his “Adventures of an Atom,”—­a political romance, displaying, under Japanese names, the different parties of Great Britain.  A recurrence of ill health drove him back to Italy in 1770.  At Monte Nuovo, near Leghorn, he wrote his delightful “Humphrey Clinker.”  This was his last work.  He died at Leghorn on the 21st October 1771, in the fifty-first year of his age.  His widow erected a plain monument to his memory, with an inscription by Dr Armstrong.  In 1774 a Tuscan monument was erected on the banks of the Leven by his cousin, James Smollett, Esq., of Bonhill.  As his wife was left in poor circumstances, the tragedy of “Venice Preserved” was acted at Edinburgh for her benefit, and the money remitted to Italy.

Smollett, for variety of powers, and indefatigable industry, has seldom been surpassed.  He was a politician, a poet, a physician, a historian, a translator, a writer of travels, a dramatist, a novelist, a writer on medical subjects, and a miscellaneous author.  It is only, however, as a novelist and a poet that he has any claims to the admiration of posterity.  His history survives solely because it is usually bound up with Hume’s.  His translation of “Don Quixote” has been eclipsed by after and more accurate versions.  His “Tour to Italy” is a succession of asthmatic gasps and groans.  His “Regicide”, and other plays, are entirely forgotten.  So also are his critical, medical, political, and miscellaneous effusions.

In fiction he is undoubtedly a great original.  He had no model, and has had no imitator.  His qualities as a novel-writer are rapidity of narrative, variety of incident, ease of style, graphic description, and an exquisite eye for the humours, peculiarities, and absurdities of character and life.  In language he is generally careless, but whenever a great occasion occurs, he rises to meet it, and writes with dignity, correctness, and power.  His sea-characters, such as Bowling, and his characters of low-life, such as Strap, have never been excelled.  His tone of morals is always low, and often offensively coarse.  In wit, constructiveness, and general style, he is inferior to Fielding; but surpasses him in interest, ease, variety, and humour, “Roderick Random” is the most popular and bustling of his tales.  “Peregrine Pickle” is the filthiest and least agreeable; its humours are forced and exaggerated, and the sea-characters seem caricatures of those in “Roderick Random;” just as Norna of the Fitful Head, and Magdalene Graeme, are caricatures of Meg Merriless.  “Sir Lancelot Greaves” is a tissue of trash, redeemed only here and there by traits of humour.  “The Adventures of an Atom” we never read.  “Humphrey Clinker” is the most delightful novel, with the exception of the Waverley series, in the English language.  “Ferdinand, Count Fathom,” contains much that is disgusting, but parts of it surpass all the rest in originality and profundity.  We refer especially to the description of the pretended English