George II., so calm and impartial a
testimony to the various worth of his literary compeers that it almost
assumes the tone of the voice of posterity. This is the suggestion of
the article in the "Quarterly Review," and the language of the letter
confirms it. Despairing of ever again returning to his accustomed
avocations, and with a frame shattered by sickness and grief, he passes
from the field of busy life to a distant land, where he thinks to leave
his bones; but ere he bids a last farewell to his own soil, he passes in
review the names of those with whom he has for years been on relations
of amity or of ill-will, in his own profession, and, while he makes
their respective merits, so far as in him lies, a part of the history of
their country, he seems to breathe the parting formula of the gladiator
of old,--_Moriturus vos saluto_.

In the first of the ensuing letters an amusing commentary will be found
on Smollett's assertion, that his independent spirit would not stoop to
solicit either place or pension. The papers of which it forms one appear
to have been selected from the private correspondence of Dr. Smollett,
and are preserved among the MSS. of the Library Company of Philadelphia,
to which they were presented by Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence, who may have obtained them in Scotland.
Like the letter to Mr. Smith, we are satisfied that these are authentic
documents, and shall deal with them as such here. Lord Shelburne (better
known by his after-acquired title of Marquis of Lansdowne) was the
identical minister whom Pitt, twenty years later, so highly eulogized
for "that capacity of conferring good offices on those he prefers," and
for "his attention to the claims of merit," of which we could wish to
know that Smollett had reaped some benefit. The place sought for was
probably a consulate on the Mediterranean, which would have enabled our
author to look forward with some assurance of faith to longer and easier
years. The Duchess of Hamilton, to whom his Lordship writes, and by whom
his letter seems to have been transmitted to its object, was apparently
the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning, dowager Duchess of Hamilton, but
married, at the date of the letter, to the Duke of Argyle. Having
an English peerage of Hamilton in her own right, it is probable she
preferred to continue her former title.

LORD SHELBURNE TO THE DUCHESS OF HAMILTON.

"_Holt Street, Tuesday._

"Madam,-