Now we are not very well versed in Scottish topography; but we well recollect, that in Dean Swift’s “Memoirs of Captain John Creichton,” who was a noted Cavalier in the reigns of Charles II., James II., and William III., and had borne an active part in the persecution of “the puir hill-folk,” there is mention made of the name of Stobo.  The Captain dwells with no little satisfaction upon the manner in which, after he had been so thoroughly outwitted by Mass David Williamson,—­the Covenanting minister, who played Achilles among the women at my Lady Cherrytree’s,—­he succeeded in circumventing and taking prisoner “a notorious rebel, one Adam Stobow, a farmer in Fife near Culross.”  And later in the same book occurs a very characteristic passage:—­“Having drunk hard one night, I dreamed that I had found Captain David Steele, a notorious rebel, in one of the five farmers’ houses on a mountain in the shire of Clydesdale and parish of Lismahago, within eight miles of Hamilton, a place I was well acquainted with.”  Lest the marvellous fulfilment of Creichton’s dream should induce other seekers to have resort to a like self-preparation, we will merely add, that the village of Hamilton is hard by the castle of the Duke of that name, to whose family we have already seen Smollett was under some obligations, and that it is described in the same pages with Lismahago.  It is not improbable, therefore, that, being at Hamilton, the novelist’s attention may have been attracted to “Creichton’s Memoirs,” which treat of the adjacent districts, and that the mention of Stobo’s name therein may have suggested to his mind its connection with Lismahago.  Certainly there was no antecedent work to “Humphrey Clinker,” in which, as we may believe, either of these names finds a place, save this of Creichton; and as, throughout the whole series of letters, Smollett does not profess to avoid the introduction of actual persons and events, often even with no pretence of disguise, we need not hesitate to think that he would make no difficulty of turning the eccentricities of a half-pay officer to some useful account.

[Footnote A:  Some amusing particulars concerning Stobo may be found also in the Journal of Lieut.  Simon Stevens: Boston 1760.—­EDS.  ATLANTIC.]

But we have wandered too far away from the business of his correspondence.  The next letter that we shall examine is one from John Gray, dated at Florence, Nov. 15th, 1770, to Smollett, at Leghorn.  It abounds in details of the writer’s attempts at the translation of a French play for the English stage, on which he desires a judgment; and cites verses from several of the songs it contains,—­one of them being that so familiar to American ears thirty years since, when Lafayette was making his last tour through this country:—­

  “Ou peut on etre mieux
  Qu’au sein de sa famille?”