition. Reference is here made to the "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality," and to the passages respecting young Annesley; and since biographers do not seem to have touched especially on the manner of their introduction into the novel, we will give a word
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